- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
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.
Archive.today became non-citable the moment it began altering archived webpages, regardless of anything else.
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