PSA: Internet Archive “glitch” deletes years of user data & accounts

Recently at Internet Archive a “glitch” (their choice of word) deleted a great many accounts, including my account that had been at archive.org/details/@gingerbeardman since 2015.

Somewhat surprisingly, they are not reaching out to affected users but rather waiting for them to create new accounts and silently relinking their old uploads only if the new account has same email as the old account. Otherwise, all profile metadata, favourites, lists, reviews, posts, collections, web archives, and the original username are not being relinked. For me that’s a decade of data…gone.

The main impact of this massive data loss, that happened around mid-July, is that there are now dead links to old profiles and various old pages all across the internet, plus the additional impact of lost data that is not being recovered. It’s a real blow to the broader preservation effort to know that the one place where data is supposed to be safe forever has had a massive data loss and the organisation responsible are not taking proactive steps to address the issue fully. I can appreciate addressing it will require a certain amount of time, energy, staff and that’s likely the reason why it’s not being.

The extent of the data loss and how many accounts were affected is currently unknown. And because they’re not really talking about it, it’s quite difficult to find any concrete information as to the extent or cause of the data loss. You can find more info at the Internet Archive forums, the /r/internetarchive subreddit, or your choice of social media where Internet Archive have a presence (Twitter: ref1, ref2).

This story is still developing, and the press have been notified.

Status

Here’s a summary of the current status of the pages related to my deleted account:

Relinked

• archive.org/details/@gingerbeardman/uploads

Restored (see update below)

• archive.org/details/@gingerbeardman
• archive.org/details/fav-gingerbeardman

Lost

• archive.org/details/@gingerbeardman/loans
• archive.org/details/@gingerbeardman/lists
• archive.org/details/@gingerbeardman/posts
• archive.org/details/@gingerbeardman/reviews
• archive.org/details/@gingerbeardman/collections
• archive.org/details/@gingerbeardman/web-archive

Support, up to a point

My support experience with Internet Archive was frustrating and ultimately futile. They did not adequately address my queries and requests. Instead they made changes to my account that I did not request, and in the end were pretty clear that they were not going to help me any further. This is such a disappointing stance to take with users who are simply trying to recover their data as a result of loss caused by Internet Archive itself.

Update, about turn

After the second submission of this post by somebody else hit the Hacker News homepage I received an email say that they had “figured a workaround” (their choice of word) and restored my username, which in turn relinked my old favorites. This miracle contradicts the message shown above there they are pretty clear that it was not possible.

So this means there’s still a bunch of data missing, as detailed above. I suspect this was a one off workaround and that they’re not doing it for everybody affected. YMMV. It wasn’t my intention to try and force action by publicising this event, but it does seem to have had that effect.

Elsewhere

• Hacker News
• Hacker News submitted by somebody else (“flagged” for some reason)
• Lobste.rs (deleted by moderator at the request of Internet Archive)
• Tildes
• Two Stop Bits