Outlets like The Guardian and The New York Times are scrutinizing digital archives as potential backdoors for AI crawlers.
This investigation for Nieman Lab broke the news that major publishers — including The New York Times, The Guardian, and USA Today Co. —had started blocking the Wayback Machine, fearing that the digital library would be scraped for AI training. Our follow-up story identified more than 340 local news publications that had begun blocking the Wayback Machine for the same reason and explored the unique threats this trend posed to local news archives.
Our reporting launched a campaign to “Save the Archive,” which included a petition signed by hundreds of prominent journalists and authors. I appeared on Marketplace to discuss the story and its fallout.
January 2026, Nieman Lab
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