Last week, viral videos of two former staffers of the Elon Musk-led government agency DOGE went viral. The videos offered a rare, behind-the-scenes look at how DOGE was run and how cuts to federal funding were determined.
On Friday, a federal judge ordered the videos be removed after a complaint from the Trump administration.
However, much to the chagrin of the U.S. government, internet archivists and forums like Reddit’s r/datahoarders have already re-uploaded backups of the videos.
The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), the American Historical Association (AHA), and the Modern Language Association (MLA) originally hosted the hours-long depositions of two former DOGE employees, Justin Fox and Nate Cavanaugh. Fox and Cavanaugh had been deposed as a result of a lawsuit from the three organizations regarding DOGE’s cuts to the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).
The depositions of the two DOGE employees quickly went viral. Fox’s interview especially spread after clips were made of his inability to explain exactly what DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) was, regardless of the fact that DEI was his reasoning in cutting funding to specific projects or groups. The DOGE staffer shared how programs were flagged for cuts if they were tagged with terms such as “Black” or “LGBTQ+” but terms like “caucasian” or “heterosexual” were not flagged. Other clips showcased how the DOGE employees used ChatGPT to determine what programs to cut.
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According to the Trump administration, the online mockery of the former DOGE staffers put the them in real, offline danger. The government told the judge that Fox specifically had been the subject of harassment and even death threats.
As a result of this request, Judge Colleen McMahon ordered that the ACLS, AHA, and MLA “take any and all possible steps to claw back” the DOGE deposition videos from the internet.
ACLS, AHA, and MLA made an argument that this was a First Amendment issue and that the videos were in the public interest as they involved “testimony from senior government officials on matters of great public concern.”
The judge denied their request and deferred the matter to a hearing on Tuesday. The hours-long depositions of Fox and Cavanaugh were removed shortly after on Friday.
However, despite the judge’s order, little could be done to remove the many viral clips from the deposition that had been uploaded all over social media.
Furthermore, internet archivists and self-described data hoarders had already ripped the entirety of both videos before they were removed from YouTube. Since their removal, the two full depositions have already been re-uploaded to sites like the Internet Archive. The subreddit r/datahoarders has also provided torrents of the two videos, so anyone who wants them can download the depositions locally to their own computers as well.
Regardless of what the judge decides at the hearing, it seems pretty clear that the internet has reached a verdict. These deposition videos of two DOGE staffers will always be available online in one form or another.
