The DOGE deposition videos a judge ordered removed from YouTube on Friday after they had gone massively viral have since been backed up across the internet, including as a torrent and to the Internet Archive. The videos included DOGE members unable or unwilling to define DEI; discussing how they used ChatGPT and terms such as “black” and “homosexual” to flag grants for termination but not “white” or “caucasian,” and acknowledgements that despite their aggressive cuts they failed to achieve the stated goal of lowering the government deficit.
The news shows the difficulty in trying to remove material from the internet, especially that which has a high public interest and has already been viewed likely millions of times. It’s also an example of the “Streisand Effect,” a phenomenon where trying to suppress information often results in the information spreading further.
“DOGE deposition videos in Depositions for MLA-ACLS-AHA Lawsuit About the NEH,” the title of the page on the Internet Archive reads. The page says the files were uploaded on Saturday. On the Data Hoarder subreddit, multiple users said they had downloaded a torrent of the videos. Once a torrent of files has been shared, it becomes much harder to fully delete off of the internet because its distribution has been decentralized. 404 Media verified that the torrent did contain the DOGE deposition videos.
The depositions come from a lawsuit the Modern Language Association, American Council of Learned Societies, and American Historical Association brought against the National Endowment for the Humanities and others over its cutting of hundreds of millions of grants. DOGE members Justin Fox and Nate Cavanaugh were a driving force behind those cuts. The deposition videos, which the MLA uploaded to YouTube earlier this month, included depositions of Fox, Cavanaugh, and NEH officials Adam Wolfson and Michael McDonald.
The videos went viral when 404 Media and other outlets reported on their contents and clipped certain segments. Those included Fox not being able or unwilling to define DEI.
On Friday, government lawyers in the lawsuit filed a court record which said they asked the plaintiffs to remove the videos “from the internet due to concerns that the publication of the videos could subject the witnesses and their family members to undue harassment and reputational harm.” The filing then said that Fox specifically “has been subject to harassment and has received a number of death threats since the videos and video clips were publicized and circulated.”
In response, Judge Colleen McMahon ordered the plaintiffs to “immediately take any and all possible steps to claw back the videos of the depositions of the witnesses identified in the Government’s motion.” As of Friday, the videos were no longer available on the MLA’s YouTube channel.
Notably, the judge’s order is only directed at the plaintiffs, and not a specific platform or other people who upload the videos. It is unclear if the plaintiffs are expected to take steps to try to remove these uploads as well. The plaintiffs did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
On Friday the plaintiffs filed an emergency motion saying, “Defendants never designated the video depositions in question as Confidential under the Protective Order, and Defendants have never alleged in their correspondence with ACLS Plaintiffs that ACLS Plaintiffs violated the protective order presently in place.”
The judge denied the emergency motion, and scheduled a hearing for Tuesday about the matter.
