Federal data is disappearing. On Thursday, meet the teams working to rescue it
54 comments
·February 13, 2025enaaem
What do Trump supporters here think of this?
misja111
Does anybody have an example of federal data that has disappeared already? I'm interested what kind of data it's about.
diggan
Examples:
> At the Department of Justice, a database detailing the vast array of criminal charges and successful convictions of January 6 rioters was removed, according to a report from Donie O’Sullivan and Katelyn Polantz at CNN
> Several pages on the Center for Disease Control have also been removed, including information on LGBTQ+ rights, HIV and adolescent health, reports Will Stone and Selena Simmons-Duffin from NPR
From https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2025/feb/04/the-fight...
matwood
We’ve always been at war with Eurasia.
This wholesale purge of data is an effort to rewrite history. Hopefully the Internet can mostly remember.
walrus01
They already deleted the main USAID YouTube channel, likely so news media can't easily pull any public domain footage of projects in various developing nations.
bloomingkales
Found one for ya:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcla7WoWIpQ
The USAID Office of Transition Initiatives (USAID/OTI) began its program in Haiti in January 2010 as part of the post-earthquake response, supporting short- and medium-term activities aimed at stabilizing Haiti through support for community revitalization, improved governance, and economic strengthening.
know-how
[dead]
libsofhn
[flagged]
actionfromafar
So, are the feds saving money on hosting costs?! What's the point of this.
guff_se
This is not an objection against saving hosting costs, it is the fact that the original data is not saved or backed up. To understand our future we need to know our past. Saving shelf space in the library is not a good justification to burn our history books. If you don’t like having them up, you can put them in the basement. Storage costs hardly anything.
guff_se
This is of course a deliberate move. By actively destroying ideas and work you don’t agree with, rather than archiving it, you make it harder for the other side to realize their vision. It’s a kind of scorched earth strategy.
watwut
It is easier to claim "everything functions better then before" if you destroyed data about how to worked before and have under control what is said about now.
lazide
Especially if done from the official archives, since you can then claim any copies are ‘fake news’/forgeries.
mschuster91
It has worked in the past. One of the first things the OG 1933-45 Nazis burned down once they took power was the "Institut für Sexualwissenschaft" [1] - a research center around gender and sexuality - after about a decade of anti-queer hate. That set the fight for queer / LGBT issues back for many, MANY decades.
Parallels to current events are completely obvious.
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_f%C3%BCr_Sexualwissen...
josteink
> By actively destroying ideas and work you don’t agree with, rather than archiving it, you make it harder for the other side to realize their vision.
Ok. I’ll bite.
Can you show me examples of how previous administrations have worked to maintain and back up systems and content it disagrees with and deemed wrong (or different policy, conservative, right-wing, white-supremacist, hateful, whatever)?
Because if they didn’t do it before, how is this any different now?
WhyNotHugo
For a political leader who makes a lot of unsubstantiated claims where data contradicts him, removing that data makes his claims a lot harder to refute.
matwood
> What's the point of this.
"Who controls the past, controls the future."
hexaga
It is presented as an attack against the left, which is popular with proponents of the current administration. Trying to analyze it at the object level is pointless - this is, chiefly, a political move toward political ends.
soco
Reminds me of that tweet where someone was complaining how difficult is to combat the arguments of the left because these tend to be based on facts.
christkv
I view it more like a battle between two groups of the elites. The left/right prism is a distraction. Personally I think both political parties got taken over by what we used to call the Neo-cons. The Republicans underwent an internal revolution that sidelined the Neo-cons inside it. So I view this as a battle between one group Neo-cons vs this new group represented by the current administration.
I don't have an opinion if that is better or worse, only time will tell. Demolishing USAID etc. should be seen as purging their political enemies and their supporters who's been nesting in the public structure for a couple of decades.
llamaimperative
I can help here: the group who is canceling life-saving treatment for millions of people, including 566,000 children, as part of a purge of “political enemies” are the bad ones.
lazide
Really it’s just an attack against any truth/data found inconvenient. Why argue when you can just make it not exist?
0xEF
Fascists control the future by changing the past. Simple as.
USAID and recent actions are just the start. After four more years of this blatantly slippery slope we are on, the removal of a YouTube channel will seem quaint and petty compared to what's to come.
null
washadjeffmad
It looks like you're getting some knee-jerk downvotes because some people are likely misreading your exasperation with what practical utility removing the data could possibly serve as "So [what], the feds are saving money on hosting costs?! What's the point of this [thread]."
That's not your fault, and I'm sorry.
4ndrewl
So, we're saving money on shelf space by burning those books. What's the problem?!
rizky05
[dead]
Looks like an admirable effort, although I assume this is all happening too quickly for them to put out a list of what is actually disappearing. It'll be an interesting topic to revisit in a few months.