Mass data deletion by governments is accelerating.

Opinion by: Phil Mataras, founder and chief executive officer at AR.io

Let’s stop pretending that data just disappears. It doesn’t. It’s deleted, erased, buried and more often than not, done deliberately. 

Every time a new administration seizes power, priorities are reshuffled. This is to be expected, but what is unacceptable is the quiet, coordinated disappearance of public information. It can already be seen, particularly in the United States, and at a pace that should alarm anyone who cares about truth.

From public health dashboards to economic indicators, entire swathes of data are being taken offline without a press release or explanation. Just gone. This isn’t housekeeping or protective; historical revisionism is happening in real time. 

The fragility of digital memory

The internet was meant to be a great equalizer — a vast public ledger of knowledge used for the greater good — but this ideal has not translated into reality. Instead, it has metastasized into a digital mirage. Vast in appearance, but fragile in reality.

When websites vanish, archives fold, or files get quietly pulled… There is no librarian to ask, no phone number to call, and usually no explanation of why. The centralization of information has become its greatest weakness — a system designed for convenience rather than permanence.

Let’s not sugarcoat it: This is dangerous. Power cannot be held accountable if there is no access to its actions, and as such, justice, policy and reform cannot be pursued if the data supporting them has already been deleted. 

Facts don’t have a shelf life, but in the current system, they may as well come with an expiration date. 

Consider World War II and the Holocaust — the horrors that unfolded in silence and the gaps in evidence that allowed deniers to crawl through the cracks. If the tools available today had existed then — tools to record, store and distribute without censorship — how much might have changed?

Proceed to 2021, when independent news outlets like Apple Daily were forced offline within hours in Hong Kong. A 26-year archive of journalism became inaccessible almost overnight, as servers were shut down and digital records wiped from public reach. Hope was renewed after cyber activists began backing up articles on the censorship-proof, permanent blockchain Arweave.

Fast forward to today in Spain, and we see the same problem years later. ISPs are blocking entire parts of the internet under pressure from corporate sports interests — no vote cast, no public conversation, just censorship wrapped in legalese. 

Don’t mistake silence for peace. Silence is control.

Preserving public data 

Erasure is no longer a crude act of destruction. It’s a quiet, legalistic, bureaucratic process that’s been sharpened over the decades. While the threat to public data preservation is real, so too are the responses.

Recent: US govt. sets AI policies across agencies

Nonprofit initiatives, like the Internet Archive, have quietly backed up billions of web pages over the years, effectively safeguarding against digital decay. These kinds of open-source archiving efforts operate independently of governments because no single administration should ever hold the keys to the public record.

Blockchain-based data storage solutions also offer censorship-resistant and tamper-proof alternative storage solutions — unlike today’s dominant cloud providers, which allow and even act on deletion and manipulation of data.

Every deleted article, every missing data set and every broken link is a chisel taken to the foundation of public reality. Without data, truth becomes subjective. When truth is subjective, power speaks last (and loudest).

The loss of information is the loss of history, and while solutions exist, they are not the point of this article. This is not a commercial — this is a warning.

Data preservation as rebellion 

Preserving public data is no longer a technical challenge — it’s a civic obligation. Not everyone can craft legislation or lead protest movements, but everyone can save a copy. For every archive and every witness, there is the protection of truth, not just for what is happening but, most importantly, for what was.

George Orwell wrote, “It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.” That was fiction, but today, it’s strategy because the future isn’t built on dreams — it’s built on records. 

When public memory is hosted on systems that can be edited, purchased or removed, what remains is not history — it’s a version of history, authored by the last person in power standing. This is the true danger. Not misinformation but ‘un’information: a void where only a blank slate remains — where accountability should exist.

The choice ahead is simple: Let the deletions continue or fight for permanence and truth. 

The record must outlast the regime, and the facts must outlive the people who fear them. Without this, current generations will not only lose their history; they will also forfeit their future.

Opinion by: Phil Mataras, founder and chief executive officer at AR.io.

This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.