It’s an unfortunate truism that nothing is permanent on the internet. This is a shame for anyone who values information and entertainment on the web.
Websites regularly disappear along with their content. Sometimes publishers purge older content from their websites. This leads to a lot of “broken links” when web surfers click on a hyperlink to find information but get an error message instead.
A study by the Pew Research Center showed how bad the problem of “digital decay” is. Pew said a quarter of all webpages that existed at one point between 2013 and 2023 are no longer accessible.
The older the content is the worse the “link rot” problem is. Some 38% of webpages that existed in 2013 are not available today, Pew said in its May report.
The study also showed that 11% of all references linked on Wikipedia are no longer accessible.
The issue of disappearing content also applies to social media sites like X, formerly Twitter.
Meanwhile, an important repository of internet information, the nonprofit Internet Archive, is fighting copyright lawsuits that threaten its future.
It’s not a pretty picture.
Related articles:
When Media Outlets Shutter, Why Are the Websites Wiped, Too? (Slate; Feb. 24, 2024)
When Online Content Disappears (Pew Research; May 17, 2024)
The internet is full of broken links (Sherwood, May 22, 2024)
The Internet Archive’s Fight to Save Itself (Wired; Sept. 27, 2024)
Photos: Illustration produced by Dall-E 3 (top); Chart from Pew Research Center.
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