There is a lot on the Internet, including many that are questionable – that is why the Internet Archive has made it its business to make corrective information available on some archived websites. In some cases, this can be background information to put misleading statements into context; in other cases it is fact-checking that is intended to correct earlier false statements. The Internet Archive presents its new project in a blog post.

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fact checks linked As Mark Graham writes in his blog post, the Internet Archive has begun to display links to such annotations in the saved snapshots of a webpage when a user of the Wayback Machine – the search engine with which one searches the archive rummages – comes across a questionable page. The archived website remains unchanged, only a yellow background is displayed between the header with the search engine information and the snapshot of the website.

Fact checks or background information on a The Wayback Machine will show the archived website with a yellow bar.

(Image: Internet Archive / archive.org)

This additional information comes partly from various fact-checking institutions and partly from the websites concerned, if they later corrected their own representations or withdrew them with justification.

Preserve digital history, add context Graham emphasizes that the aim is to continue to preserve the ‘digital history’, but is also aware of the problem that this gives access to false or misleading statements from a wide variety of sources. With the links to further information it is hoped to give the users of the Wayback Machine more context for a better understanding of the contents.

The blog post gives three examples in which context information is displayed: For example, a link to the fact checkers of Politifact, which makes a statement in a CNN Correct Report on Debate on US Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare; a link to a report by Graphika exposing a text on indymedia.uk as part of a disinformation campaign; as well as a post on medium.com, which was withdrawn from the website itself because it violated the rules of Covid – 19 – Reporting violated.

The Internet Archive works with the following organizations to contextualize its archived content: FactCheck.org, Check Your Fact, Lead Stories, Politifact, Washington Post Fact-Checker, AP News Fact Check , USA Today Fact Check, Graphika, Stanford Internet Observatory, and Our.news. The blog post does not provide any information about the scope of the links or the number of documents already viewed.

( tiw)