I send a very politically controversial source to my roommate, but when he goes to open it, it’s been deleted. Now what? Enter the Wayback Machine. View deleted web pages, edits, and really anything in the archive saved over many points in time.

The reason this is so important is that erasing sources, facts, history, etc. can be extremely dangerous and highlights the fragility of our present knowledge. Whether you are writing an academic paper for school or developing scientific research, if someone can remove your sources, they can ruin you. That can’t happen now with https://web.archive.org/ because you can prove the existence and content of your sources.

Another great example is when the media writes articles to enrage people for clicks and views and then say half a year later, they change a bunch of the terms used and the wording so it’s not as inflammatory making them look better and take on less blame. Given the outcomes and consequences of writing said article have already occurred and they got their money, it’s fine for them. On the website, it doesn’t tell you what they changed, but enter the Wayback Machine, and now you can see for yourself.

There are many use cases for this, but I think it’s extremely important for combatting censorship and fake news today. We have access to fact-checkers like Snopes and Politico, but I didn’t have a good resource for looking for deleted data or finding exactly what was edited before finding this resource.

Will you start to use the Wayback Machine now? Have you already been using this? Are there any other good resources like this? What are your thoughts on cancel culture, censorship, and fake news? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below and don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe!