We've said it more than once. The page or online service you enjoy today can disappear tomorrow. Photos, music, videos, and documents backed up in the cloud… erased. And that's not to mention links: the occasional 404 during a session might not mean much to you, but it hides a much deeper and more complex problem. The concept of link rot attacks the web's natural ability to store information, and unfortunately we don't have robust solutions. The internet is rotting.
Hyperlinks are everywhere. They are a fundamental resource for our digital lives, making them faster, simpler, more dynamic. In some cases, they also convey identity, security, and even reputation. But hyperlinks are not eternal, nor were they designed to be. The link that works beautifully today can return a 404 within an hour or a decade... and no portal or service is immune. Our own site is a victim of broken links or videos that disappear shortly after, and even your own browser bookmarks probably have a similar problem.
Sometimes the loss of those links is just an accident, but if we study most cases, it's a deliberate action. For example, I recently tried to locate old drivers and BIOS for Intel motherboards… and I remembered that Intel completely removed those files in November 2019. Only community efforts have prevented a complete loss, however, it's never enough. In fact, some experts dare to suggest the worst: the internet is rotting from pure link rot.
Link Rot: The Internet Is Rotting at Every Level
One of the most cited cases of link rot dates back to 2010. Justice Samuel Alito shared his legal opinion in the United States Supreme Court, and within that opinion he placed a link as a source to justify his position. The problem was that the link stopped working shortly thereafter, and the original text was left with that 404 forever. Nobody could access the information.
The people at perma.cc, a service dedicated to combating link rot, offer some chilling numbers: More than 50 percent of the links in Supreme Court opinions do not lead to the correct source. This rises to almost 70 percent when it comes to academic journals, and 20 percent of all science, technology, and medicine articles have already been affected by link rot.
Rewriting the Past, Losing the Present?
Universities, government agencies, newspapers… no one has managed to escape link rot, and everything suggests its effects will be even deeper. Digitization campaigns are vital to improve access to information and reduce paper use (which often includes the destruction of original copies), but without careful preparation, the value of such an effort could be neutralized, one broken link at a time.
As if that weren't enough, information isn't only deleted: it also changes. Think of every politician desperate to erase what they said in a tweet ten years ago, or companies looking to bury unpleasant events. Lies turned into truths, vandalism and denialism, invented news and words, modified books. The famous case of the English digital version of War and Peace distributed by Barnes & Noble still resonates in our minds: Every instance and variant of 'kindle' in the text had been replaced with 'Nook'.
Now, our hands aren't entirely empty. The aforementioned perma.cc and the Internet Archive itself serve as main lines of defense. Even Wikipedia recommends its contributors use the Wayback Machine and Archive Today to 'shield' links inserted in articles to some extent... but we must be realistic: the internet is rotting, and link rot will continue to advance.
Sources: The Atlantic, The Verge
