334
Wikipedia blacklists Archive.today, starts removing 695,000 archive links (arstechnica.com)
submitted 8 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
45 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

The English-language edition of Wikipedia is blacklisting Archive.today after the controversial archive site was used to direct a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack against a blog.

In the course of discussing whether Archive.today should be deprecated because of the DDoS, Wikipedia editors discovered that the archive site altered snapshots of webpages to insert the name of the blogger who was targeted by the DDoS. The alterations were apparently fueled by a grudge against the blogger over a post that described how the Archive.today maintainer hid their identity behind several aliases.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 107 points 8 months ago* (2 children)

Archive.today became non-citable the moment it began altering archived webpages, regardless of anything else.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 28 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    This is peak incompetence, I think, but it maybe shows that they see their mission not in preserving credible sources, but in breaking paywalls or something else entirely that is not forfeited by petty revenge edits

    This is still my number one fear to hear about any archive, because altering the data when done properly may go undetected and lead people to wrong conclusions

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 17 points 8 months ago

    Yeah, archive.today came out of gamergate, so there's a very good chance that the owner sees their mission as being to help jumpstart fascism. In a world where the truth is paywalled but the lies are free, becoming more useful on the left might have been a real problem for them.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent