Text (Mostly Tweet) Archiving and You
Why?
People delete things. To discuss news and drama accurately, it's important to have a record of who said what.How?
Archive sites:
Archive sites take a snapshot of a web page as it was on the day you accessed it. Unlike screenshots, they are not easily faked.I know of three archive sites. There may be others. Unfortunately all three sites have their own quirks when it comes to tweets, which are the majority of what should be archived.
- archive.today - Paste URL in. Press Save. The Firefox add-on in the post above reduces this to one button. When the page changes to archive.ph/wip/[characters], copy that URL and put it in your post. You do not need to wait for it to finish.
- Only preserves embedded images as thumbnails
- Does not preserve replies to a tweet (currently)
- ghostarchive.org - Paste URL in. Press Submit for Archival. When the page changes to ghostarchive.org/archive/[characters], copy that URL and put it in your post. You do not need to wait for it to finish.
- Preserves replies to a tweet (currently)
- Seems slower than archive.today
- Seems to intend to preserve full embedded images in tweets, but gets stuck on loading
- archive.org - Click on Web. Paste URL into Save Page Now and press Save.
- Has a process for takedown requests, so not the first choice. If you're paranoid that a page which has been deleted is only on archive.org, you can re-archive it using archive.today.
- Useless for new tweets when I tested it
- Very useful for edge cases like video, audio, Google Docs that require you to be signed in
All three sites can be searched for existing archives as well, provided you have a URL.
One weird trick (the TVA embed method):
If you have a lot of tweets you want to archive, paste them all into a post on this forum and press Post. Then use the Archive Page button on the top right of the page. This opens a new archive.today tab. Edit that archive URL into your post. The embedded tweets will still be visible, even if the original tweets are deleted. However, anything in spoiler tags is not archived.
Screenshots:
Archive sites are an independent record. Screenshots are not independent; they can be faked. But sometimes you have no choice (e.g. site that requires login), and in those cases screenshots are better than nothing.Edge: ... (Menu) > Web Capture, or Ctrl+Shift+S - Capture Full Page is an option
Firefox: Right-click > Take Screenshot - Save Full Page is an option (but see the post below)
Chrome/Brave/etc. : GoFullPage add-on
I have not looked into mobile browser options. If nothing else, you can screenshot your phone screen and crop it down as needed.
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