Archive.Today starting to use Google’s QR-based reCaptcha
#recaptcha #degoogle #datahoarder
The site has a few variant domains, unsure why, and archive.md, the one I’d been using, threw the QR reCaptcha just now, as per the attached image, while archive.today directly threw the good ol’ “try to verify a dozen times” version.
The recaptcha may appear even when the user is not using a VPN if it grows suspicious, meaning the site may soon be inaccessible without bending to Google.
You shouldn’t be using it under any of its domains:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archive.today
(Referring to the abuse of its website’s users to DDoS another website and falsifying archived websites)
Article is rather leghty, so would help pointing the exact problems.
But taking the liberty to try to sift through it myself, from the History section up to the 30 October 2025 situation, nothing sounds conclusive to me.
The French government and CP situation sounds like a grey area - if I understood it right, the French gov. tried to take the contents down without due process?
If that’s the case, I could conjecture the demand was made as part of the internet censorship agenda, where laws and decisions made would induce content hosters to preemptively censor theirs users to avoid massive fines. And usually such agendas advance in the points it’s harder to criticize first to get normalized.
But if it was the due process and I didn’t understand the French legal jargons, then shitty move on Archive.Today’s side.
About the ongoing 2026 situations, those were pretty shitty moves, yeah, and worth being careful at best around the platform.
I’m mostly referring to the 2026 which aren’t just “shitty moves”, but straight up illegal.
They falsified archived information and inserted the name of a person they did not like.
And also, used their websites users as a kind of botnet to DDoS the other website.
I’ve not seen one in the wild yet, but I will refuse to scan them. TIL I am a robot.
I can’t tell if there’s a way to deal with this from the screenshot, but that looks like an accessibility nightmare. How is a blind person supposed to accomplish that task?
What if I don’t have a mobile phone? What if I do, but the camera is broken? What if… eh, fuck Google.
In the voice of Generic Google’s Spokesperson:
Q: “How is a blind person supposed to accomplish that task?”
A: Just use our new AI read-a-loud function! Just $19.99 a month!Q: “What if I don’t have a mobile phone?”
A: But everyone has a phone nowadays!Q: “What if I do, but the camera is broken?”
A: Just buy this new Google Pixel with all pieces soldered together, so you don’t have to worry about refurbishing anymore!Q: “What if… eh, fuck Google.”
A: Just–! …We know where you live… Your routine… Most of your friends and coworkers have Our services. Beware what you say.Jokes aside, Google isn’t there to make things easier, going by their modus operandi. Embrace, Expand, Extinguish, as Microsoft’s internal strategies found in a lawsuit from the early 2000’s would say.
I’m pretty sure they’re totally okay with screwing over thousands of potential users… As long as they can capture the identities of millions of them.
How can this in any way shape or form prove that someone is human?
That’s what the headphones icon is for…audio captcha.
I think I’m gonna start using audio captchas from now on.
I’ve heard some of the captcha bypass libraries do that because it’s a lot easier to process speech than images.
I don’t trust this site after They tried to DDOS someone’s blog, and becauas of that Wikipedia banned this archiver.
Ever since then I have been sticking to archive.org.It requires JavaScript. :(
Oh right
I had one of these last week. Refreshed the page and got a standard image-based captcha. It won’t be long before this QR/device attestation shit becomes the norm though.
Joke’s on them - I will just stop using the internet and live in a cave, then.
The site has a few variant domains, unsure why
Because their domains keep getting blocked, because corporate media don’t like paywall bypasses, and they have deep pockets.
The site itself is a bit trash, considering the captcha-adjacent DDoSing antics the owner got up to a few months ago. Unfortunately, complaints aside, sometimes it’s the easiest (or even only) way to access a lot of otherwise-inaccessible content.
Are there any other archivers besides this and archive.org?
@TankieTanuki@hexbear.net there’s that Australian one Louis Rossmann had found but that I always forget the name. There’s Preservetube for Youtube videos. And one could argue RSS bots here on the fediverse are a partial form of archival, since they pull the title, some times the context from the blurb, and the link to show at least that it existed (also yet to find a bot post from a dead instance to test if they can be propagated after the instance ceases fo be).
Other than those, not familiar with any, sadly.
Yes, but I can’t name them right now; but you should be able to find them online.
