The Archive Problem
The internet remembers everything except the things we needed it to keep.
By Elena Marsh · July 23, 2026
Link rot is not a technical curiosity. It is a slow erasure of the public record.
What disappears
Court filings, municipal budgets, press releases, and the small local reports that anchor larger investigations. When those vanish, so does the ability to check the work.
What can be done
Institutional archiving is cheap relative to its value. The obstacle has never been storage. It has been ownership.
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