> What I don't see on that page is where they explicitly don't promise to not modify anything in the archive.
I'm quoting all of that because is lacks an explicit promise of non-modification /i
Meanwhile seriously, if you were disappointed not to see e.g. "We explicitly don't promise not to modify", then perhaps you should consider why, regardless, this site was trusted enough to get a gazillion links in Wikipedia... and HN.
> I'm quoting all of that because is lacks an explicit promise of non-modification.
And I'm quoting all of that because it lacks an explicit (or implicit) promise of modification. :)
It was (emphasis on past-tense) so-trusted because it advertises itself as an archival site. (The linked disclaimer is all about it not being a "long-term" archival site. It says it archives pages for latecomers. There is an implication here that it archives them accurately. What use is a site for latecomers if they change the content to be something else?) If they'd said or indicated they would be changing the content to no longer reflect the original site, Wikipedia would not have linked to them because they wouldn't be a credible source.
In any case, now I can't use them to share or use links since we can no longer trust those archives to be untampered. When I share a link to nyt content on archive.today or copy and paste content into email, I'm putting my name on that declaring "nyt printed this". If that's not true, it's my reputation.
> When I share a link to nyt content on archive.today or copy and paste content into email, I'm putting my name on that declaring "nyt printed this". If that's not true, it's my reputation.
What if the nyt article itself is the problem? How does that square?
Archive.org snapshots may load javascript from external sites, where the original page had loaded them. That script can change anything on the page. Most often, the domain is expired and hijacked by a parking company, so it just replaces the whole page with ads.
The page "got changed" every second. It is easy to make an archived page which would show different content depending on current time or whether you have Mac or Windows, or your locale, or browser fingerpring, or been tailored for you personally
Much worse indeed. This's why one should be deeply sceptical of the handful of WP users seeking to replace archive.today by archive.org. AT allows tampering by the archive operator; IA allows tampering by half the planet... including WP editors who'd love that replacement.
Follow-up: maybe you're confusing Ars Technica with Wikipedia, whose admins did redact Nora's last name from discussions? If so, that's a weird equivalence to draw, since the change was disclosed and done to protect personal information, not attack someone else in the process. (Also, "Nora [redacted]" itself seems to be a name lifted from an unrelated person who had merely contacted Archive.today with a takedown request.)
1. I can't post links (I've already tried), my comments with links are getting shadowbanned. Check out Jon Brodkin's article on Ars about AT, not today's, but the previous one, 6 days ago. Nora's name was there, but now it's silently gone.
2. We learned about Nora's involvement from Patokallio. We learned about Nora's non-involvement... also from Patokallio. They could have reached a settlement with AT that includes hiding Nora's name.
3. Regardless of who Nora is, it is interesting to see the extent of this censorship: so far only gyrovague.com and arstechnica.com, but not tomshardware.com and not tech.yahoo.com. This shows which sites are working closely with the AT defamation campaign, and which are simply copywriting the news feed.
Silently? It tells you right there in the article: "Nora [last name redacted]". Maybe they could add a more fulsome explanation in an editor's note but it seems pretty obvious in context.
If AT is appropriating some random person's name as an alias, it seems helpful to report on that publicly in order to expose the practice and help clear up the misinformation.
Even if they did, so what? There's nothing wrong with a news article removing personal information as a precaution. It's light-years away from altering the content of an archival snapshot in order to target someone else.
Well, that's the only name they removed, even though it didn't stand out among the other names in the investigation. Secondly, it's ironic to do so in an article tagged "Streisand Effect" so perhaps we're witnessing part of the performance. And thirdly, it's strange to blame AT for removing... the same name, and not blame Ars. Immediately accusing... AT of double standards and hypocrisy.
I am lost here. It is definitively an organized defamation campaign.
Seems more like Ars trying to avoid piling more attention on the name of a person that isn't actually involved.
And again, the accusation against Archive.today isn't just that they removed their "Nora" alias from a snapshot, but that they replaced it with the name of the blogger they were quarreling with. There's no defensible reason to do that outside of petty revenge (which tracks with the emails and public statements from the Archive.today maintainer).
They apparently did a find + replace across their database to change the Nora alias to the blogger's name. So any archives of content referencing her would instead point to him, muddying the waters and blaming him for anything she was accused of. Like I said, petty.
This is an impressively unhinged take. I still have no idea what the person is trying to achieve. And I'm sad we're likely going to lose that resource in the future.
I understand being mad but no, unfortunately, despite me knowing humans are human and they get angry at times, this response does still leave a bitter taste in the mouth and many people will perceive it that way. Changing the content of the archived pages is the worst thing they've done honestly. The "3 Hz DDoS" is funny perhaps but then if it's so harmless, then why even bother? But regardless, tampering with the archives, that is, tainting the content that people appreciate you for won't sit well with people.
We're taking about both now, at least one a week it seems. Without the DDoS, we'd mostly forget about the blog. I didn't even know about the blog until the DDoS started.
Meanwhile their IMA on Reddit: no promises, no commitment. Just like Microsoft EULA :)
https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/1i277vt/psa_ar...