Ask HN: Why does the number of datasets on data.gov vary so much?

5 days (or so) ago, I remember seeing 438k, now it is 391K. What happened to the ~47K?

https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/

Is this a bug?

Comments

toomuchtodoJan 24, 2026, 8:33 PM
One should expect substantial flux of data available under the current administration.

HN Search: data.gov - https://hn.algolia.com/?q=data.gov

A 16TB Mirror of Data.gov on Source.Coop - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42974533 - February 2025 (18 comments)

Announcing the data.gov archive - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42970039 - February 2025 (132 comments)

Archivists work to save disappearing data.gov datasets - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42881367 - January 2025 (238 comments)

The US government's open data on Data.gov is currently being scrubbed - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42876055 - January 2025 (58 comments)

SilverElfinJan 24, 2026, 8:51 PM
Does any nonprofit maintain an archive of everything?
toomuchtodoJan 24, 2026, 8:53 PM
Yes.
pseudohadamardJan 25, 2026, 1:05 PM
No, it's the government removing any facts they disagree with. There's an ongoing effort by staff to try and save the data from the government's Fahrenheit 451 approach, but it's only sometimes successful.