Mass data deletion is a call to digital preservation action

Phil Mataras, founder and CEO of AR.io, argues that deleting public data is a deliberate, quiet process that calls for digital preservation as a civic obligation. He points to the removal of public health dashboards and economic indicators in the United States, and to the 2021 shutdown of Hong Kong outlet Apple Daily, after which a 26-year archive became inaccessible within hours. He says cyber activists then backed up its articles on the Arweave blockchain, and he cites nonprofit efforts like the Internet Archive, which has backed up billions of web pages, as a counterweight.