Preservation Ethics

Last reviewed: March 2025

At GFNDC, ethical archival practice is not an afterthought — it is foundational. Digital memory, once preserved, gains power. That power must be wielded with caution, reflection, and transparency.

We operate under a three-part ethical charter: contextual fidelity, preservation with consent, and public accountability. Our archives are not neutral; they reflect decisions, omissions, and values. Every ingested byte carries implications, and those implications must be regularly interrogated.

Core Principles

• Context Preservation: All archived material is embedded with layered metadata describing its original environment, user interface, platform affordances, and timeline position.
• Do No Harm: We do not retain or republish material that may cause reputational, personal, or physical harm, especially in the case of vulnerable individuals or historically marginalized communities.
• Obscurity as a Right: Individuals who wish to be forgotten or anonymized may submit requests through our Preservation Ethics Office. These are reviewed within 30 days by a mixed panel of internal staff and independent observers.
• Transparency of Absence: When material is excluded or removed from the archive, a redacted stub is created to maintain scholarly integrity. Omission itself becomes part of the historical record.
• Provenance Disclosure: We provide source paths, access logs, and transformation chains for every object we ingest, where technically possible. We disclose what we know — and what we don't.

Oversight & Review

Ethical questions are reviewed by our Ethics Committee, which includes legal advisors, former platform moderators, and researchers in internet anthropology. This committee operates independently of funding bodies and executive staff. Its deliberations are logged, anonymized, and publicly summarized every quarter.

Contested materials — especially those involving user-generated content, pseudonymous identities, or unexpected resurfacing — are placed in a holding protocol pending review. In borderline cases, our working heuristic is: "Would this inclusion embarrass, endanger, or violate the dignity of the creator if resurfaced in today's context?"

International Framework Alignment

While based in California, GFNDC aligns its ethical policies with global memory standards, including:

• The UNESCO Charter on the Preservation of Digital Heritage (2003)
• The General Principles of Digital Archival Ethics from the Internet Memory Coalition (2019)
• The EU Right to Be Forgotten (GDPR Art. 17), interpreted through a non-commercial research exemption

We also maintain an internal living document: the GFNDC Ethics Protocol v4.2, reviewed biannually, which governs our decision-making, redaction criteria, and public appeal process.

If you have concerns or inquiries about ethical practices, please contact our Preservation Ethics Office at ethics@gfndc.org.

“The past is not ours to own, but we can carry it with care.”