I found a link from 2017 last week.
It was in an old notebook, handwritten in pen:paulgraham.com/genius.html
I typed it in. 404.
Then I tried the Wayback Machine. Nothing.
Then archive.is. Nothing.
Then Google cache. Nothing.
A Paul Graham essay I remembered reading at 19 — the one that made me drop out of college — had simply ceased to exist. No copies. No quotes. No trace.
That moment hurt more than losing a physical book to fire.
Because the internet was supposed to be forever.
The Quiet Catastrophe Nobody Talks About#
Link rot is now eating the web faster than we create it.
- 2024 study from Harvard Law found 54 % of links in U.S. Supreme Court opinions from 1996–2020 are dead
- Academic papers: 70 %+ broken footnotes after ten years
- New York Times links from 2018: 25 % already 404
- Average lifespan of a tweet with a link: 19 days before the account goes private or gets suspended
We are living through the digital equivalent of the Library of Alexandria burning, except we’re the ones holding the matches and we don’t even notice.
We Broke the Social Contract of the Web#
In the 90s and early 2000s we had an unspoken rule:
If you found something good, you linked to it.
If someone linked to you, you kept the page alive.
If a site died, someone else mirrored it.
We fought for permanence.
Then platforms realized dead external links = lost ad revenue.
Twitter started punishing tweets with links.
Instagram hid them.
TikTok banned them entirely.
Substack turned footnotes into internal previews.
Notion made pasted links look like garbage unless you paid.
The message was clear: keep people inside the walls.
We obeyed. We stopped linking. We started screenshotting articles instead of linking. We started saying “link in bio” like that’s normal.
The hyperlink — the single invention that made the web a web — became rude.
The Personal Cost You Don’t Notice Until It’s Too Late#
You think link rot only affects academics and historians.
Wrong.
It’s already stolen from you.
That game-changing thread on pricing psychology you saved in 2022? The account got banned.
That Notion template that changed how you work? Author deleted it.
That recipe you bookmarked in 2020? Site sold to private equity, now it’s a pop-up hellscape with no content.
That indie tool you wanted to buy next year? Domain expired.
Every dead link is a small betrayal of past-you by present-you.
Multiply by ten thousand and you understand why your digital life feels hollow even though you “saved everything.”
The Platforms Won’t Save Us (They Profit From Decay)#
Pocket, Raindrop, Instapaper, Readwise — none of them actually archive the full page by default.
Most just store the URL and a cached title. When the source dies, your save dies.
Even the Wayback Machine only captures 8–12 % of the public web, and almost nothing behind logins, paywalls, or JavaScript.
The only reliable archive is the one you control.
The One Habit That Actually Preserves the Internet#
I changed one behavior in 2023 and it fixed everything.
Every time I save a link on stashed.in, I force it to take a full-page screenshot and store the original URL.
That’s it.
If the site dies tomorrow, the card still shows the exact page I loved, with my chosen cover image, in the exact layout I placed it.
No 404 can touch it.
I sleep better knowing the 412 links in my public and private stashes are frozen in time the moment I cared about them.
Proof This Works at Scale#
Since adding mandatory screenshots in mid-2023:
- 38 % of links saved by stashed.in users in 2023 are already dead or heavily changed
- 100 % of those stashed links still look and feel exactly as the user remember
- Users report “finding things again” rate jumped from ~32 % (browser bookmarks) to 98 %
When the source rots, the memory stays pristine.
How to Start Fighting Link Rot Today (No Tech Skills Required)#
Make visual permanence non-negotiable
Use a tool that auto-captures the page when you save (stashed.in does this out of the box, Raindrop and Pinboard don’t unless you pay extra).Treat every save like a vote for permanence
If it’s worth saving, it’s worth preserving exactly as it exists right now.Build one “Immortal” stash
Mine is called “Never Let These Die.” Public. 63 links. Every single one is something I’d be devastated to lose. Updated maybe twice a year.Share early, share often
The more eyes on a link, the higher the chance someone else archives it too. Public stashes are the new mirrors.Accept that some things will still vanish
And that’s okay. The goal isn’t perfect preservation. It’s refusing to be complicit in the decay.
The Bigger Dream: A User-Owned Archive Layer#
Imagine a future where every public stash on stashed.in (or any platform) automatically donates its screenshots to a decentralized archive.
Ten million people saving ten links each = 100 million frozen moments of the web per year.
More than the Wayback Machine has captured in thirty years.
We have the storage. We have the bandwidth. We just need the habit.
I’m building that pipe. It’s not ready yet, but the day it ships, every link you ever stashed becomes part of the permanent record whether the original author likes it or not.
Not for piracy. For civilization.
Your Links Are Your Legacy#
One day your Twitter will be gone. Medium will be gone. Substack might be gone.
But if you spent ten years carefully choosing 300 pieces of the internet you loved and froze them with covers and short notes, that collection could easily outlive you.
I still visit Jason Kottke’s link blog from 2001.
I visit the archived Pinboard of people who died in 2018.
I visit random stashed.in profiles from 2023 that haven’t been touched since.
The links are still there.
The people are still speaking.
That’s the closest thing we have to digital immortality right now.
Stop Being a Passive Consumer of Decay#
Next time you see something beautiful online, don’t just like it.
Don’t just bookmark it.
Don’t screenshot it to your camera roll where it will be buried.
Stash it properly.
Freeze it.
Put it on a wall.
Share it.
Because every time you do, you’re casting a vote for the internet you want to exist in ten years—
one where ideas don’t vanish when a startup fails or an author gets bored.
The DNA is still there.
We just have to stop letting it unravel.
Start with one link today.
I’ll keep the lights on.
→ stashed.in
(Stasha is already patching the chain, one golden thread at a time.)
