How the Internet Archive is Waging War on Misinformation

'San Francisco-based non-profit is archiving billions of web pages in
a bid to preserve web history. From a report:

Since the 2016 US election, as fears about the power of fake news have
intensified, the archive has stepped up its efforts to combat
misinformation. At a time when false and ultra-partisan content is
rapidly created and spread, and social media pages are constantly
updated, the importance of having an unalterable record of who said
what, when has been magnified. "We're trying to put in a layer of
accountability," said founder Brewster Kahle. Mr Kahle founded the
archive, which now employs more than 100 staff and costs $18m a year
to run, because he feared that what was appearing on the internet was
not being saved and catalogued in the same way as newspapers and
books. The organisation is funded through donations, grants and the
fees it charges third parties that request specific digitisation
services.

So far, the archive has catalogued 330bn web pages, 20m books and
texts, 8.5m audio and video recordings, 3m images and 200,000 software
programs. The most popular, public websites are prioritised, as are
those that are commonly linked to. Some information is free to access,
some is loaned out (if copyright laws apply) and some is only
available to researchers. Curled up in a chair in his office after
lunch, Mr Kahle lamented the combined impact of misinformation and how
difficult it can be for ordinary people to access reliable sources of
facts. "We're bringing up a generation that turns to their screens,
without a library of information accessible via screens," said Mr
Kahle. Some have taken advantage of this "new information system", he
argued -- and the result is "Trump and Brexit." Having a free online
library is crucial, said Mr Kahle, since "[the public is] just
learning from whateverâ...âis easily available."'

-- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/19/09/19/1858249

Cheers, Peter
-- 
Peter Reutemann
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Waikato, NZ
+64 (7) 858-5174
http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/
http://www.data-mining.co.nz/
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