>Why?

Because once the problematic content is removed it should no longer be blocked.

>It's accurate

It is neither a C&C server for a botnet, nor any other server related to a botnet. I would not call it accurate.

>Nobody should ever use that site

It has a good reputation for archiving sites, has stead the test of time, and doesn't censor pages like archive.org does allowing you to actually see the history of news articles instead of them being deleted like archive.org does on occasion.

▲ 3eb7988a1663 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

The site started doctoring archived versions as part of the petty feud. That is, what was supposed to be a historical record, suddenly had content manipulated so as to feed into this fight[0]. There is no redemption. You want to be an archive, you keep it sacrosanct. Put an obvious hosting-site banner overlay if you must, but manipulating the archive is a red-line that was crossed.

  ...On 20 February 2026, English Wikipedia banned links to archive.today, citing the DDoS attack and evidence that archived content was tampered with to insert Patokallio's name.[19] The decision was made despite concerns over maintaining content verifiability[19] while removing and replacing the second-largest archiving service used across the Wikimedia Foundation's projects.[20] The Wikimedia Foundation had stated its readiness to take action regardless of the community verdict.[19][20]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archive.today

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boredhedgehog 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

That line of argument is rather misleading, as some kind of content manipulation is inherent to the service an archive that violates paywalls has to provide. It needs to conceal the accounts it uses to access these websites, and their names and traces are often on the pages it's archiving.

Did AT go beyond that and manipulate any relevant part? That's rather difficult to say now. AT is obviously tampering with evidence, but so is Wikipedia; their admins have heavily redacted their archived Talk pages out of fear one of these pseudonyms might be an actual person, so even what exactly WP accuses AT of is not exactly clear.

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JasonADrury 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[flagged]

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tredre3 2 days ago | parent [-]

If archive.today was known to be run by God himself, I would still describe what he is doing as a DDoS and breaching the trust of its users by abusing their browser and bandwidth to conduct his battles.

	▲	JasonADrury 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		I think you replied to the wrong comment? That doesn't address what I wrote in any way whatsoever. Unless you're arguing that the response by archive.today retroactively justifies the behaviour of Jani Patokallio, which would be a bizarre take.

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charcircuit 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

While I disagree with that action I still trust the site as a reliable source. Redemption is possible. Maybe not for Wikipedia, but I don't care about that site and consider it rotten.

▲ InsideOutSanta 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's not just problematic content, it's criminal behavior. And the site has a bad reputation for archival, given that the owner altered the content of archived articles.

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charcircuit 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

The site commits copyright infringement by showing you content it doesn't have the rights for. This is not the kind of site to go on about morals for.

>the site has a bad reputation

Not compared to archive.org. archive.is has a much better track record.

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InsideOutSanta 2 days ago | parent [-]

I'm not sure whether you're making a joke or confusing the two websites.

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walletdrainer 2 days ago | parent [-]

You’re just not at all familiar with the subject.

Archive.org is awful. It allows site owners and random third parties to edit old archived pages.

Archive.today does not.

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Hamuko 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Is it that much better that Archive.today reserves the right to edit old archived pages for the owner whenever they have a petty grudge with someone?

At least site owners have the copyright on the pages that Archive.org saves. They can just get the content pulled through DMCA anyway.

	▲	walletdrainer 21 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Are you for real? The operator of archive.today (presumably one, at most a handful of people) can edit archived pages on archive.today Literally anyone can edit archived pages on archive.org. There are literally at least hundreds of thousands of tampered archives on archive.org. How is that not worse than the couple of tampered archives on archive.today?

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ddydjjffntn 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Folks keep saying this

Do you actually mean edit or do you just mean delete

Both are problematic, but falsifying a historic record is orders of magnitude worse than deleting one, and conflating them would be extremely dishonest

	▲	walletdrainer a day ago \| parent [-]
		Archive.org lets archived pages pull in JavaScript from the non-archived internet, so it’s only trustworthy if viewed with JavaScript disabled.

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JasonADrury 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

>It's not just problematic content, it's criminal behavior.

How is that supposed to be a big deal when the one of core services archive.today provides is obviously illegal anyway?

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InsideOutSanta 2 days ago | parent [-]

I'm not sure how illegal copyright violations really are, given that all major tech companies are doing it. DDoS attacks, on the other hand, are pretty clear-cut.

I also think "but they also do that other crime" doesn't help their case.

	▲	JasonADrury 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		I think the DDoS is clearly problematic, I just don't think it's problematic because it's criminal. It's problematic because it's childish and pointlessly degrades the user experience.

▲ gbear605 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

It is in fact a botnet - they’ve been hijacking user browsers to act as a botnet to DDoS.

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charcircuit 2 days ago | parent [-]

Are Hacker News users part of a botnet since they link to sites that when people click they go down due to all of the traffic? Am I part of a botnet if I have HN open as it means HN can execute javascript? I think it's stretching the definition.

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gbear605 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Hacker News absolutely would be if it was making those requests to random sites that the user doesn’t know about, and have no reason to be making requests to other than attacking them.

I suppose if all the users go on the site intentionally wanting to take part in a DDoS, then sure it’s not a botnet. But that’s not reality.

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fastball a day ago | parent | prev [-]

If you don't think this is a DDoS with archive.today visitors acting as an unwitting/unwilling botnet, how do you think this normally works? It's not any more sophisticated. There is not much functional difference between someone telling my smart fridge to ping https://gyrovague.com and a website telling my browser to do it.

	▲	charcircuit a day ago \| parent [-]
		I don't think it's a botnet. To me that implies that the software that runs on your computer is a service that talks to a C&C server or to other bots P2P, forming the net(work) part of a botnet. In this case it is not a bot downloading a payload from a C&C, but a user intentionally visiting a website which downloads and runs the payload. It does not really work as a botnet since the web browser is not a service that will continually talk with a network of other servers to get a new payload. Try ignoring what the payload is as it does not really matter in defining what is or isn't a botnet (though botnets typically imply malicious or sketchy payloads). In regards to it being a DDoS it leans more in the yes direction due to the intent of it, but it also sites sending traffic to other sites is part of the web. You can embed things from other sites like images and then those others sites will fulfill those requests. The web didn't restrict pages to only send requests and load content from the same domain.