[AI Minor News Flash] Are News Articles Disappearing? Major Media Outlets Block Internet Archive as an ‘AI Backdoor’

📰 News Overview

• Expansion of Restrictions by Major Media: Leading publications like The New York Times (NYT), The Guardian, and the Financial Times (FT) are limiting or completely blocking the archiving of articles by Internet Archive.
• Countermeasures Against the ‘Backdoor’ for AI Training: Publishers are concerned that AI companies might bypass direct blocks and use Internet Archive’s API or Wayback Machine as a “structured database” to scrape content without permission.
• Impact on Historical Records: Internet Archive warns that these restrictions could lead to a “decrease in public access to historical records,” hindering efforts to combat information disorder.

💡 Key Points

• Specific Blocking Measures: NYT has implemented a “hard block” by disallowing “archive.org_bot” in robots.txt since the end of 2025. The Guardian is taking a gradual approach, limiting API access and article URL extraction while still allowing preservation of its homepage.
• Collateral Damage to Goodwill Efforts: Computer scientist Professor Michael Nelson points out that “well-intentioned organizations” like Internet Archive are facing backlash from media due to “malicious users” like AI companies, resulting in collateral damage.
• Reddit Follows Suit: In August 2025, Reddit also limited access to Internet Archive due to similar concerns. As the value of AI training data rises, platforms are trying to prevent the archive from becoming a “free data provider.”

🦈 Shark’s Eye (Curator’s Perspective)

This news is a spicy clash between the preservation and protection of information!

The point raised by The Guardian’s representative about “APIs being an ideal connection point for AI businesses” is a glaring blind spot of our time. While acknowledging that the Wayback Machine itself is less risky due to its unstructured nature, leaving the “faucet” of the API open risks having their intellectual property siphoned away. This use of the term “backdoor” reflects the strong caution from the media side!

Ironically, the Internet Archive—once a sanctuary for preserving the internet’s history—now risks being treated like a “laundering site for content” due to the immense demand for AI training. It’s tragic that a goodwill crawler aiming to record history is getting punished in place of AI companies.

🚀 What’s Next?

More publishers may close the doors to archives under the guise of “AI countermeasures.” If this trend continues, we could see a digital blackout in a few decades, with “no traces of late 2020s internet news” left behind—welcome to the digital dark ages!

💬 Shark’s Takeaway

A battle between those wanting to preserve history and those wanting to protect content! I sympathize with both sides, but it’s a painful situation… and AI’s appetite just keeps growing! 🦈🔥

📚 Terminology Explained

• Internet Archive: A nonprofit organization aiming to preserve digital assets like websites, books, and videos from around the world, making them accessible for free.

• Wayback Machine: A tool provided by Internet Archive that allows users to view the state of websites at specific points in the past—like a time machine for the web.

• Scraping: A technique used to automatically extract data from websites, frequently employed to gather training data for AI.

• Source: News publishers limit Internet Archive access due to AI scraping concerns