The first paragraphs of the article.
The English-language edition of Wikipedia is blacklisting Archive.today after the controversial archive site was used to direct a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack against a blog.
In the course of discussing whether Archive.today should be deprecated because of the DDoS, Wikipedia editors discovered that the archive site altered snapshots of webpages to insert the name of the blogger who was targeted by the DDoS. The alterations were apparently fueled by a grudge against the blogger over a post that described how the Archive.today maintainer hid their identity behind several aliases.
“There is consensus to immediately deprecate archive.today, and, as soon as practicable, add it to the spam blacklist (or create an edit filter that blocks adding new links), and remove all links to it,” stated an update today on Wikipedia’s Archive.today discussion. “There is a strong consensus that Wikipedia should not direct its readers towards a website that hijacks users’ computers to run a DDoS attack (see WP:ELNO#3). Additionally, evidence has been presented that archive.today’s operators have altered the content of archived pages, rendering it unreliable.”
A Bluesky comment.
The owner of Archive Today was in a dispute with a blogger who published the archivist’s pseudonym, and in retaliation years later, the archivist manipulated their archive of that blog, replacing the pseudonym with the bloggers own name. As though the blogger were accusing himself. And then tried to DDoS the blog so that their manipulated archive would be the only surviving copy. I guess???
That’s just very complicated and very weird and pointless,.
You must log in or # to comment.
The blogger is an AI-loving dipshit lib who couldn’t leave a good thing well enough alone and felt like it was a great idea to do the FBI’s work for them.
The owner of archive.today is a dipshit who thought the best way to retaliate against being doxxed is to doxx the doxxer and use their website to carry out DDOS attacks.
And NATOpedia will use this opportunity to make things harder to look up and push their own propaganda.
i was on reddit reading about this and i thought this comment offered more context
These are just my two cents: The paranoia of the operator of archive.today stems from a specific event: at the end of 2025, the FBI sent a subpoena to the domain registrar (Tucows) to obtain the real data of the owner. In the wake of the shutdown of 12ft.io, authorities are tightening the net around services that circumvent paywalls. The attack on the blog and the threats appear to be a desperate attempt to “burn” old OSINT traces that could help investigators.
The user who reported the attack on Hacker News (“rabinovich”) is very likely the same admin of archive.today, with the aim of creating a diversion, controlling the narrative on the site, and, above all, pushing users toward a “lifeboat” site called Ghostarchive , in preparation for a possible seizure of the main domain.
The organization “Web Abuse Association Defense” (WAAD), which offered legal assistance to the attacked blogger, is not a charitable entity but most likely funded by copyright trolls who, exploiting the general chaos, attempted to doxx the blogger’s real identity under the pretext of “legal checks,” probably on behalf of third parties (copyright trolls) interested in targeting anyone involved in the archiving scene in order to erase their own traces.
TL;DR: Archive.today is under federal pressure and is reacting by targeting anyone who has written about them in the past. Meanwhile, third-party actors are trying to take advantage of the confusion to steal personal data. Use uBlock and stay cautious.
A Reddit link was detected in your comment. Here are links to the same location on alternative frontends that protect your privacy.
And NATOpedia will use this opportunity to make things harder to look up and push their own propaganda.
How? How does this help with propaganda?
I know everyone hates NATOp€€dia here, but that makes sense to me. An archive run by a petulant child that manipulates past snapshots is not a reliable source. Fuck 'em. Internet archive is better anyway
some commentors on other forums have said the federal goverment is trying to crack down on pirates - and this action from the archivest is an attempt to stamp out leads
but i dunno, if they are in russia what is the point? but then again i dunno, i feel some inclination to side with the archivest if anything - the work they do is invaluable
Yeah, it sucks the pigs are after them. But they should’ve done evasion without destroying their credibility in the process
“change the original source to something that doesn’t need an archive (e.g., a source that was printed on paper), or for which a link to an archive is only a matter of convenience.”
Dismissing the ability to actually read a source as “only a matter of convenience”. A book source might as well be on the moon for the vast majority of readers and they know this. Anyone trying to bury an archive is relying on this fact in order to reduce accountability for what they’ve written. Someone is real mad they can’t go after archive.today with law suits like those trying to kill archive.org and this looks like the new strategy.
Someone is real mad they can’t go after archive.today with law suits like those trying to kill archive.org and this looks like the new strategy.
The dumbass owner did it themself. Fuck em. Don’t manipulate the past if you’re trying to be an archivist
I once bought a referenced book to check a source on wikipedia, and the referenced fact did not appear in the book…
Books are good, actually. And Anna’s Archive is a great convenience.
archive.today’s operators have altered the content of archived pages
Why can’t we have nice things?
I completely understand them wanting to remain anonymous - if the operator chose not to archive the blog post as a result, it’d be slightly disappointing but understandable, but editing your archive of the post to doxx the poster defeats the purpose of archival.
ZioPedia can’t go a day without doing imperialist propaganda. I want my 10 dollars from 2020 back.
deleted by creator
