UNKNOWN Is Not Zero: Notes on Archives and Honest Infrastructure Research
I’m working on UINET (Ukraine Influence Network Tracker) — a personal research project that’s still taking shape. October 2026 · Work in progress · Open to discussion I started working on UINET because I wanted to better understand how websites involved in documented online influence operations might be connected through their historical infrastructure. If two sites used the same server, tracking…
The article discusses the author's personal research project, UINET (Ukraine Influence Network Tracker), which aims to understand the connections between websites involved in online influence operations through their historical infrastructure. The author emphasizes the importance of keeping the observation, its source, and the interpretation separate, rather than outputting a confident looking connection.
Historical archives pose challenges, and the author stresses that UNKNOWN is not zero, meaning a failed lookup isn't proof of absence or a negative inspection. The author also highlights the importance of visible and honest research practices, such as building an append-only journal for the collection process, recording requests as started before they are made, and recording raw responses with hashes for verification.
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