Musk Slashes $345,000 in Funding! Internet Archive Cut Off, Outrage Erupts Among U.S. Netizens!
Who would have thought that the Internet Archive, the world’s largest digital library claiming to "provide universal access to all knowledge," would face a sudden blow from the U.S. government? Last week, after the nonprofit mobilized volunteers to "emergency-backup" 110,000 pages of sensitive government web content, Elon Musk’s newly established "Department of Government Efficiency" (DOGE) abruptly axed its federal funding of $345,000. The move sparked fury, with Harvard scholars condemning it as "digital-age book-burning!"
The controversy traces back to January, when the Trump administration began enforcing anti-diversity policies, pressuring institutions to delete or alter historical content related to LGBTQ+ rights and racial equality. Sensing danger, the Internet Archive swiftly organized a "citizen archiving task force," using its Wayback Machine to capture snapshots of 110,000 pages from official sites like WhiteHouse.gov and the CDC. This bold preservation effort, however, struck a nerve. Musk’s DOGE retaliated by slashing grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), directly targeting libraries, museums, and smaller archives reliant on federal funds.
For 29 years, the Internet Archive has been a "free haven" for global netizens, preserving 560 billion web pages and 30 million books—even resurrecting 1990s-era websites. During the pandemic, its "National Emergency Library" lent free digital textbooks to students, only to face lawsuits from publishers branding it a "pirate hub." Now, with U.S. funding severed, director Brewster Kahle warned: "They’re strangling public access to knowledge."
Yet the Archive isn’t defenseless. Hardened by years of clashes with the Trump administration, it survives on grassroots donations and corporate data-backup services. Smaller institutions, however, face collapse. Oklahoma’s Humanities Council, which relies on federal grants for 75% of its budget, may shutter projects like its oral history archive documenting the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. Netizens roasted Musk: "He dreams of Mars colonization while erasing Earth’s history?"
The funding cut also revived old tensions. Last year, the U.S. government forced the Archive to remove 1.4 million free eBooks after a copyright lawsuit. Critics now accuse DOGE of "ideological purging," noting the Archive’s trove of inconvenient truths the administration seeks to erase.
As the "digital book-burning" drama unfolds, the Archive’s loyal users have launched crowdfunding campaigns. One supporter shared its first webpage snapshot from 1996, captioning: "It saved the web—now we save it." This isn’t just a budget cut—it’s a sledgehammer to humanity’s collective hard drive.
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