Internet Archive rolls out fact-checking on archived webpages

Even the Wayback Machine is getting into fact-checking now.

In a blog post on its website, the Internet Archive announced it was rolling out fact-checking annotations on certain webpages archives by its Wayback Machine.

According to Mark Graham, director of the Wayback Machine, the organization felt the need for this feature after noticing a number of fact-checking groups linking to archived versions of pages.

“We are attempting to preserve our digital history but recognize the issues around providing access to false and misleading information coming from different sources,” Graham wrote in the post. “By providing convenient links to contextual information we hope that our patrons will better understand what they are reading in the Wayback Machine.”

Basically, due to fact-checking organizations resurfacing old, out-of-date information to debunk, the Internet Archive felt it was important that the Wayback Machine provide that context on the archived pages itself.

Credit: Wayback Machine

The announcement included examples of Wayback Machine’s fact checking labels. A yellow bar appears at the top of the archived page, informing users that it's been subject to a fact-check. A link to the fact-checking article is included in the label.

The examples include an archived CNN story on the GOP’s 2017 healthcare bill, which was fact checked by Politifact. Another example is an archived link to a page which researchers determined to be part of a disinformation campaign. The Wayback Machine now includes a link to the disinformation report.

Internet Archive’s final example is, in my opinion, the most relevant. The Wayback Machine can be a great resource for material originally posted on social platforms that were taken down due to policy violations. In this example, a Medium post which was promoting COVID-19 misinformation was removed from Medium’s platform due to one of those policy violations. The Wayback Machine now displays a label explaining that the page was removed due to breaking that platform’s rules.

The Wayback Machine is the largest online archive of digital material, maintained by the nonprofit Internet Archive. Users can search for nearly any webpage and find an archived version of that page. Some websites have multiple versions of its pages archived, allowing you to travel back in time and see how a certain webpage looked like at any given point in its history.

The fact-check labels are a good step towards combating misinformation, but they also say something about the state of the internet when even an archive library needs them.