The Data Hoarders Resisting Trump’s Purge

Can librarians and guerrilla archivists save the country’s files from DOGE?

https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/the-data-hoarders-resisting-trumps-purge

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But strangers online had grabbed other directories, and together they were able to complete the backup. “I think we’ll be surprised by how many things have been saved by people we don’t yet know, because they haven’t had a chance to give it to someone,” he told me. When I asked who they were, Majstorovic had a simple answer: “Nerds who care.”

They came, in many cases, from r/DataHoarder, a subreddit with nearly a million members devoted to preserving files. The data hoarders collect zines, manuals, family photos, old television shows, and defunct websites—just about everything digital or digitizable at risk of disappearance. Their tastes run a wide gamut. Among the hoards cited on periodic show-and-tell threads are “1,500 90 minute recordings of church services,” “15000+ hentai mangas and growing,” “a digital collection of Occitan and Piedmontese books,” and “someone’s grandma’s recipes.” But the hoarders speak the same language on the subject of digital permanence, swapping tips on storage and sharing glamour shots of their elaborate server “rigs.” The subreddit’s banner image is a stack of hard drives emblazoned with the words “What do you mean DELETE?!”

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