Government websites have undergone massive changes since President Donald Trump returned to office.

Some of the changes are routine — like swapping out the current president and vice president for their predecessors on the White House’s official site.

But other changes go much further. Several sites — like USAID.gov, ReproductiveRights.gov, and the Spanish-language version of WhiteHouse.gov — have gone offline. Remaining sites have been scrubbed of certain data and terminology in order to comply with Trump’s executive orders targeting “gender ideology” and DEI.

It’s an acceleration of a problem known as digital decay — or linkrot. Large quantities of the internet are disappearing as media outlets go under, companies upgrade their web infrastructure, or organizations take down information they believe is no longer valuable or relevant. A recent Pew Research Center study found that 38 percent of webpages that existed in 2013 are no longer available. Because so much of our culture now happens online, losing those pages means losing part of the record of ourselves.

Mark Graham, director of the Wayback Machine, joined Sean Rameswaram on Today, Explained to talk about digital decay, what his team is doing to combat the problem both generally and during Trump’s second term, and why internet preservation is so important.

Below is an excerpt of the conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and

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