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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.

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[-] XLE@piefed.social 44 points 2 weeks ago

From Wikipedia

As of 13:27, 19 February 2026 (UTC), the owners are now batch-replacing certain names in archived pages with the real name of the gyrovague.com webmaster as a form of harassment.

The top piece of evidence (not in any special order) was redacted due to "revealing personal information".

Other subsequent pieces of evidence were retained but names were replaced with abbreviations

I have another evidence of tampering: this is a Megalodon archive of a archive.ph archive of a post. The original post is now dead. Patokallio mentions this post in his blog – he would surely mention if the post mentioned him, in the way the archived version does. He quoted the original [N.P.] was a woman[...], while the archive.ph reads Jani Patokallio was a woman[...]

Another example:

Sometime today, Archive.today replaced the name with the equivalent amount of spaces (only where N...'s name used to be). Ironically, "Jani Patokallio" is of the same length as "N...".

[-] Gork@sopuli.xyz 41 points 2 weeks ago

Should I stop using archive.ph then? I mostly used it because it's a lot faster than archive.org, which is a bit clunkier to use.

[-] Hubi@feddit.org 66 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

AFAIK archive.is , .ph and .today are all just different domains for the same site.

[-] AmbitiousProcess@piefed.social 28 points 2 weeks ago

Yep, also owned by archive.today.

As is archive.is, archive.fo, archive.li, archive.md, and archive.vn.

[-] antonim@lemmy.world 22 points 2 weeks ago

Well, for accessing paywalled articles .org is no replacement for .ph/.today, sadly. But it's advisable to use it as little as possible, it seems using visitors for DDoS'ing the blog is still going on.

[-] XLE@piefed.social 15 points 2 weeks ago

GhostArchive came up in discussions.

[-] silence7@slrpnk.net 22 points 2 weeks ago

The problem that web.archive.org and ghostarchive.org both have is that they regularly fail to archive content

[-] XLE@piefed.social 12 points 2 weeks ago

Understandable. Archive.today is really good at getting website content, but their methods are proprietary and a little dubious.

If you just want to save things locally, I believe Single File is really good. It downloads the page that you see on your browser, as you see it.

[-] zarkanian@sh.itjust.works 5 points 2 weeks ago

Also, as the name indicates, it downloads the page as a single file. Obviously, it doesn't help for archiving the page for other people, though.

[-] XLE@piefed.social 3 points 2 weeks ago

Couldn't you host it somewhere yourself? I guess there's a question of trust there, but trust is the reason Wikipedia has decided to stop using archive.today

[-] zarkanian@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 weeks ago

I would probably use the Wayback Machine for that. You can give it the page's address and tell it to make a copy.

[-] XLE@piefed.social 5 points 2 weeks ago

The Wayback machine is good, but it has limitations archive.today subverted. That's why people are looking for alternatives specifically to the latter

[-] VonReposti@feddit.dk 19 points 2 weeks ago

When I said that Wikipedia should take it seriously and rip off the bandaid as quick as possible when the DDoS's started, a few didn't believe me when I said there was no reason to trust the content anymore if archive[.]today decided malicious activity using their traffic was okay. The owner's ehtics (or lack thereof) showed that nothing stopped them from maliciously altering the content either, making any reason to hang on to the archive site null and void.

To those people doubting my perspective: Called it.

[-] notsure@fedia.io 5 points 2 weeks ago

People with lotsa money tried to make truth disappear....are you all fucking nutz?

[-] Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world 104 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

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

[-] sukhmel@programming.dev 29 points 2 weeks ago

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

[-] silence7@slrpnk.net 18 points 2 weeks 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.

[-] JohnnyCanuck@lemmy.ca 52 points 2 weeks ago

It sounds like archive.today is behaving poorly. As far as I know, Wikipedia isn't exactly "big money". If you know different on either front, can you please explain. Otherwise your comments are meaningless.

[-] fonix232@fedia.io 11 points 2 weeks ago

Dunno if I would call it "behaving poorly".

The blogger in question doxxed the owner/maintainer of Archive.today who in return doxxed the blogger. To me this sounds more like eye for an eye FAFO.

[-] ilinamorato@lemmy.world 58 points 2 weeks ago

If it's altering snapshots, it's not a reliable archive. Simple as that.

[-] JohnnyCanuck@lemmy.ca 36 points 2 weeks ago

That's inappropriate, childish, and unprofessional. It makes them untrustworthy for citations. There are better ways of handling it.

If altering snapshots for a grudge isn't your definition of "behaving poorly" for a site archiving the state of the Internet, then you must not think they have to be an accurate source of information. If they're not an accurate source of information, then Wikipedia has no obligation to allow them to be used in citations, and they should remove such citations.

[-] fonix232@fedia.io 4 points 2 weeks ago

Has the accuracy of the snapshots actually changed based on this edit? After all, if it's factual information being presented...

I do agree that it raises the issue of what other modifications there may be, and it IS childish, but so is going after a person who provides a good service and wants to remain anonymous while doing so.

All I'm saying is that while I do not agree with the actions, I also am not saying I don't understand the reasoning behind.

[-] JohnnyCanuck@lemmy.ca 34 points 2 weeks ago

Has the accuracy of the snapshots actually changed based on this edit? After all, if it's factual information being presented...

Yes! Quite literally, yes. They're supposed to be an archive of what is on other sites. It doesn't matter if the original site was, right, wrong, complete, incomplete, accurate, inaccurate, factual, unfactual, etc. If they change things, they're editorializing and are no longer an archive, they're new content - which is not the purpose people use them for.

I do agree that it raises the issue of what other modifications there may be,

That's literally the point. It doesn't matter how much you "understand the reasoning" (though you also think it's childish and don't agree with the actions). You can use it if you want to, no one is stopping you. The point is Wikipedia can't trust it as a source of archived data and has every right to ban it.

[-] pivot_root@lemmy.world 14 points 2 weeks ago

The blogger in question doxxed the owner/maintainer of Archive.today who in return doxxed the blogger.

Did you actually read the two articles posted by the blogger? The archive.today owner wasn't doxxed. No personally identifying information was provided; it only aggregates already-known info including a couple of fake aliases. The most it concludes is that the guy is Russian or operating out of Russia.

https://gyrovague.com/2026/02/01/archive-today-is-directing-a-ddos-attack-against-my-blog/

https://gyrovague.com/2023/08/05/archive-today-on-the-trail-of-the-mysterious-guerrilla-archivist-of-the-internet/

this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2026
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