6 ms·

There is an post describing the possibility of an organised campaign against archive.today [1] https://algustionesa.com/the-takedown-campaign-against-archive-to

by wuschel 8mo ago

There is an post describing the possibility of an organised campaign against archive.today [1] https://algustionesa.com/the-takedown-campaign-against-archive-today/ https://algustionesa.com/the-takedown-campaign-against-archi... How does the tech behind archive.today work in detail? Is there any information out there that goes beyond the Google AI search reply or this HN thread [2]? [1] https://algustionesa.com/the-takedown-campaign-against-archive-today/ https://algustionesa.com/the-takedown-campaign-against-archi... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42816427 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42816427

deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
iamnothere 8mo ago
There was also the recent news about sites beginning to block the Internet Archive. Feels like we are gearing up for the next phase of the information war.
- idiotsecant 8mo ago
  [flagged]
leonidasv 8mo ago
If they're under an organised defamation campaign, they're not helping themselves by DDoSing someone else's blog and editing archived pages.
- ouhamouch 8mo ago
  it gives them a voice.
  - duskwuff 8mo ago
    And that voice is practically shouting, "I AM UNTRUSTWORTHY".
    - ouhamouch 8mo ago
      that is not the worst scream (especially after FBI and Russian trail). better to shout anything than to die in silence
      - eddythompson80 8mo ago
        What kinda logic is that? If you don't want to die in silence, then shout something sensical. But if you're gonna shout garbage, just die in silence.
        ouhamouch 8mo ago
        The property of the medium: no one would repost or discuss "something sensical".
        tolerance 8mo ago
        People say they want the old weird web back. Well there’s this.
    - tolerance 8mo ago
      Or some shrewd sort of tactician.
- behringer 8mo ago
  Is that, itself, true or disinformation?
  - drum55 8mo ago
    It was true and visible when reported, yeah.
    - deleted 8mo ago
      [deleted]
  - stuffoverflow 8mo ago
    I've not seen any evidence of them editing archived pages BUT the DDOSing of gyrovague.com is true and still actively taking place. The author of that blog is Finnish leading archive.today to ban all Finnish IPs by giving them endless captcha loops. After solving the first captcha, the page reloads and a javascript snippet appears in the source that attempts to spam gyrovague.com with repeated fetches.
    - mmooss 8mo ago
      How do you know that? Did you see it (do you have a Finnish IP?)?
      - delusional 8mo ago
        This is quite an interesting question. For a single datapoint, I happen to have access to a VPN that's supposedly in Finland, and connecting through that didn't make any captcha loop appear on archive.today. The page worked fine. Now it's obviously possible that my VPN was whitelisted somehow, or that the GeoIP of it is lying. This is just a singular datapoint.
        fear-anger-hate 8mo ago
        As another datapoint with Finnish IP from Mullvad VPN: CAPTCHA loop and indeed after solving first CAPTCHA this can be found in page source: setInterval(function(){fetch("https://gyrovague.com/tag/"+Math.random().toString(36).substring(2,3+Math.random()*8)+"/ https://gyrovague.com/tag/"+Math.random().toString(36).subst...",{ referrerPolicy:"no-referrer",mode:"no-cors" });},1400);
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
ouhamouch 8mo ago
There are number of blog posts like owner-archive-today . blogspot . com 2 years old, like J.P's first post on AT
8cvor6j844qw_d6 8mo ago
archive.today works surprisingly well for me, often succeeding where archive.org fails. archive.org also complies with takedown requests, so it's worth asking: could the organised campaign against archive.today have something to do with it preserving content that someone wants removed?
- sieabahlpark 8mo ago
  [dead]
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- wolvoleo 8mo ago
  They preserve a lot of paywalled content so yeah I'm sure there's enough financial incentives to bother them :(
bdhcuidbebe 8mo ago
They are able to scrape paywalled sites at random, so im guessing a residential botnet is used.
- pingou 8mo ago
  But how do they bypass the paywall? They can't just pretend to be Google by changing the user-agent, this wouldn't work all the time, as some websites also check IPs, and others don't even show the full content to Google. They also cannot hijack data with a residential botnet or buy subscriptions themselves. Otherwise, the saved page would contain information about the logged-in user. It would be hard to remove this information, as the code changes all the time, and it would be easy for the website owner to add an invisible element that identifies the user. I suppose they could have different subscriptions and remove everything that isn't identical between the two, but that wouldn't be foolproof.
  - seanhly 8mo ago
    There are some pretty robust browser addons for bypassing article paywalls, notably https://gitflic.ru/project/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clean#installation https://gitflic.ru/project/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-fire... This particular addon is blocked on most western git servers, but can still be installed from Russian git servers. It includes custom paywall-bypassing code for pretty much every news websites you could reasonably imagine, or at least those sites that use conditional paywalls (paywalls for humans, no paywalls for big search engines). It won't work on sites like Substack that use proper authenticated content pages, but these sorts of pages don't get picked up by archive.today either. My guess would be that archive.today loads such an addon with its headless browser and thus bypasses paywalls that way. Even if publishers find a way to detect headless browsers, crawlers can also be written to operate with traditional web browsers where lots of anti-paywall addons can be installed.
    - pingou 8mo ago
      But don't news websites check for ip addresses to make sure they really are from Google bots?
pyuser583 8mo ago
Was that written by AI? It sounds like AI, spends lots of time summarizing other posts, and has no listed author. My AI alarm is going off.
- lambda 8mo ago
  Yeah, wow. Definitely setting off my AI summary alarm.
- girvo 8mo ago
  Yeah nearly certainly.
- KennyBlanken 8mo ago
  Ars was caught recently using AI to write articles when the AI hallucinated about a blogger getting harassed by someone using AI agents. The article quoted his blog and all the quotes were nonsense.
  - mrweasel 8mo ago
    Even if something is AI generated the author, and the editor, should at least attempt to read back the article. English isn't my native language, so that obviously plays in, but very frequently I find that articles I struggle to read are AI generated, they certainly have that AI feel. It would be interesting to run the numbers, but I get the feeling that AI generated articles may have a higher LIX number. Authors are then less inclined to "fix" the text, because longer word makes them seem smarter.
    - moron4hire 8mo ago
      "Should" and "will" are completely different things. My kids "should" brush their teeth every night without me having to tell them. But they won't.
      - mrweasel 8mo ago
        Sounds like you're suggesting an RFC for journalists and editors :-)
robotnikman 8mo ago
A big fear of mine is something happening to archive.is There is so much is archived there, to lose it all would be a tragedy.

by wuschel 8mo ago

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]

iamnothere 8mo ago

There was also the recent news about sites beginning to block the Internet Archive. Feels like we are gearing up for the next phase of the information war.

idiotsecant 8mo ago
[flagged]

leonidasv 8mo ago

If they're under an organised defamation campaign, they're not helping themselves by DDoSing someone else's blog and editing archived pages.

ouhamouch 8mo ago
it gives them a voice.
- duskwuff 8mo ago
  And that voice is practically shouting, "I AM UNTRUSTWORTHY".
  - ouhamouch 8mo ago
    that is not the worst scream (especially after FBI and Russian trail). better to shout anything than to die in silence
    - eddythompson80 8mo ago
      What kinda logic is that? If you don't want to die in silence, then shout something sensical. But if you're gonna shout garbage, just die in silence.
      - ouhamouch 8mo ago
        The property of the medium: no one would repost or discuss "something sensical".
      - tolerance 8mo ago
        People say they want the old weird web back. Well there’s this.
  - tolerance 8mo ago
    Or some shrewd sort of tactician.
behringer 8mo ago
Is that, itself, true or disinformation?
- drum55 8mo ago
  It was true and visible when reported, yeah.
  - deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
- stuffoverflow 8mo ago
  I've not seen any evidence of them editing archived pages BUT the DDOSing of gyrovague.com is true and still actively taking place. The author of that blog is Finnish leading archive.today to ban all Finnish IPs by giving them endless captcha loops. After solving the first captcha, the page reloads and a javascript snippet appears in the source that attempts to spam gyrovague.com with repeated fetches.
  - mmooss 8mo ago
    How do you know that? Did you see it (do you have a Finnish IP?)?
    - delusional 8mo ago
      This is quite an interesting question. For a single datapoint, I happen to have access to a VPN that's supposedly in Finland, and connecting through that didn't make any captcha loop appear on archive.today. The page worked fine. Now it's obviously possible that my VPN was whitelisted somehow, or that the GeoIP of it is lying. This is just a singular datapoint.
      - fear-anger-hate 8mo ago
        As another datapoint with Finnish IP from Mullvad VPN: CAPTCHA loop and indeed after solving first CAPTCHA this can be found in page source: setInterval(function(){fetch("https://gyrovague.com/tag/"+Math.random().toString(36).substring(2,3+Math.random()*8)+"/ https://gyrovague.com/tag/"+Math.random().toString(36).subst...",{ referrerPolicy:"no-referrer",mode:"no-cors" });},1400);

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

ouhamouch 8mo ago

There are number of blog posts like owner-archive-today . blogspot . com 2 years old, like J.P's first post on AT

8cvor6j844qw_d6 8mo ago

archive.today works surprisingly well for me, often succeeding where archive.org fails. archive.org also complies with takedown requests, so it's worth asking: could the organised campaign against archive.today have something to do with it preserving content that someone wants removed?

sieabahlpark 8mo ago
[dead]
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
wolvoleo 8mo ago
They preserve a lot of paywalled content so yeah I'm sure there's enough financial incentives to bother them :(

bdhcuidbebe 8mo ago

They are able to scrape paywalled sites at random, so im guessing a residential botnet is used.

pingou 8mo ago
But how do they bypass the paywall? They can't just pretend to be Google by changing the user-agent, this wouldn't work all the time, as some websites also check IPs, and others don't even show the full content to Google. They also cannot hijack data with a residential botnet or buy subscriptions themselves. Otherwise, the saved page would contain information about the logged-in user. It would be hard to remove this information, as the code changes all the time, and it would be easy for the website owner to add an invisible element that identifies the user. I suppose they could have different subscriptions and remove everything that isn't identical between the two, but that wouldn't be foolproof.
- seanhly 8mo ago
  There are some pretty robust browser addons for bypassing article paywalls, notably https://gitflic.ru/project/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clean#installation https://gitflic.ru/project/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-fire... This particular addon is blocked on most western git servers, but can still be installed from Russian git servers. It includes custom paywall-bypassing code for pretty much every news websites you could reasonably imagine, or at least those sites that use conditional paywalls (paywalls for humans, no paywalls for big search engines). It won't work on sites like Substack that use proper authenticated content pages, but these sorts of pages don't get picked up by archive.today either. My guess would be that archive.today loads such an addon with its headless browser and thus bypasses paywalls that way. Even if publishers find a way to detect headless browsers, crawlers can also be written to operate with traditional web browsers where lots of anti-paywall addons can be installed.
  - pingou 8mo ago
    But don't news websites check for ip addresses to make sure they really are from Google bots?

pyuser583 8mo ago

Was that written by AI? It sounds like AI, spends lots of time summarizing other posts, and has no listed author. My AI alarm is going off.

lambda 8mo ago
Yeah, wow. Definitely setting off my AI summary alarm.
girvo 8mo ago
Yeah nearly certainly.
KennyBlanken 8mo ago
Ars was caught recently using AI to write articles when the AI hallucinated about a blogger getting harassed by someone using AI agents. The article quoted his blog and all the quotes were nonsense.
- mrweasel 8mo ago
  Even if something is AI generated the author, and the editor, should at least attempt to read back the article. English isn't my native language, so that obviously plays in, but very frequently I find that articles I struggle to read are AI generated, they certainly have that AI feel. It would be interesting to run the numbers, but I get the feeling that AI generated articles may have a higher LIX number. Authors are then less inclined to "fix" the text, because longer word makes them seem smarter.
  - moron4hire 8mo ago
    "Should" and "will" are completely different things. My kids "should" brush their teeth every night without me having to tell them. But they won't.
    - mrweasel 8mo ago
      Sounds like you're suggesting an RFC for journalists and editors :-)

robotnikman 8mo ago

A big fear of mine is something happening to archive.is There is so much is archived there, to lose it all would be a tragedy.