InevitableSwing [none/use name]@hexbear.net to Chapotraphouse@hexbear.netEnglish · 18 days ago

Wikipedia blacklisted Archive.today and started removing 695,000 archive links. [More inside. This is a crazy story.]

arstechnica.com

14
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Wikipedia blacklisted Archive.today and started removing 695,000 archive links. [More inside. This is a crazy story.]

arstechnica.com

InevitableSwing [none/use name]@hexbear.net to Chapotraphouse@hexbear.netEnglish · 18 days ago
14
Wikipedia blacklists Archive.today, starts removing 695,000 archive links
arstechnica.com
If DDoSing a blog wasn't bad enough, archive site also tampered with web snapshots.

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,.

  • Clippy [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    10·
    17 days ago

    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.