3 ms·

There's really no interpretation of this which isn't malicious, although, not to defend this behaviour whatsoever, I'm not entirely surprised by it. The only re

There's really no interpretation of this which isn't malicious, although, not to defend this behaviour whatsoever, I'm not entirely surprised by it. The only real value of archive.is is its paywall bypassing abilities and, presumably, large swaths of residential proxies that allow it to archive sites that archive.org can't. Only somebody with some degree of lawlessness would operate such a project.

Brybry 9mo ago
It's not just for paywall bypassing. Sometimes there are archive.today snapshots that aren't in the Wayback Machine (though I think your overall point about lawlessness still stands). For example, there was some NASA debris that hit a guy's house in Florida and it was in the news. [1] Some news sites linked to a Twitter post he made with the images but he later deleted the post. [2] The Wayback Machine has a ton of snapshots of the Twitter post but none of them render for me. [3] But archive.today's snapshot works great. [4] [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9www02e49zo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9www02e49zo [2] https://xcancel.com/Alejandro0tero/status/1768729031493427225 https://xcancel.com/Alejandro0tero/status/176872903149342722... [3] https://web.archive.org/web/20240715000000*/https://twitter.com/Alejandro0tero/status/1768729031493427225 https://web.archive.org/web/20240715000000*/https://twitter.... [4] https://archive.md/obuWr https://archive.md/obuWr
- internetter 9mo ago
  Archive.today has a different approach to the baseline archive technology (executing javascript at archival time and saving the DOM instead of saving and replaying server responses verbatim). Additionally, Archive.today employs a number of site specific mitigations which aren't visible to the end user. In some cases, for instance, they use accounts, but then retroactively modify the DOM to mask this mitigation. [0] While the exact strategy they use for Twitter isn't known to me, they are doing something by their own admission. [1] [0] https://blog.archive.today/post/708008224368001024/why-isnt-instagram-archive-working https://blog.archive.today/post/708008224368001024/why-isnt-... compounded with personal observation. [1] https://blog.archive.today/post/708565142782246912/pretty-please-remove-the-recent-restrictions-for https://blog.archive.today/post/708565142782246912/pretty-pl...
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 9mo ago
  . { echo resolve web.archive.org:443:207.241.237.3 echo url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240404223104if_/https://twitter.com/Alejandro0tero/status/1768729031493427225 echo user-agent=\"\" echo header accept: } \ |curl -qK/dev/stdin|tr \< '\n'|sed -n '/^meta/s/^/</;/./{/og:url/,/og:image/p;}'
jijijijij 9mo ago
Not excusing this malicious behavior, but I have to say, the mentioned blog post is a major dick move, too. Got quite the impression of a passive aggressive undertone, and there is clearly bittersweet irony in collecting and "archiving" an archiver's personal information from long ago traces. Maybe it's all some feud between two dicks, some backstory untold. Maybe the blog author wanted some information gone from archive.today, but was denied.
- internetter 9mo ago
  Perhaps, and yet I've referenced this article numerous times over the years. The most important property of an archive is that it saves an authentic copy of the source material—that is to say, the archive must be trusted. If archive.today is indeed a legitimate archival source first and foremost as it purports to be, the user has a reasonable interest in investigating the people behind it so that they can come to an informed conclusion about if they can trust the archive or not.
  - jijijijij 9mo ago
    There are different scenarios and different needs. Trust-wise, the enemy of your enemy may be your friend. Dodging legal liability can be an asset too, if you are dealing with evidence against the government, or powerful people within your jurisdiction. Wikileaks fills a similar role. And archive.org certainly isn't trustworthy with respect to US political influence. They are trying to rewrite history, they will purge the archives, too. For the average case, you shouldn't fully trust any one service IMO. BTW, there is a neat browser add-on, which lets you search across various archives: https://github.com/dessant/web-archives https://github.com/dessant/web-archives
- gyrovague 9mo ago
  Blog post author here. Nope, I was just curious, since it's quite remarkable how huge archive.today is, how widely it's used, and how little we know about it. I do acknowledge the irony of an archiver being upset by an archive of their own work though :) All that said, the post does not actually dox anyone (as far as I can tell, every name mentioned is an alias or red herring), and the "investigation" was basically punching things into my favorite search engine and seeing what came up. If a nation state level threat actor or even one of the copyright cabals wanted to find the maintainer, they have much better ways of going about it.
ycombinator_acc 9mo ago
What's the alternative? At least they don't comply with takedown requests, which can't be said about archive.org who remove everything even semi-controversial.

Brybry 9mo ago

It's not just for paywall bypassing. Sometimes there are archive.today snapshots that aren't in the Wayback Machine (though I think your overall point about lawlessness still stands). For example, there was some NASA debris that hit a guy's house in Florida and it was in the news. [1] Some news sites linked to a Twitter post he made with the images but he later deleted the post. [2] The Wayback Machine has a ton of snapshots of the Twitter post but none of them render for me. [3] But archive.today's snapshot works great. [4] [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9www02e49zo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9www02e49zo [2] https://xcancel.com/Alejandro0tero/status/1768729031493427225 https://xcancel.com/Alejandro0tero/status/176872903149342722... [3] https://web.archive.org/web/20240715000000*/https://twitter.com/Alejandro0tero/status/1768729031493427225 https://web.archive.org/web/20240715000000*/https://twitter.... [4] https://archive.md/obuWr https://archive.md/obuWr

internetter 9mo ago
Archive.today has a different approach to the baseline archive technology (executing javascript at archival time and saving the DOM instead of saving and replaying server responses verbatim). Additionally, Archive.today employs a number of site specific mitigations which aren't visible to the end user. In some cases, for instance, they use accounts, but then retroactively modify the DOM to mask this mitigation. [0] While the exact strategy they use for Twitter isn't known to me, they are doing something by their own admission. [1] [0] https://blog.archive.today/post/708008224368001024/why-isnt-instagram-archive-working https://blog.archive.today/post/708008224368001024/why-isnt-... compounded with personal observation. [1] https://blog.archive.today/post/708565142782246912/pretty-please-remove-the-recent-restrictions-for https://blog.archive.today/post/708565142782246912/pretty-pl...
1vuio0pswjnm7 9mo ago
. { echo resolve web.archive.org:443:207.241.237.3 echo url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240404223104if_/https://twitter.com/Alejandro0tero/status/1768729031493427225 echo user-agent=\"\" echo header accept: } \ |curl -qK/dev/stdin|tr \< '\n'|sed -n '/^meta/s/^/</;/./{/og:url/,/og:image/p;}'

jijijijij 9mo ago

Not excusing this malicious behavior, but I have to say, the mentioned blog post is a major dick move, too. Got quite the impression of a passive aggressive undertone, and there is clearly bittersweet irony in collecting and "archiving" an archiver's personal information from long ago traces. Maybe it's all some feud between two dicks, some backstory untold. Maybe the blog author wanted some information gone from archive.today, but was denied.

internetter 9mo ago
Perhaps, and yet I've referenced this article numerous times over the years. The most important property of an archive is that it saves an authentic copy of the source material—that is to say, the archive must be trusted. If archive.today is indeed a legitimate archival source first and foremost as it purports to be, the user has a reasonable interest in investigating the people behind it so that they can come to an informed conclusion about if they can trust the archive or not.
- jijijijij 9mo ago
  There are different scenarios and different needs. Trust-wise, the enemy of your enemy may be your friend. Dodging legal liability can be an asset too, if you are dealing with evidence against the government, or powerful people within your jurisdiction. Wikileaks fills a similar role. And archive.org certainly isn't trustworthy with respect to US political influence. They are trying to rewrite history, they will purge the archives, too. For the average case, you shouldn't fully trust any one service IMO. BTW, there is a neat browser add-on, which lets you search across various archives: https://github.com/dessant/web-archives https://github.com/dessant/web-archives
gyrovague 9mo ago
Blog post author here. Nope, I was just curious, since it's quite remarkable how huge archive.today is, how widely it's used, and how little we know about it. I do acknowledge the irony of an archiver being upset by an archive of their own work though :) All that said, the post does not actually dox anyone (as far as I can tell, every name mentioned is an alias or red herring), and the "investigation" was basically punching things into my favorite search engine and seeing what came up. If a nation state level threat actor or even one of the copyright cabals wanted to find the maintainer, they have much better ways of going about it.

ycombinator_acc 9mo ago

What's the alternative? At least they don't comply with takedown requests, which can't be said about archive.org who remove everything even semi-controversial.