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title, layout, permalink, toc, custom-foot, about-featured-image, position, heading, sub-heading, padding
| title | layout | permalink | toc | custom-foot | about-featured-image | position | heading | sub-heading | padding |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Data | about | /data/ | true | js/table-js.html | starlacoll012 | center | Our Data | a deep dive into {B/qKC}'s decentralized, digital archival methods | 6em |
## Huh? Why all this in the first place? It's hard to imagine our world without central governing authorities–which has ultimately translated to how a majority of us use the web. Need to search something? You Google it.A very special thank you to Gray Area, TechSoup and FileCoin Foundation and their Cultural Memory Lab for teaching us a lot about DWeb technology and making this all possible. Learn more about the program on their website.
Need to share something online? You Tweet or Instagram it.
Need to store something? You upload them to an arbitrary "cloud."
“The platforms that host our networked public sphere and inform us about the world are unelected, unaccountable, and often impossible to audit or oversee.”
— Chelsea Barabas, Neha Narula, Ethan Zuckerman, "The Decentralized Web: Defending Internet Freedom through Decentralization: Back to the Future?" (2017)
So what does "decentralized" mean here?
At its core, decentralization means distributing power instead of concentrating it in one place.
In a centralized system, a company, like Google, for example, owns massive data centers, their own proprietary software, and sets the rules for how users will engage with their materials–including how they can use our data in exchange for the use of their services.
In 2022, Alphabet (Google’s parent company) made $224 billion–nearly 80% of its total revenue–from advertising: which includes Google Search, Google networks, and YouTube ads. Our personal data directly fuels this advertising revenue.
We've deliberately gone against a centralized framework–opting for open-access tools and a decentralized storage model that allows us to remain in control of our data and share it with you (and of course, keeps yours safe while you browse).
How this website works (in plain language)
This archive might look like a regular-degular website, but under the hood, it's built very differently and with deep intention!
1. The Website – Built with CollectionBuilder (Lib-Static methodology)
To start, this website is built using an open source tool called [CollectionBuilder](https://collectionbuilder.github.io/). Created by librarians at the University of Idaho, CollectionBuilder is a set of flexible, static web templates that are populated purely from our archive's metadata.
This means:
- There's no third-party service involved: bye-bye annual subscription fees and murky T's & C's!
- Pages are simple HTML files, allowing for more useabiltiy and access!
- The site is pretty fast (you let us know!), stable, and inexpensive to maintain!
2. The Archive – Files being served via IPFS (InterPlanetary File System)
All of the images, media and data files part of {B/qKC} are being loaded from the [InterPlanetary File System (IPFS)](https://ipfs.tech/), a decentralized peer-to-peer file system.
Instead of files living on one server in one massive data center:
- files each get their own unique "fingerprint,"
- mulitple copies of these files can exist across different nodes in the IPFS network,
- no single entity controls access to IPFS.
This makes our archive highly resistant to deletion or takedown, and ensures files remain accessible even if a node in the network goes down. That also means if this website were to shutdown, the archive would still be accessible!
3. The Cloud – We run our own digital space
This website is self-hosted on our own physical server using [YunoHost](https://doc.yunohost.org/en/admin/about_self_hosting/#:~:text=Self%2Dhosting%20means%20owning%20and%20administrating%20your%20own,instead%20of%20relying%20exclusively%20on%20third%20parties)–an open-source technology designed to make ethical self-hosting possible.
This means no Amazon Web Services, no Google Cloud, no third-party entity quietly watching your traffic or collecting data from you.
By choosing to host this website on our server, we get to control how this site operates, how data is handled, and stay accountable to the people whose stories live here.
GOOD TO KNOW: {B/qKC} uses the 3-2-1-1-0 preservation strategy: meaning there are 3 copies of all our archival materials (2 of these on IPFS and our server), stored on 2 different types of media, with 1 copy off-site, 1-copy offline, and all with 0 backup errors.
Our ultimate why
We refuse to help Big Tech power destructive data centers and use our data for nefarious ends.
In the 2020's, alone, we've seen Big Tech's concentrated, profit-driven power consistently put technological advancements over human beings. Some stark examples:
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Google and Amazon's Project Nimbus: a $1.2 billion contract between Google and Amazon with the Israeli government and its military, signed in 2021, aiming to provide cloud computing infrastructure, artificial intelligence (AI) and other technology services for its war on Gaza
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ICE and Palantir use 'probability' to detain people: Palantir helped developed an application for ICE as part of a $29.9 million agreement called "Enhanced Leads Identification & Targeting for Enforcement (ELITE)": described as "a targeting tool designed to improve capabilities for identifying and prioritizing high-value targets through advanced analytics."
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Data Center boom will excaerbate Earth's deterioration: Cornell researchers have found that, by 2030, the current rate of AI growth would annually put 24 to 44 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the emissions equivalent of adding 5 to 10 million cars to U.S. roadways. It would also drain 731 to 1,125 million cubic meters of water per year–equal to the annual household water usage of 6 to 10 million Americans.
We choose to remain the stewards of our stories.
We must continuously ask ourselves who benefits from our technological uses, and who stands most at-risk.
As a Black queer digital community archive, we push against the notion that technological advancement is worth losing our planet and the people within it.
For archivists and memory workers (or otherwise) looking for advice on how to "deGoogle" their collections, please reach out!
{% include feature/button.html text="Contact Us" link="/contact/" color="success" %}
Archival Metadata (check out our Copyright & Terms before you download!)
The table below provides sorting and basic search of the archive's contents. Use the "CSV" button below to download the filtered metadata you see on the page. Alternatively, click the "Download" button at the top right to view the full archive's metadata in various formats.
{% include data-download-modal.html no_toc=true %}
{% include data-table.html %}