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https://web.archive.org/web/20260220191245if_/https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/02/wikipedia-bans-archive-today-after-site-executed-ddos-and-altered-web-

https://web.archive.org/web/20260220191245if_/https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/02/wikipedia-bans-archive-today-after-site-executed-ddos-and-altered-web-captures/ https://web.archive.org/web/20260220191245if_/https://arstec... archive.today is very popular on HN; the opaque, shortened URLs are promoted on HN every day I can't use archive.today. I tried but gave up. Too many hassles. I might be in the minority but I know I'm not the only one. As it happens. I have not found any site that I cannot access without it The most important issue with archive.today though is the person running it, their past and present behaviour. It speaks for itself Whomever it is, they have lot of info about HN users' reading habits given that archive.today URLs are so heavily promoted by HN submitters, commenters and moderators

belviewreview 9mo ago
I use archive.today all the time. How do you access pages, like for instance on the economist, without it?
- mhitza 9mo ago
  If dang and tomhow enforce a policy against paywalled content would garner less interest in accessing those pages via third parties. Most news gets reported by multiple outlets in general, so the same discussions would still surface.
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- ouhamouch 9mo ago
  for instance on the economist: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46060487 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46060487
- 201984 9mo ago
  With the paywall blocker so good it got banned! You can also get it on Android. https://gitflic.ru/project/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clean https://gitflic.ru/project/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-fire...
  - jwrallie 9mo ago
    A Russian domain git website hosting just a readme.md and a copy of the MIT license but no source code? Just the extension files?
    - moho 9mo ago
      The author got banned from github and gitlab after DMCA takedowns. The code used to be available in those, but I guess he got tired of starting over? Anyway, extensions are just signed zip files. You can extract them and view the source. BPC sources are not compressed or obfuscated. The extension is evaluated and signed by Mozilla (otherwise it wouldn't install in release-channel Firefox), if you put any stock in that.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 9mo ago
  http-request set-header user-agent "Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 14) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/127.0.6533.103 Mobile Safari/537.36 Lamarr" if { hdr(host) -m end economist.com } Years ago I used some other workaround that no longer works, maybe something like amp.economist.com. AMP with text-only browser was a useful workaround for many sites Workarounds usually don't last forever. Websites change from time to time. This one will stop working at some point There are some people who for various reasons cannot use archive.today
  - gpvos 9mo ago
    Which utility, extension, tool or language is that?
    - 1vuio0pswjnm7 9mo ago
      It's from an haproxy configuration file This unfamiliarity is why I try to use programs that more HN readers are familiar with, like curl or wget, in HN examples. But I find those programs awkward to use. The examples may contain mistakes. I don't use those programs in real life For making HTTP requests I use own HTTP generators, TCP clients, and local forward proxies Given the options (a) run a graphical web browser and enable Javascript to solve an archive.today CAPTCHA that contains some fetch() to DDoS a blogger or (b) add a single line to a configuration file and use whatever client I want, no Javascript required, I choose (b)
- ranger_danger 9mo ago
  For me, all archive.* links just present an endless captcha loop. I am not using CF DNS or any proxy/VPN, but even if I do try those things, it still doesn't work.
fouc 9mo ago
you can change the tld of any archive.today link if .today doesn't work. for example archive.ph, archive.is, archive.md, etc
- qingcharles 9mo ago
  There's a DNS issue between Archive Today and some ISPs which causes their domains not to resolve properly, which is why some people have a lot of trouble using it.
  - justincormack 9mo ago
    Its not "a DNS issue" they are banned in many countries and there are ongoing court cases, so various enforcement mechanisms are used.
    - jdiff 9mo ago
      There are also, separately, DNS issues that Archive.today chooses to block certain providers from. For instance: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828317 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828317
bawolff 9mo ago
The fact is i cant have a discussion about a paywalled article without reading it. Archive.today is popular as a paywall bypass because nobody wants HN to devolve into debate based on a headline where nobody has rtfa.
diath 9mo ago
> Whomever it is, they have lot of info about HN users' reading habits given that archive.today URLs are so heavily promoted by HN submitters, commenters and moderators It's not promoted, it's just used as a paywall bypass so everyone can read the linked article.
1vuio0pswjnm7 9mo ago
"archive.today" as used here means the collection of archive.tld domains, where .tld could be ".is", ".md", ".ph", etc. "promoted" as used here means placing an archive.tld URL at the top of an HN thread so that many HN readers will follow it, or placing these URLs elsewhere in threads
1vuio0pswjnm7 9mo ago
Archive.today wants/needs EDNS subnet "Geolocation" as a justication is ambiguous Why a need for geolocation Geolocation can be used for multiple purposes "DNS performance" is only one purpose Other purposes might offer the user no benefit, and might even be undesirable for users As a result, some users don't send EDNS subnet. It's always been optional to send it Even public resolvers, third party DNS services, like Cloudflare, recognise the tradeoffs for users and allow users to avoid sending it. Popular DNS software makes compiling support for EDNS subnet optional Archive.today wants/needs EDNS subnet so bad it tries to gather it using a tracking pixel or it tries to block users who dont send it, e.g., Cloudflare users Thus, before one even considers all the other behaviour of this website operator, some of which is mentioned in this thread, there is a huge red flag for anyone who pays attention to EDNS subnet As with almost all websites repeated DNS lookups are not an absolute requirement for successful HTTP requests There are some IP addresses for archive.{today,is,md,ph,li,...} that have continued to work for years
wolvoleo 9mo ago
> Whomever it is, they have lot of info about HN users' reading habits given that archive.today URLs are so heavily promoted by HN submitters, commenters and moderators Anyone interested in the reading habits of HN users can just take a look at news.ycombinator.com ;)
nobody9999 9mo ago
>I can't use archive.today. I tried but gave up. Too many hassles. What hassles have you experienced? I use the Archive Page[0] extension which is really easy to use. The only thing that annoys me about it is the repeated requests (starting about eight or nine months ago) to complete CAPTCHAs. [0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/archive-page/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/archive-page/
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 9mo ago
  "The only thing that annoys me about it is the repeated requests (starting about eight or nine months ago) to complete CAPTCHAs" What does this annoy you
  - nobody9999 9mo ago
    >What does this annoy you Prior to that I was rarely prompted with a CAPTCHA. Now it's every. single. time. I archive something or open an AT link. Why doesn't that annoy you?
    - 1vuio0pswjnm7 9mo ago
      "Why doesn't that annoy you?" I don't use archive.today. Why would it annooy me

belviewreview 9mo ago

I use archive.today all the time. How do you access pages, like for instance on the economist, without it?

mhitza 9mo ago
If dang and tomhow enforce a policy against paywalled content would garner less interest in accessing those pages via third parties. Most news gets reported by multiple outlets in general, so the same discussions would still surface.
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
ouhamouch 9mo ago
for instance on the economist: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46060487 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46060487
201984 9mo ago
With the paywall blocker so good it got banned! You can also get it on Android. https://gitflic.ru/project/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clean https://gitflic.ru/project/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-fire...
- jwrallie 9mo ago
  A Russian domain git website hosting just a readme.md and a copy of the MIT license but no source code? Just the extension files?
  - moho 9mo ago
    The author got banned from github and gitlab after DMCA takedowns. The code used to be available in those, but I guess he got tired of starting over? Anyway, extensions are just signed zip files. You can extract them and view the source. BPC sources are not compressed or obfuscated. The extension is evaluated and signed by Mozilla (otherwise it wouldn't install in release-channel Firefox), if you put any stock in that.
1vuio0pswjnm7 9mo ago
http-request set-header user-agent "Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 14) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/127.0.6533.103 Mobile Safari/537.36 Lamarr" if { hdr(host) -m end economist.com } Years ago I used some other workaround that no longer works, maybe something like amp.economist.com. AMP with text-only browser was a useful workaround for many sites Workarounds usually don't last forever. Websites change from time to time. This one will stop working at some point There are some people who for various reasons cannot use archive.today
- gpvos 9mo ago
  Which utility, extension, tool or language is that?
  - 1vuio0pswjnm7 9mo ago
    It's from an haproxy configuration file This unfamiliarity is why I try to use programs that more HN readers are familiar with, like curl or wget, in HN examples. But I find those programs awkward to use. The examples may contain mistakes. I don't use those programs in real life For making HTTP requests I use own HTTP generators, TCP clients, and local forward proxies Given the options (a) run a graphical web browser and enable Javascript to solve an archive.today CAPTCHA that contains some fetch() to DDoS a blogger or (b) add a single line to a configuration file and use whatever client I want, no Javascript required, I choose (b)
ranger_danger 9mo ago
For me, all archive.* links just present an endless captcha loop. I am not using CF DNS or any proxy/VPN, but even if I do try those things, it still doesn't work.

fouc 9mo ago

you can change the tld of any archive.today link if .today doesn't work. for example archive.ph, archive.is, archive.md, etc

qingcharles 9mo ago
There's a DNS issue between Archive Today and some ISPs which causes their domains not to resolve properly, which is why some people have a lot of trouble using it.
- justincormack 9mo ago
  Its not "a DNS issue" they are banned in many countries and there are ongoing court cases, so various enforcement mechanisms are used.
  - jdiff 9mo ago
    There are also, separately, DNS issues that Archive.today chooses to block certain providers from. For instance: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828317 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828317

bawolff 9mo ago

The fact is i cant have a discussion about a paywalled article without reading it. Archive.today is popular as a paywall bypass because nobody wants HN to devolve into debate based on a headline where nobody has rtfa.

diath 9mo ago

> Whomever it is, they have lot of info about HN users' reading habits given that archive.today URLs are so heavily promoted by HN submitters, commenters and moderators It's not promoted, it's just used as a paywall bypass so everyone can read the linked article.

1vuio0pswjnm7 9mo ago

"archive.today" as used here means the collection of archive.tld domains, where .tld could be ".is", ".md", ".ph", etc. "promoted" as used here means placing an archive.tld URL at the top of an HN thread so that many HN readers will follow it, or placing these URLs elsewhere in threads

1vuio0pswjnm7 9mo ago

Archive.today wants/needs EDNS subnet "Geolocation" as a justication is ambiguous Why a need for geolocation Geolocation can be used for multiple purposes "DNS performance" is only one purpose Other purposes might offer the user no benefit, and might even be undesirable for users As a result, some users don't send EDNS subnet. It's always been optional to send it Even public resolvers, third party DNS services, like Cloudflare, recognise the tradeoffs for users and allow users to avoid sending it. Popular DNS software makes compiling support for EDNS subnet optional Archive.today wants/needs EDNS subnet so bad it tries to gather it using a tracking pixel or it tries to block users who dont send it, e.g., Cloudflare users Thus, before one even considers all the other behaviour of this website operator, some of which is mentioned in this thread, there is a huge red flag for anyone who pays attention to EDNS subnet As with almost all websites repeated DNS lookups are not an absolute requirement for successful HTTP requests There are some IP addresses for archive.{today,is,md,ph,li,...} that have continued to work for years

wolvoleo 9mo ago

> Whomever it is, they have lot of info about HN users' reading habits given that archive.today URLs are so heavily promoted by HN submitters, commenters and moderators Anyone interested in the reading habits of HN users can just take a look at news.ycombinator.com ;)

nobody9999 9mo ago

>I can't use archive.today. I tried but gave up. Too many hassles. What hassles have you experienced? I use the Archive Page[0] extension which is really easy to use. The only thing that annoys me about it is the repeated requests (starting about eight or nine months ago) to complete CAPTCHAs. [0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/archive-page/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/archive-page/

deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
1vuio0pswjnm7 9mo ago
"The only thing that annoys me about it is the repeated requests (starting about eight or nine months ago) to complete CAPTCHAs" What does this annoy you
- nobody9999 9mo ago
  >What does this annoy you Prior to that I was rarely prompted with a CAPTCHA. Now it's every. single. time. I archive something or open an AT link. Why doesn't that annoy you?
  - 1vuio0pswjnm7 9mo ago
    "Why doesn't that annoy you?" I don't use archive.today. Why would it annooy me