> While it’s unclear how or why those archives vanished, Abulhawa says the coincidence raises concern about a broader digital erasure of Palestinian documentation.
Note: I am making no comment on the conflict itself here.
I understand that journalists have to go where the people are, but if your archive strategy relies on posts on social media, you do not, in fact, have an archive strategy.
propagandist•55m ago
His feed is an archive of war crimes documented under conditions of imposed starvation and an information blackout, in a "conflict" that has had the highest journalist mortality rate by far.
First, he's under no obligation to archive his posts. It's on the world to archive them and prosecute the perpetrators of the documented crimes.
Second, the platform in question has, at the highest levels, intelligence officers from the entity committing those crimes.
Third, humanity has failed in its moral duty yet again, and this sort of "neutral" commentary that ends with a glib remark directed at a murdered non-combatant is shocking to the conscience.
terminalshort•35m ago
Is he under an obligation? No. Is he, and any other professional who doesn't, an idiot for not backing up his data? Yes.
luaybs•32m ago
Are you calling a man that was living under a g*nocide documenting the horrific war crimes an idiot because he didn't back up his data, do you hear yourself??
terminalshort•31m ago
If you can upload it to Meta's servers, you can back it up too.
luaybs•24m ago
The number one priority was for him to spread the information as fast as possible to as many people as possible. Given the limited bandwidth, limited electricity, limited availability for physical storage devices, and limited everything, do you really think that backing up his data was his priority? Have some empathy...
jasonlotito•13m ago
Technically there was a backup we knew about that was taken down, too.
dima55•29m ago
This is HN. This thread is about data and backups. Yes.
tclancy•22m ago
Begging the question there, aren’t we? I can’t imagine that as the takeaway.
jasonlotito•15m ago
You are making some assumptions here.
He is dead. Any backups he might have made might be long gone, or otherwise, unknown. What we do know is that the IG posts AND the backups done via the Internet Archive are gone.
So, my question to you is: where can you set a backup for no cost, available from Gaza, and that won't be taken down 3rd parties. Note, anything online has the potential to have data removed, and even then, we don't know what other backup locations he might have been using. We just know what was available now to the public.
In addition, let's say he had hardware backups (which are now gone after he was killed), or let's say just a random S3 bucket. We have to know about it. Know how to get access to it. And hope that AWS doesn't nuke it because someone asks them to do it.
It's a big mess, and blaming him for not having more backups than an entire country is incredible.
vasco•12m ago
If you die right now, will people on the internet know how to restore your backups or that you had them or are you an idiot?
elygre•10m ago
I think we don’t know if he backed up his data.
We do know that he is dead, though.
vkou•35m ago
His mistake in choice of archive does not absolve Facebook of the moral bankruptcy of deleting his photos.
It's acting as a willing propaganda mouthpiece for absolutely abominable people. If they were doing nothing wrong, they wouldn't be hiding the truth of what they did from the world.
burkaman•19m ago
There's no reason to believe he didn't have an archive strategy. I'm guessing he did have one, and his photos and videos are backed up somewhere, but he was relying on not being dead to be able to retrieve them.
bhouston•41m ago
FB should make it available again. It is a historical record of the conflict as seen by someone experiencing it. To deny it is unfair. I don’t think FB is going around deleting the pages of Israelis killed in this conflict - it seems to be exclusive to Palestinians.
dghlsakjg•1h ago
Note: I am making no comment on the conflict itself here.
I understand that journalists have to go where the people are, but if your archive strategy relies on posts on social media, you do not, in fact, have an archive strategy.
propagandist•55m ago
First, he's under no obligation to archive his posts. It's on the world to archive them and prosecute the perpetrators of the documented crimes.
Second, the platform in question has, at the highest levels, intelligence officers from the entity committing those crimes.
Third, humanity has failed in its moral duty yet again, and this sort of "neutral" commentary that ends with a glib remark directed at a murdered non-combatant is shocking to the conscience.
terminalshort•35m ago
luaybs•32m ago
terminalshort•31m ago
luaybs•24m ago
jasonlotito•13m ago
dima55•29m ago
tclancy•22m ago
jasonlotito•15m ago
He is dead. Any backups he might have made might be long gone, or otherwise, unknown. What we do know is that the IG posts AND the backups done via the Internet Archive are gone.
So, my question to you is: where can you set a backup for no cost, available from Gaza, and that won't be taken down 3rd parties. Note, anything online has the potential to have data removed, and even then, we don't know what other backup locations he might have been using. We just know what was available now to the public.
In addition, let's say he had hardware backups (which are now gone after he was killed), or let's say just a random S3 bucket. We have to know about it. Know how to get access to it. And hope that AWS doesn't nuke it because someone asks them to do it.
It's a big mess, and blaming him for not having more backups than an entire country is incredible.
vasco•12m ago
elygre•10m ago
We do know that he is dead, though.
vkou•35m ago
It's acting as a willing propaganda mouthpiece for absolutely abominable people. If they were doing nothing wrong, they wouldn't be hiding the truth of what they did from the world.
burkaman•19m ago