For those who aren't aware, the CIA World Factbook was a bit like a modern day atlas with many well-sourced headline statistics about each and every country. Things like it's political structure, religion, economy, population, history etc.
I missed it recently when wanting to compare government revenue and expenditure for several countries. Without it, I didn't bother as I'd have to look figures up manually through each respective country's own budget website, and ensure figures were like-for-like (which they rarely are), and doing this for each country each with its own conventions is prohibitively tedious. Therein lies the value of Factbook; all that miserable distillation work was done for us.
The rationale for defunding was 'why should the US tax-payer fund something that's equally valuable for everyone in the world'. I think that's fair. But I lament its removal and wish the US could rattle the tin so other countries chip in and bring it back.
I never found it particularly useful but the CIA World Factbook seemed to have originated with some of the "country orientation guides" that the US DoD used to prepare in printed form for military service members being posted to weird locations. There's historical "Welcome to South Korea!" type documents that make an attempt to orient "never traveled outside of the USA before" type Americans to cultural and regionally specific things in Japan, South Korea, Germany, etc. The CIA World Factbook was just a more structured encylopedia like version of the same.
edit: There was absolutely nothing "CIA" specific or sensitive about it whatsoever, it was basically like if you paid some government employees to attempt a job similar to the mid 1980s era Encylopedia Britannica. Maybe with a bit more emphasis on public statistics like literacy rate, percent of houses with telephones, economic statistics, other basic public stats that governments are known to publish.
I always figured the answer was that the information was for the US Taxpayer, and if other countries would like to use it. well, it is not for them, but if they can get access, fine, The effort required to try and keep them out is not worth it.
Sort of the same reason US government works end up in the public domain "This work was funded by the US citizens and as such it is owned by the US citizens(in the public domain), it is too much hassle to try and prevent non-US citizens access so if they can get a copy they are free to use it as well"
I liked the idea of having the intelligence agency maintain a public intelligence encyclopedia for it's citizens. Sort of how the geological survey provides public maps and earthquake alerts.
I mean Claude literally does not have eyeballs, it cannot feel discomfort, it does not need to squint, it cannot be annoyed by low contrast, and it cannot desire something better, it will not seek to improve this unprompted as a human would to "scratch its own itch".
"On February 4, 2026, following the restriction and closure since 2025 of other government-funded information websites, the CIA announced, with no warning and no explanation, that The World Factbook was discontinued."[0]
Thank you for including data sources as well as some basic data analysis. The scatter plots are quite helpful in analyzing some demographic assumptions that often arise when discussing economic and social development.
You know what else they killed? The SIGAR.mil website (special inspector general for afghan reconstruction), the congressionally chartered oversight/audit entity that had a very well laid out website with chronological ordered list of every document that the SIGAR had ever produced. But no, let's sweep it under the rug.
All of its PDF are still out there in the public domain, just scattered and not well organized in a single set of tabular pages. Here's its final report for an example of what it did.
I'm not even going to bother writing several long paragraphs lecturing you on the Trump administration plan to hand the country back to the Taliban, which was executed in early spring 2020 in the "Doha Peace Deal" during the peak of covid19, when the world news media was thoroughly distracted.
For everyone else reading, the SIGAR reports cover a time span of multiple administrations, under both Bush terms, both Obama terms, Trump and then Biden again and second term of Trump. Its final report was published in late 2025. Removing all of its reference material on .AF generally is akin to removing the CIA World Factbook and is directly relevant to the topic at hand.
The httpd that was the sigar.mil website was static content only and cost effectively nothing to keep up after its chartered mission was completed. Instead, it's been shut down under the current administration. Did you even see the SIGAR website before they killed it? It was dead simple.
Your scant post history on what looks like a barely used sock puppet account also shows, and here's a verbatim quote: "All executions should be public if not for transparency's sake.", so I'm not going to further dignify engaging with some sort of fascist apologist.
I have absolutely zero compunctions against engaging in a personal attack against someone who defends livestreaming a public execution. Have a nice day, guy.
The internet was so fucking great up until around the time facebook showed up and became overbearing. Starting with an era of 'multimedia' CD-ROMs and first wave of internet, through the second wave of internet around the dotcom era and the third era of "AJAX" it felt really open, accessible, full of everything.
I can't tell for sure what happened around 2005 or so, youtube spawned up as well and it seemed for a while it was going great and then things started dying off, getting walled-in and dying within those walls as well.. I don't know how it happened, maybe as Hemingway put it - two ways. gradually, then suddenly.
Factbook was one such place that carried memories of ye olde past.
Also, CIA FACTbook, not CIA FACEbook, although when you think about it and In-Q-Tel lol.
CIA Factbook was mundane things like population, land area, system of govt, major exports, etc. Stuff that is now on the right-hand sidebar of Wikipedia. Presumably it was made for US govt employees to have a basic understanding of other countries. It was useful to do a 7th grade research report on Uzbekistan circa 1997.
For those who aren't aware, the CIA World Factbook was a bit like a modern day atlas with many well-sourced headline statistics about each and every country. Things like it's political structure, religion, economy, population, history etc.
I missed it recently when wanting to compare government revenue and expenditure for several countries. Without it, I didn't bother as I'd have to look figures up manually through each respective country's own budget website, and ensure figures were like-for-like (which they rarely are), and doing this for each country each with its own conventions is prohibitively tedious. Therein lies the value of Factbook; all that miserable distillation work was done for us.
The rationale for defunding was 'why should the US tax-payer fund something that's equally valuable for everyone in the world'. I think that's fair. But I lament its removal and wish the US could rattle the tin so other countries chip in and bring it back.
I never found it particularly useful but the CIA World Factbook seemed to have originated with some of the "country orientation guides" that the US DoD used to prepare in printed form for military service members being posted to weird locations. There's historical "Welcome to South Korea!" type documents that make an attempt to orient "never traveled outside of the USA before" type Americans to cultural and regionally specific things in Japan, South Korea, Germany, etc. The CIA World Factbook was just a more structured encylopedia like version of the same.
edit: There was absolutely nothing "CIA" specific or sensitive about it whatsoever, it was basically like if you paid some government employees to attempt a job similar to the mid 1980s era Encylopedia Britannica. Maybe with a bit more emphasis on public statistics like literacy rate, percent of houses with telephones, economic statistics, other basic public stats that governments are known to publish.
I always figured the answer was that the information was for the US Taxpayer, and if other countries would like to use it. well, it is not for them, but if they can get access, fine, The effort required to try and keep them out is not worth it.
Sort of the same reason US government works end up in the public domain "This work was funded by the US citizens and as such it is owned by the US citizens(in the public domain), it is too much hassle to try and prevent non-US citizens access so if they can get a copy they are free to use it as well"
I liked the idea of having the intelligence agency maintain a public intelligence encyclopedia for it's citizens. Sort of how the geological survey provides public maps and earthquake alerts.
Title does not match page and title says "Facebook" instead of "Factbook".
CIA World Freudian Slip
According to the wikipedia article,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Factbook
this is the new open source site:
https://openfactbook.org/
"CIA World Facebook"--> Is that a code name for PRISM or ECHELON or whatever??
It was a literal factbook online. In high school, I remember using it to look up facts like the area or population of different countries.
The title of this submission says "Facebook", not "Factbook". That's what they were referring to.
I feel a bit twitchy remembering the pain of trying to do the references right for websites back then.
No, it was a guidebook anyone could use for just about every country. It well predates PRISM, and was well regarded until it was discontinued.
That was the factbook
I had to read it twice times. It has always been cited on Wikipedia for as long as I can remember.
It's a typo in the HN title which should be corrected. Should be World Factbook; nothing to do with Facebook.
Freudian Slip. Everyone knows that Facebook is Five Eyes Book/Mossadbook
I thought it was a site exposing CIA undercover agents
The most recently archived (meaning last) one seems to be 2020. 367 MB.
https://archive.org/download/factbook-2020
Freedom In the world stat and couple of others - boundaries and value don't match; says 1-7 1 is the best but listed value is between 1 and 100
Request for higher contrast please for my old eyes.
Pale-grey on white. There are many websites like this. Why on earth?
darkreader.org helps.
Hacker News is worse by the way.
This is because Claude made them, and Claude doesn't have eyeballs.
Low effort looks like low effort, even if you have an AI helping.
Too late to edit to clarify:
I mean Claude literally does not have eyeballs, it cannot feel discomfort, it does not need to squint, it cannot be annoyed by low contrast, and it cannot desire something better, it will not seek to improve this unprompted as a human would to "scratch its own itch".
Feature request: include the source and date last updated for all information fields.
What happened to the CIA world factbook? It was great.
"On February 4, 2026, following the restriction and closure since 2025 of other government-funded information websites, the CIA announced, with no warning and no explanation, that The World Factbook was discontinued."[0]
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Factbook
Do we have a credible source tying this to DOGE?
No, but CNN linked its shutdown to budget cuts (also mentioned on the Wikipedia page).
It got spellchecked into the boards
Maybe @dang can fix the autocorecto
Thank you for including data sources as well as some basic data analysis. The scatter plots are quite helpful in analyzing some demographic assumptions that often arise when discussing economic and social development.
You’ve earned yourself a bookmark :)
You know what else they killed? The SIGAR.mil website (special inspector general for afghan reconstruction), the congressionally chartered oversight/audit entity that had a very well laid out website with chronological ordered list of every document that the SIGAR had ever produced. But no, let's sweep it under the rug.
All of its PDF are still out there in the public domain, just scattered and not well organized in a single set of tabular pages. Here's its final report for an example of what it did.
https://www.ecoi.net/en/file/local/2145129/sigar-final-repor...
[flagged]
> Biden admin already had a plan in place to dissolve the agency months before the 2024 election even took place
Source? (I know nothing about this, so I'm just trying to establish facts.)
> This is what happens when you get your facts from Reddit
Don't do this.
https://www.congress.gov/118/bills/hr10102/BILLS-118hr10102i...
https://youngkim.house.gov/2024/11/08/reps-kim-crow-lead-bil...
> In June 2024, the Office of the SIGAR submitted a sunset plan to ensure a smooth shutdown process and effective and timely transfer
Thank you. Looks like it was sunset in statute under Biden [1] and then closed, per the law, in 2026 prior to Trump taking office [2].
[1] https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/sigar...
[2] https://legis1.com/news/afghanistan-reconstruction-failure-c...
I'm not even going to bother writing several long paragraphs lecturing you on the Trump administration plan to hand the country back to the Taliban, which was executed in early spring 2020 in the "Doha Peace Deal" during the peak of covid19, when the world news media was thoroughly distracted.
For everyone else reading, the SIGAR reports cover a time span of multiple administrations, under both Bush terms, both Obama terms, Trump and then Biden again and second term of Trump. Its final report was published in late 2025. Removing all of its reference material on .AF generally is akin to removing the CIA World Factbook and is directly relevant to the topic at hand.
The httpd that was the sigar.mil website was static content only and cost effectively nothing to keep up after its chartered mission was completed. Instead, it's been shut down under the current administration. Did you even see the SIGAR website before they killed it? It was dead simple.
Your scant post history on what looks like a barely used sock puppet account also shows, and here's a verbatim quote: "All executions should be public if not for transparency's sake.", so I'm not going to further dignify engaging with some sort of fascist apologist.
> I'm not even going to bother writing several long paragraphs
Then why do you keep editing your post doing just that?
> cost effectively nothing to keep up
That's not how it works in any competently run business or public sector.
> some sort of fascist apologist
Nice personal attack, bruh.
I have absolutely zero compunctions against engaging in a personal attack against someone who defends livestreaming a public execution. Have a nice day, guy.
The internet was so fucking great up until around the time facebook showed up and became overbearing. Starting with an era of 'multimedia' CD-ROMs and first wave of internet, through the second wave of internet around the dotcom era and the third era of "AJAX" it felt really open, accessible, full of everything.
I can't tell for sure what happened around 2005 or so, youtube spawned up as well and it seemed for a while it was going great and then things started dying off, getting walled-in and dying within those walls as well.. I don't know how it happened, maybe as Hemingway put it - two ways. gradually, then suddenly.
Factbook was one such place that carried memories of ye olde past.
Also, CIA FACTbook, not CIA FACEbook, although when you think about it and In-Q-Tel lol.
*Factbook
Factbook, please.
Another take from 8 months ago
https://worldfactbookarchive.org/
(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47114530)
Last thing I want is another Facebook
[flagged]
new account, obvious troll
CIA Factbook was mundane things like population, land area, system of govt, major exports, etc. Stuff that is now on the right-hand sidebar of Wikipedia. Presumably it was made for US govt employees to have a basic understanding of other countries. It was useful to do a 7th grade research report on Uzbekistan circa 1997.