824
The Internet Archive is under attack, with a popup claiming a ‘catastrophic’ breach
(www.theverge.com)
this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2024
824 points (99.9% liked)
Technology
59651 readers
2643 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I can’t think of any reason to attack that website, what have they done wrong?
Archived something someone doesn't want to be seen by the world... like any and all since-removed misinformation for one...
I have zero proof of this so take it for the musing it is, but the Internet Archive/Wayback Machine can be used to view articles that have been taken offline (sometimes for political reasons). The IA is a very accessible way to prove that once something is on the Internet, it's out there forever. I used it in a recent post to show an Israeli newspaper article that argued Israel had a right to not just Palestine, but Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and other territories. It was taken off the newspaper's website a few days later, but IA had it.
This may explain why no one is taking credit, and there are no demands. Or it could very well be another reason, including people just being assholes.
so if this is the case then it could be a foreign government
Yeah, this is a bit like vandalizing a library. They are providing a valuable public service, leave them alone.
Yeah, and what kind of psychos would want to restrict public access to books in libraries?!?! I'm not on the conspiracy train until there's proof and I agree with your post. Just saw a bit of irony there since a lot of North Americans are currently in the process of dismantling libraries.
It's probably for the lulz I guess. There's only a few places left on the internet that are decent and good, archive being one, so why not shit all over it? People are so dumb.
There's currently a fuck ton of hacking going on everywhere maybe just prior to the US elections maybe something unrelated but there's definitely a concerted effort to turn the internet on its head.
In this case it’s looking like people trying to showcase their skill and possibly get bragging rights or at least a reputation for doing these attacks which they can use to earn money from others for these types of services.
We just need to accept that there's terrible people in this world
We see this and think of an amazing and essential public service. A capitalist sees this and tries to find a way to make money with it, and the first step is to ruin the free product.
The attacker(s) apparently just did it to do it.
Dipshits thought it was affiliated with the US government and attacked it to "avenge" Gaza.
No one is using Internet Archive to bypass ads. Anyone who would think of doing that already has ad blockers on.
I completely understood. No one is going to IA as their first stop. They're only going there if they want to see a history change or if the original site is gone.
Because if you're referencing something specific, why would you take the chance that someone changes that page? Are you going to monitor that from then on and make sure it's still correct/relevant? No, you take what is effectively a screenshot and link to that.
You aren't really thinking about this from any standpoint except your advertising revenue.
This conversation makes me want to throw up, as most discussions that revolve around the DMCA usually do. Using rights under the DMCA doesn't put you in very good company.
Have you ever heard of the mysterious places called "libraries"? IA does not "republish" anything, it is an archive.
Wah wah wah, my stuff's been preserved and I dont like it.
Lmao you think Google needs to go through Archive to scrape your site? Delusional.
The mechanisms used to serve ads over the internet nowadays are nasty in a privacy sense, and a psychological manipulation sense. And you want people to be affected by them just to line your pockets? Are you also opposed to ad blockers by any chance?
And how do you suggest a site which has been wiped off the face of the internet gets archived? Maybe we need to invest in a time machine for the Internet Archive?
What do you mean by "engagement", exactly? Clicking on ads?
It's user-driven. Nothing would get archived in this case. And what if the content changes but the page remains up? What then? Fairly sure this is why Wikipedia uses archives.
Pretty sure mainstream ad blockers won't block a custom in-house banner. And if it has no tracking, then it doesn't matter whether it's on Archive or not, you're getting paid the same, no?
Pr
SEO killed the internet. You're literally part of the reason why people go look for alternatives to viewing your website, no one wants ads.
Wait, people prefer the archived version? Too much ads?
Did you just draw comparison between redistribution of publicly available content and...rape? Dang.
Hey, if they choose to wrap their comments in completely inane reasoning they should be allowed to.
I 100% agree with you. I'm also allowed to call them out on their bullshit haha
Meaning, your content changes often?
I only try to understand why you seem to be especiallly affected.
how do you expect an archive to happen if they are not allowed to archive while it is still up. How are you suposed to track changed or see how the world has shifted. This is a very narrow and in my opinion selfish way to view the world
What if I'm looking for something but the page has changed?
Nah. It just lets slimy gits claim they never said XYZ, or that such and such a thing never happened. With as volatile a storage media as internet media, hard backups are absolutely necessary. Put it this way; would you have the same complaimt about a newspaper? A TV show? Post your opinion piece to a newspaper and it's fixed in ink forever. Yet somehow you complain when that same opinion piece is on a website? Get outta here.
A couple of good examples are lifehacker.com and lifehack.org. Both sites used to have excellent content. The sites are still up and running, but the first one has turned into a collection of listicles and the second is an ad for an "AI-powered life coach". All of that old content is gone and is only accessible through the Internet Archive.
In fact, many domains never shut down, they just change owners or change direction.
About the only thing I can agree with you on here is I don’t like when people on Wikipedia archive a link and then list that as the primary source in the reference instead of the original link. Wikipedia (at least in English) has a proper method to follow for citations with links and the archived version should only become the primary if the original source is dead or has changed and no longer covers the reference.
They should also honor a DMCA takedown and robots.txt, but at least with the DMCA I’m sure there’s a backlog. Personally I’ve always appreciated the archive’s existence, though, and would think their impact is small enough that it’s better to have them than block them.