[JasonADrury]

So far, the only sin archive.today has been accused of is retaliating against a guy attempting to dox them.

That's a pretty small sin in my book. To be written off as wildly unsuccessful but entirely justified self defense.

DDoSing gyrovague.com is silly, not evil.

The content on gyrovague.com which targets archive.today is evil, plain and simple.

[ellen364]

The person who runs archive.today decided to involve me, and every other visitor, in their dispute. They decided to use us to hurt someone else. That's a pretty big sin in my book.

[altairprime]

By this logic, the Code Green worm is ethical; forcing a security patch upon users who didn’t install one is obviously Not Evil. And that’s why operating systems aren’t wrong to force security updates on their users using invisible phone-home systems that the users aren’t aware of: it’s a small sin that is entirely justified self defense for the users and the device maker. Clearly we should all be updated to iOS 26 without our consent.

The ‘small sin’ of wielding your userbase as a botnet is only palatable for HN’s readers because the site provides a desirable use to HN’s readers. If it were, say, a women’s apparel site that archived copies of Vogue etc. (which would see a ton of page views and much more effective takedown efforts!) and pointed its own DDoS of this manner at Hacker News, HN would be clamoring for their total destruction for unethical behavior with no such ‘it’s just a evil for so much good’ arguments.

Maintaining ethical standards in the face of desire for the profits of unethical behavior is something tech workers are especially untrained to do. Whether with Palantir or Meta or Archive.today, the conflict is the same: Is the benefit one derives worth compromising one’s ethics? For the unfamiliar, three common means of avoiding admitting that one’s ethics are compromised: “it’s not that bad”, “ethics don’t apply to that”, and “that’s my employer’s problem”. None of those are valid excuses to tolerate a website launching DDoS attacks from our browsers.

[Permik]

archive.today has a documented history of altering the archived content, as such they immediately lose the veil of protection of a service of "public good" in my books.

Just my 2 ¢, not that it really matters anymore in this current information-warfare climate and polarization. :/

[baal80spam]

> archive.today has a documented history of altering the archived content

Wow, I had no idea. Thanks.

[JasonADrury]

Archive.org has an even worse history of this, FWIW.

It allows website owners and third parties to tamper with archived content.

Look here, for example: https://web.archive.org/web/20140701040026/http://echo.msk.r...

Archive.today is by far the best option available.

[echoangle]

What does this example show? It shows „ad blocker detected“ for me.

[_osud]

Archived page from 2014 gets tampered with by this javascript from 2022: https://web.archive.org/web/20220912152218/http://echobanner...

Unless you're very technical, web.archive.org is completely untrustworthy

[pschastain]

Deflection rather than addressing the actual accusation

Pay attention to this type of behavior, folks. It's revealing

[_osud]

What do you want me to address? I'm just pointing out that there are no great archival services, and the only real alternative to archive.today is worse.

>Pay attention to this type of behavior, folks. It's revealing

What does it reveal?

[AlexeyBelov]

Lmao, did you just start bickering with yourself?

Or, wow, you just revealed your second account.

[dotBen]

People are painting this as a mutually exclusive ideological decision. Yet two things can be true:

1) The act of archive.today archiving stories (and thus circumventing paywalls) is arguably v low level illegal (computer miss-use/unauthorized access/etc) but it is up for interpretation whether a) the operator or the person requesting the page carries the most responsibility b) whether it's enforceable in third party countries neither archive.today or the page requester reside in

2) DDoSing a site that writes something bad about you is fundamentally wrong (and probably illegal too)

[il-b]

Not just something, it is PII i.e. doxxing

[miken123]

> So far, the only sin archive.today has been accused of is retaliating against a guy attempting to dox them.

I think you're missing that circumventing paywalls is unlawful in most parts of the world.

[animuchan]

Respectfully, it's not, in most parts of the world.

[choo-t]

> I think you're missing that circumventing paywalls is unlawful in most parts of the world.

And a necessity if you want to archive the content correctly, also necessary if you want the archives to be publicly available.

[Hamuko]

Not really sure if circumventing paywalls is that unlawful across the world, but basically copying and pasting an entire web page is just clear and simple copyright violation.