The Ethics of Online Archive Curation

[Apollo69]

I've been writing a few research essays for an online archive of texts called The Ted K Archive recently. So, I just wanted to discuss the ethics of that project with people, because I think there's obviously a lot of interesting unethical pitfalls to curating an archive based around interest in a serial killer.

Also as an explainer to my past Ted K topic posts. I know that in writing about this I'm admitting to being far-left which isn't going to win me any favours, but it's all good.

Basically the TLDR to my interest in Ted K is I used to live with a primitivist crust punk who promoted misanthropic terror attacks and who died really young, probably from a drug overdose: a text dump on Jay. So, I just also find Ted K's weird life story and what people take from it an interesting fault line in culture and politics.

Baudrillard asserts that the explosion of the terrorist’s bomb causes an implosion of meaning, a gaping hole in the social fabric that power frantically seeks to cover in order to restore the tyranny of meaning.

A lot of people are bought into the mythology around Ted that he was an 'academic savant who rejected society to live in the wild, and only struck back at technology because of its continued encroachment on his wilderness life'. But, the timeframe for Ted feeling lost and first planning to kill started long before that.

So, what's interesting to me about this is I think this archetypal mythologising is a mirror image of Euro-American narratives of the 'last wild Indian and the noble savage'. The 'noble savage' is admired for starting out a Wildman fighting a justified war against his oppressors and who then becomes someone who could teach the white man his wisdom; whereas Ted is perceived by some as having gone in the opposite direction, of being someone who had all the capabilities and drive to become well accomplished academically early on in life in advanced society, but who chose to reject society to go into the wilds and fight a justified war.

But, regardless of the truth or usefulness of these noble savage stories, when we see people who even vaguely resemble them, they are often very emotionally impactful because it's a striking reminder on such an intuitive level that this fight to preserve wildlife habitat and low-impact ways of living are being lost. How we have failed to organize well-thought-out and sufficient resistance to the powers that bring about this environmental destruction.

Anyway, that's enough about me for now. Here's why the name of the website was chosen:

People who are curious about his life and impact are just the main audience we hope to draw in with this website.

Since we think he's going to be remembered as a true crime curiosity anyways, we might as well capitalize on that and use it as a space to promote critiques of people with similar politics to him and help with similar mental health issues to him.

And here's how the website is explained on the about page:

We, everyone who has contributed, have archived:

• A ton of primary source documents on Ted's life and ideas.
• Documents analyzing the effect he had on the public's understanding of radical environmentalists, anarchists, terrorists, criminals, the mentally ill & simple mental neurodivergence.
• Lots of great suggested reading on anarchism & other issues.

We, the librarians who bought the website domain, are pro-tech anarchists, but we just find his life story and impact really interesting.

So, we’re hoping the website will continue to draw people in with similar politics to him and similar mental health issues frankly. Then for the cold hard reality of the primary source reading material, the epic-ness of the suggested reading material and the inviting discussion spaces connected to the website, to all have a deprogramming effect and be a mental health support.

For example, a popular text on the website for a while was simply a book on how to Unfuck Your Friendships and the discord has already played host to a discussion between people encouraging each other to think rationally about their depression diagnosis.

Also, there are fans of Ted K who literally glorify the Khmer Rouge's genocide and burning down of cities, so having books about that genocide on the archive to hopefully, yes deprogramme, simple dogmatic reasoning, holding people back from compassionately relating to how **** up a policy that was is we think a good thing.

The reason we're saying all this is simply to promote transparency. We think due to the undesirability of anti-tech philosophy, opening all its rarer arguments up to scrutiny is likely going to have a positive outcome in drawing in more critical analysis and leading more people to reject the ideas.

Saying all that, this isn't the main goal of the archive by any means, we're mainly just happy to have been able to achieve archiving goals, such as creating parallel pages for every PDF on the Calif. Uni. website archive of UNABOM documents, making them easier to search through.

So, one of my hobbies currently is trying to engage people in productive debates and recommending texts I enjoy discussing which argue people over to being pro-tech, but I'm open to arguments that I should be anti-tech.

And obviously just discouraging people from going down the anti-tech road for any length of time would also be a win for me, even if that means just staying with their old politics. As becoming an anti-tech extremist can have disastrous consequences for people whilst they're involved with it, such as copy-cat terrorist networks:

Kaczynski’s influence on ITS is difficult to miss. Many parts of the group’s communiqués are merely paraphrases of the Manifesto: ‘The essence of the power process has four parts: setting out of the goal, effort, attainment of the goal, and Autonomy’. But the depth of Kaczynski’s influence on ITS is difficult to appreciate without knowing the origins of his ideas. ITS cites Morris’s The Human Zoo in support of its claim that ‘the Wild Nature of the human being in general was perverted when it started to become civilized’. The same communiqué later echoes Morris without citing him: ‘it is totally abnormal to live together with hundreds of strangers around you’.

--The Unabomber and the origins of anti-tech radicalism

Also, here's a list of ethical steps taken by the project:

We have a list of essays critiquing Ted’s politics & philosophy on the introduction page of the website.

There are long critiques and disclaimers added to some texts and we aim to add more.

When collecting together research on misanthropic groups and projects, we simply title the text ‘a text dump on ______’. That way for example we don’t dignify fictional stories terror groups weave when they write their own press releases and title them as communiqués.

Anyone can join the debate over which texts should go up on the website, obviously if you join just to troll or spam though, you will be removed.

A record will be kept of all texts that were rejected, whether for minor formatting reasons or deeply held political reasons.

A record will also be kept of controversial texts that were approved, where for example there was a sizable disagreement.

Ideally, in the future we will have popular sorting mechanisms directly under the main search box, such as a check box for 'only anarchist texts' that would exclude texts labelled 'not anarchist'.

Finally, here's a few other archival projects for comparison:

The Ted Kaczynski Papers - A University special collections archive which Ted K sent copies of all his letters to, the library is mostly offline, but people can ask for scans of two folders per month.

UNABOM Collection - Another university one that is made up of donated scans of an FBI guy who worked on the UNABOM taskforce. Lots of the scans are online in downloadable pdfs.

I don't think either of the archives above did much to publicize their archives, which was potentially a conscious ethical choice, to not make it easier to find for zealots, so to attempt to mainly cater to academic researchers.

The Anarchist Library - Huge archive that includes some non- and ex-anarchist texts, to document the reasons why people left anarchism or came to the philosophy late. But, it means archiving some really dumb stuff, such as primitivist terrorists 'communiques'. I think they're wrong to not include disclaimers at the top of texts and to not format some of the texts as text dumps, but their argument is that's simply not their job as archivists.

 

[Just A Butt]

No one cares.

 

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

Archive everything. Disclaimers are unnecessary and gay. Do it if your audience demands it I guess. You could have separate pages with your introduction and analysis sitting in between the home page and the primary sources.

 

[Kendall Motor Oil]

Ted Kaczynski is a massive meme and his memers have poisoned the well on his writings.

 

[Lemmingwiser]

I used to live with a primitivist crust punk who promoted misanthropic terror attacks and who died really young

Did you ever do any of those?

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Ted Kaczynski is a massive meme and his memers have poisoned the well on his writings.

Not more than his actions did. It's the irony that the only way people know him is because the innocents that died due to his actions, and it could have been way worse.

 

[Apollo69]

Did you ever do any of those?

No lol, they are relatively rare events thank Zeus. There was a Greek ex-serviceman who was coaxed into building a pipe bomb and leaving it in a public square in Edinburgh, Scotland. The communique he wrote to claim responsibility explained that he was motivated in part by 09A satanism bullshit:

(ABYSS) 48 COMMUNIQUE OF THE INDIVIDUALISTS TENDING TOWARDS THE WILD

-A package bomb left totally indiscriminately at a central location selectively.

Why do I not think of the “innocent” people one might think… I answer with a question… Did my birth giver’s pussy think when it was fucked to be fertilized with microscopic semen that creates the vessels that I hate? Did anybody ask me to be born? Did anyone know what I would become? Do you know that some see consciousness as a curse? Fuck you, pathetic pricks, you don’t know shit then! I do not seek justification for existence, neither do I seek someone to blame. I seek the amoral rape of existence through the injection of life passing from the Death Gate. Anti-human odium is my life’s blood, transforming my vessel into the Beast.

The joke of human consciousness and what it creates I confront with nihilistic laughter, unconscious cynicism and misanthropic passion! When I say ”fuck you all”, it might as well be the most sincere thing I have said my whole life! I wish my scream could burn you all, but it can’t do fuckin shit! Hahahahahahahah! This is why I have to experiment with fire, poison, bombs, even if the attack fails. Next time it might not, until I satisfy my Egotistical Satanity.

Furthermore I claim myself as part of the international Terrorist Mafia known as ITS. Between egoist conspirators I accepted a criminal offering on the basis of common interest. This is no spiritual union like those of the anarchists. I am not an Eco-extremist, I am a Nihilist Misanthrope as I like to call myself. Of course words mean nothing and are used in a specific context and for my own benefit.

He was arrested 2 years later, plead guilty, sentenced to 8 years and 4 months, and then asked his lawyers to submit an appeal for not getting enough mercy for having plead guilty:

Nikolaos Karvounakis, originally from the Greek island of Crete, had placed the improvised device packed with 58 nails and sections of metal pipe in a shelter at Princes Street Gardens in January 2018.

Written on the flap inside the box were the words “fuck you all”. The device included low grade explosive, and a primitive but disconnected fuse made from a light filament and a battery.

Army explosives experts believed that had it been made operational or accidentally detonated, it would have been capable of causing significant injuries, the high court in Edinburgh heard. Karvounakis later claimed to be linked to a fringe group accused of eco-terrorism which originated in Mexico.
Six weeks after the device was found, the Edinburgh Evening News received an email headed “International Terrorist Group in UK”. It contained a link to an extremist website where Karvounakis had anonymously claimed responsibility with a picture of the device and signed “Misanthropos Cacogen”.

In December 2020 Police Scotland counter-terrorism officers received intelligence from European counterparts linking him to the offence. DNA taken from tape used in the device was found to belong to him.
John Scullion QC, Karvounakis’s defence counsel, said he had been struggling with anxiety and low self-esteem, and had spent increasing amounts of time online. There he had drifted into conversations with extremists, whose beliefs he now repudiated.

Scullion said his client, who pleaded guilty to an offence under the Terrorism Act, had intended to cause disruption but had not planned to injure people, so had left the detonator unconnected. “It is fair to say he now bitterly regrets what he did and will bitterly regret it for the rest of his life,” Scullion told the court.

 

[Lemmingwiser]

So, one of my hobbies currently is trying to engage people in productive debates and recommending texts I enjoy discussing which argue people over to being pro-tech, but I'm open to arguments that I should be anti-tech.

Isn't this one of the most massive wastes of time as it is a self-solving problem to begin with?

People that don't use tech have no reach or influence, therefor their ideas can't be spread effectively, let alone that they can't organize effectively.

 

[Apollo69]

Isn't this one of the most massive wastes of time as it is a self-solving problem to begin with?

People that don't use tech have no reach or influence, therefor their ideas can't be spread effectively, let alone that they can't organize effectively.

Every group I know of wanting an anti-tech revolution is comfortable with using any tech they can get their hands on as part of their end goal of taking down tech. They're just utilitarian about it, considering it the lesser evil in order to be more effective.

Even Ted wrote from prison that if he were a young person today he'd maybe take computer science so that he could "become a computer saboteur, i.e., one of those guys who invent destructive viruses and that sort of thing."

Ted thought that as technological progress advanced, people would more and more forgoing the skills necessary to achieve everyday tasks by hand, and outsource them to higher level technology that people didn't understand how to build without world markets, and so the supports for high tech society would become more vulnerable. And also that war, disease and other events may lead to world markets becoming unstable. So, he thought that a vanguard of anti-tech revolutionaries may be able to strike at the right moment for example by disabling a bunch of electricity sub-stations, in order to give a society in crisis the extra push needed to collapse.

I don't think this revolution is likely going to happen, but I still think it's worth critiquing them and trying to argue people out of these anti-tech beliefs because of the unnecessary violence that has already come about by true believers in the goodness of collapse.