[jijijijij]

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.

[gyrovague]

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.

[jijijijij]

Assuming you are who you say you are, thanks for the feedback.

> 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)

Well, you clearly do have struck a nerve. And the article at least comes off as the attempt to dox someone. Curiosity is one thing, publishing these findings (where the original sources may fade in time) is another. It's quite evident the person behind archive.today does not want the attention. Just saying, your post doesn't exactly say respect privacy. Would you not have published, if you were actually confident to have found the guy? I got the impression, you would have published regardless.

> the "investigation" was basically punching things into my favorite search engine and seeing what came up.

I think that's what doxxing is, for the most part. You did the work, so everyone else doesn't have to. Nation state threat actors and "the copyright cabal" also got other stuff to do, technical feasibility isn't really a valid argument. Nation state actors could also hack, extort, or kill someone. Ethically, that's of no consequence regarding your own actions against someone.

Not saying you are the worst person ever, but I can totally see why you attracted someone's anger.

[internetter]

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]

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