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Diagonon Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14

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Diagonon Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14

Press Release:

[Will be sent out to media. Thanks to those who are commenting here for useful bits of information that has been included.]

Verizon Media/Yahoo closing down Yahoo Groups, with imminent loss of important history.

Yahoo, now owned by Verizon, is in the process of partially closing down a two-decades long service, Yahoo Groups. This email list-serve/bulletin board is both a discussion platform and a repository of history for a large array of communities. Verizon intends to make all such history unavailable after December 14th of this year, having provided less than 2 and a half months of warning and, due to a broken system, having failed to alert numerous group owners and members.

Some of the histories on this platform are important, not just to the early Internet, but even to academic research and scientific investigations. Examples are discussion groups that included WW-II veterans, many of whom are now deceased; queer and trans groups, some of whom have organized to try to preserve this history [1,2]; and minority/immigrant groups [3]. Those with scientific data include earthquake researchers, medical/biohacking groups, bird watchers with decades of data, and even material relevant to patent claims. Popular culture groups devoted to art have uploaded their works there, and fan-fiction groups exchanged stories and feedback [4]. Sadly, Verizon has not made arrangements to help people to preserve this material. This has resulted in individual Yahoo Group owners/moderators, most of whom do not have technical backgrounds, scrambling to find ways to download their archives. Yahoo claims they have provided a data exporter, but it is very incomplete. Groups include not only messages, but files, databases, calendars and other materials. Some more technical users have organized to take requests, crowd-sourcing the work to download these Groups. One such [4] has been in contact with the Internet Archive, with the objective of uploading whatever they can get to Archive.org. Unfortunately, for reasons we can't guess, Verizon has been actively obstructing these efforts [5]. We urgently request that if Verizon will not support efforts to preserve this material, then they at least allow some means that Group owners can download complete archives of their groups, and independent groups can download public Groups. For this, we also need more time.

Support can be offered by spreading the word on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Hacker News, and other social media.

Verizon can be contacted at:

    "Hans Vestberg, Chariman & CEO" <Hans.Vestberg@verizon.com>

    "Guru Gowrappan, Executive VP & group CEO, Verizon Media" <Guru.Gowrappan@verizon.com>

    "Ronan Dunne, Executive VP & group CEO, Verizon Consumer" <Ronan.Dunne@verizon.com>

    "Tami Erwin, Executive VP & group CEO, Verizon Business" <Tami.Erwin@verizon.com>

Ways to support the projects listed in the links below may be found on their websites.

Please contact the following people for further information:

[For people here, just go to IRC as described in the link of the OP.]

[1] Queer Digital History Project: https://queerdigital.com/ygpresproject

[2] Project to Archive Trans Yahoo Groups: https://archivetransyahoo.noblogs.org/list-of-known-trans-gr...

[3] Project to Archive South Asian American yahoo groups: https://yahoogroups.southasianamerican.org/

[4] Archive Team archiving Fandom but also taking requests from group owners: https://archiveteam.org/

[5] Exchanges with Yahoo: https://modsandmembersblog.wordpress.com/2019/12/08/verizon-...

Diagonon Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14

It's been eating at you, I can tell.

Well, all I can say is, don't add that to the list of groups that this team is trying to archive (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Z-lODnyXsE2kiu8uL01L--10nDq...) and if it does end up on archive.org, you will find another post on this thread saying that they are very responsive to takedown requests. (info@archive.org)

Diagonon Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14

Most people running these groups are not technical. Even if they got the word in time, the only option many of them could find was PGOnline, a Win pay software, which by this point Yahoo has blocked. Furthermore, even if they got it, what do they do with it? For many groups, the archives are a resource to be referred to. They need to be hosted somewhere, preferably with some kind of front-end search engine. Even better if the search engine integrates with any new posts on the forum they move to.

The Archive Team has been taking requests for backups of groups for people who don't have the technical facility to run the python scripts. They then intend to make them available on the internet archive. The next project is making some kind of front end, in case group owners want to host that somewhere. Some of us, for example, will be doing that behind some kind of a forum login, so it won't be search engine indexed.

As for your point 2, that was cut/pasted from the link in the OP, where it's describing that many groups are still using the platform. More relevant to this project, is that many groups are losing their archives, and those archives contain anything from scientific data, to hobbyist & howto information, to art and literature, etc.

Diagonon Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14

Hypothetically, yes; but right now all this stuff is available on the clearnet and searchable. So obviously any potential harm of the present situation, is decreased. And, unless your argument is that we should delete all fora on the web because someone may have said something embarrassing on them, then I think you'd probably want to come down on the side of preservation.

Diagonon Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14

BoingBoing has picked this up: https://boingboing.net/2019/12/08/oath-makes-you-swear-2.htm...

Diagonon Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14

I also noted that for yahoo changing IP, even changing continents, allowed me to use the same cookies as long as I kept my original browser window open.

Diagonon Human-Assisted Archival of Yahoo Groups

If they are public, yes, it should be ok. Regarding groups that are old or inactive, A couple that I'm concerned with had important early discussions, that people on other derivative groups refer to regularly.

Diagonon Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14

A lot of people are going to groups.io, but I certainly wouldn't want to suggest anyone move to another centralized system. The best thing to do is probably just to get a VPS and install phpBB or something. For group owners, importing our Yahoo archives there is going to be the next task.

Diagonon Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14

A lot of people apparently didn't get notified. The platform regularly lost emails. (Fifteen years of being on it, such problems were not irregular.) Also, they did offer an export tool, but the results were/are incomplete.

I'll add that some group owners/moderators have not even been able to log into their groups. Yahoo was doing something with needing a yahoo email to get in as admin, even when a non-yahoo email was associated with the account. Those people that lost access to their yahoo email account have been totally SOL.

Diagonon Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14

Some of these groups are decades old. For them, you'd be hard pressed to find someone who was there for the whole history of the group and kept them all. Also, yahoo was often a headache, dropping emails to individuals - you'd have to go to the website to read them. And furthermore, there is a lot more than emails stored on the platform: files/images/links/calendars/databases ...

To add to all this, it's not an individual project. Most people done' have technical competence. They need someone to help. That's what the Archive Team has been trying to offer (if not for Verizon).

Diagonon Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14

I totally agree. Google? FB? Twitter? How about the Friendiverse? :)

Diagonon Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14

Other collective projects to try to archive Yahoo groups:

Queer Digital History Project: https://queerdigital.com/ygpresproject

Project to Archive Trans Yahoo Groups: https://archivetransyahoo.noblogs.org/list-of-known-trans-gr...

Project to Archive South Asian American yahoo groups: https://yahoogroups.southasianamerican.org/

I've got to guess that there are more.

Diagonon Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14

Dignium - is that an online conference? Do you need to own a share to get access? I'm having trouble making it out.

Diagonon Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14

If you read here you will see that there are many active groups. Even of those that aren't active, some have important history, even scientific value.

As for old posts disappearing, individuals have always been able to go to Yahoo Groups and delete posts that they later thought the better of. Group owners can also delete posts.

Diagonon Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14

Correct. They had done some testing, but that's all. They were just getting yahoo id's, while iterating on software improvements, so they could then download the groups.

Diagonon Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14

That is one hell of an analogy. I'm going to try to use it.

(There is one guy I came across trying trying to monetize what he could download of some archives. He used the Windows software PGDownload to do it. It's a lot of alt-med stuff: https://groups.rifeforum.com)

Diagonon Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14

Yes, this was incredibly sudden, and with not support for getting out. They gave 13 days notice of intention to shut down new additions to message archives (extended to 20 days after some commotion). That was October 21, I believe. They have offered a broken group downloader that produces incomplete results. Desperate group owners have been using a Windows piece of software called PGDownload, but Verizon has blocked that. Now the only organized effort is being actively interfered with. Dumbfounding is indeed the word.

Diagonon Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14

Yes, it wasn't me who started the groups in mind, and these were quite early, starting in the late 90's. While many members were researchers, on the whole they were not in computer fields- chemistry, biology, medicine... On top of that, people of that vintage knew very little about the internet.

There have also been many other comments here about other types of groups, from bird watchers to people building rockets to histories of WWII, that would certainly not have had this kind of technical background.

Diagonon Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14

Well, I will say that if these are backed up, they will be less accessible than they would with Yahoo. Someone will have to download a large archive (gigabytes, depending on teh group) and then search through it for themselves.

Diagonon Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14

Actually, it's not. We were given 13 days for the shutoff of archives, with another 7 when there was an outcry. Most owners of groups are non-technical and have no idea how to get their data; this is why the archive team put up a request page for owners who wanted their groups archived (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Z-lODnyXsE2kiu8uL01L--10nDq...). Their more crowd sourced approach, which has been hard at work for these months, has been actively interfered with by Verizon (see the link of the OP). Verizon should be supporting this attempt to preserve this material.

Diagonon Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14

See immediately above in the thread. Instructions were perhaps not clear.

Diagonon Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14

From IRC (betamaxthetape):

It's a set of groups that have been specifically requested by the fandom community. Of course, the groups handed out depend on what's been joined, so if / once all the fandom groups are joined, we'll move onto something else.

I appreciate this isn't made clear in the instructions, but if you have a desired set of groups in mind, you don't need to use the chrome extension. Just join the groups you want saved and (provided you've sent the account details through the form) they'll be added to the queue to be archived. I did a lot of Amateur Radio (Ham Radio in US) groups that way.

Diagonon Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14

That's right, but (our main concern) is that the archives are being deleted. With no further history being recorded, it's utility for some purposes is limited. I have also come across some complaints that even as a list-serve it can be problematic. Posts, for example, are no longer coming in order.

Diagonon Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14

I agree on the first point. The second is perhaps understandable if you read the whole exchange. You know they initially gave us 13 days before they cut off storing any more of the group emails (that is, new emails)? With an outcry, they increased that to 20. Many thousands of people were scrambling to find a new home. We are now reaching the end of the line (the last week) before the archives themselves are gone, and they have blocked the main concerted attempt to save some of that history. So, some level of frustration is in order.

Diagonon Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14

Ha, ha! Well, there's some high quality material there too, but I take your point. In the right context, like "history from below," all kinds of material can be high quality!

Diagonon Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14

I checked on IRC. One person says they've been using it for hours on chromium without a problem. "I've been using Edge (Chromium) for past few hours, no issues. Could be unrelated, could be related. May help to use a standalone chromium build for this."

Diagonon Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14

I see, yes. They have been negligent in many ways. Can you contact the owner of the group or a moderator and make the request?

(We even have groups whose owners have been locked out. Who do you contact at yahoo?)

Diagonon Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14

We have groups that the owners can't even access any more. They demand a yahoo email even when there's a non-Yahoo email associated with it. Y-Groups has been badly broken for some time.

Diagonon Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14

That could really help. Thank you!