Why? If you want to read the old blog posts, you can find them at the Internet Archive:

https://web.archive.org/web/20250122132931/https://www.ftc.g...

Because the Internet archive isn't under a legal obligation to prove they have public documents available for the people who pay taxes.

It's not about just reading them, it's about being sure they're not trying to erase public information that they should have.

A FOIA request won't make them put the blog posts back up. They just have to provide you with a copy. And they can charge a fee to cover the cost of doing this. So, given that the posts are already publicly available, it seems like a waste of your time and money.

If they can't do it, you can try to interest a US Attorney in charging them with a crime.

It won't work, but at least you could say you tried to apply the law. That's worth something.

Obviously, FOIA requests are meant to be completed using the organisation's own records, but is there anything that's stopping them from just replying with copy-pastes of the post text from the Wayback Machine?

> It won't work, but at least you could say you tried to apply the law. That's worth something.

What is that worth?

The paper trail that can be made available and/or added as evidence or a factoid in a historical record. Maybe with enough accounts people will find a way to avoid a repeat in the future. Maybe/maybe not, but they definitely won't know to change anything if there is no record of it being an issue in the first place.

From the play Lion in Winter:

Geoffrey: My you chivalric fool... as if the way one fell down mattered.

Richard: When the fall is all there is, it matters.

Thank you for pointing me to that. Still, strong disagree it applies here, so I'll counter with a quote from the second part of a three piece opus, in a photoplay long ago and far away:

Do or do not. There is no try.