This webpage is a mirror of the original content created and published by Brandon Tauzik on his website at https://facing.life/.
In this project, we sought to prototype a way to preserve and protect journalist’s work and portfolio from link rot. Link rot refers to the phenomenon in which hyperlinks or URLs on the internet become broken or inaccessible over time.
This website can also be found on several peer-to-peer data sharing networks. To access these networks you can:
- Use a gateway and acccess it through the 'regular internet' (in any web browser) at https://facing-life.hyper.hypha.coop/ or https://facing-life.ipns.dweb.link/
- On IPFS in a Chrome browser using the IPFS Companion browser extension or using Brave browser using the address ipns://facing.life/
- On the Hyper network using Agregore Browser at hyper://facing.life/
- IPFS/ IPNS: ipns://facing.life/
- Hypercore: hyper://facing.life/
- Accessed through a gateway:
- https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipns/facing.life/ (IPFS gateway operated by CloudFlare)
- https://facing-life.hyper.hypha.coop/ (Hypercore gateway operated by Hypha)
Archives of this zip of this Github repo have been registered on the Filecoin distributed storage network.
Registration Records
You can view the registration records of the of the main and nov-16 branches of this website as it existed from the archived repository at https://github.com/link-rot-project/facing.life.
Archive zip Files: You can download, locally serve, and inspect these files to see what the registered versions look like and compare changes against published changes
The Filecoin archives can be viewed at https://filecoin.tools/baga6ea4seaqd2qqaub6igcumpsyy6ggzlfiueducb7us5mbs6try4nc57qnduoi
Copies of the ‘Final’ (April 2024) GitHub Repos for each Website on IPFS: https://bafybeia5twhdk6ozple5shdmzmdymjvfjqk2ij3xw33dtgoz6uiikplvgq.ipfs.w3s.link/
^ This is a zip of the Git Repo that can be downloaded, and put onto any static website hosting service
https://facing-life.testing.sutty.nl/
This project aims to explore ways that a journalist can preserve the content they’ve created, either for an established publication or self-published. In addition to their own work, this could also include the preservation of subsequent articles that cover the journalist’s work (ex: to show impact or earned media).
As an independent journalist, Brandon’s work is often vulnerable to disappearing from the internet. The maintenance and hosting of his work became an issue in the long term as he has to pay to maintain and take the time to update all the platforms his work is hosted on. To ensure this work is still available, he now self-hosts may public websites. Some work published by those who comissioned Brandon was only available in print and/or paywalled, adding similar issues to the sharing and coverage of his work. Brandon is looking to explore options to capture and preserve the work published on websites that are subject to disappearance or ‘Link Rot’, as well as find solutions that are less costly than the current self-hosting solution, that can be easily used by other creators that are also looking to solve the link rot problem.
Technology over the past few decades has progressed at a breakneck speed. The storage and hosting we used for various media technologies one or two decades ago has completely changed, moving from records, to 8-tracks, magnetic tapes, CDs, and now media is stored digitally on the drives of various devices. We anticipate a similar rapid evolution in the technology we use to publish over the next few decades. The internet has also evolved from static sites created by a few and viewed by many, to a wide array of social media and blogging sites that make everyone contributors to the world wide web.
With the Link Rot project, we anticipate that the next few decades will continue to bring about a similar change and evolution in the technology used to store and share information, and we want to publish journalists’ work in a way that is accessible in both current systems, and published on distributed, future-facing solutions such as IPFS and Hypercore. This project will also be archived in the distributed Filecoin storage network.
Brandon Tauzik is an independent photographer in California who specializes in cinemagraphs. Projects include Syria Street (commissioned by the Red Cross), Facing Life (grant from Pulitzer Center), Tapered Throne (personal), Pale Blue Dress (gallery, covered by WaPo), and George Floyd protests (for SF Chronicle).
Starling Lab is an academic research lab innovating with the latest cryptographic methods and decentralized web protocols to meet the technical and ethical challenges of establishing trust in our most sensitive digital records. Starling Lab awards fellowships to journalists who integrate and collaborate in case studies exploring the integration of technologies used to capture, store, and publish authenticated media.
Sutty is a worker-owned cooperative based in Argentina, with a platform for managing secure, fast and resilient websites using a technology called static websites, in which the entire site (the collection of webpages that provide both design and content) is generated only once before the changes are published. Because of this, the website doesn’t consume resources and lacks the more common vulnerabilities and maintenance problems most websites tend to contend with.
Hypha propagates community-led stewardship, grows technical capacities, and delivers concepts and products.Our expertise spans ideation to infrastructure. We build decentralized web protocols (see our Distributed Press initiative) and contribute to distributed ledger and blockchain-based projects. Hypha believes peer-to-peer technologies will transform traditional digital collaboration.
Sutty is a developer shop our of Argentina dedicated to building web sites that keep us safe, evading censorship, making our struggles visible in a coherent way, with self-management included. Sutty helped us set up facing life, and helped publish this website on decetralized systems using Distributed Press.