The same thing happened to me on a different article yesterday using Firefox. It worked using Edge.

There's a longstanding issue with using Cloudflare DNS. If you change Firefox's secure DNS provider settings to NextDNS the page loads without any captcha.

This is not the longstanding Cloudflare issue. That made Archive sties totally unreachable.

This Captcha issue occurs with non-cloudflare resolvers as well, although with great inconsistency. It depends on the resolver and the user's location when they query. Results can change hours later.

Change DNS to not use Cloudflare.

Yes. For me, I found that I changed my DNS server to Cloudflare with the AdGuard software installed on MacOS a while back (AdGuard > Preferences > DNS), and changing this to a different server fixed it.

I also used the command `sudo dscacheutil -flushcache; sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder` on Terminal (double-check this command before using) to flush the DNS cache, so the change would immediately take effect with the archive websites.

This is a separate issue from the previous Cloudflare issue and it manifests differently.

Getting Captcha'd happens with non-cloudflare resolvers as well, tho not universally nor consistently.

I forced all of Archive domains to query against Quad9 and started getting unskipable Captchas months ago - when I was local(US).

When I placeshifted to overseas, Quad9 resolved to different IPs and those were usable.

The technical reasons behind it are that the archive.today guy wants any takedown notices to be cross-border, so he wants to know what country you are in so he can redirect you to a server outside it.

Cloudflare doesn't support a DNS extension that allows this (eDNS maybe?) and so it fails.

Captcha pages are being served at IPs that don't come from CloudFlare. ex: Users who exclusively resolve thru Quad9 are getting Captcha pages.

Any inference that the Captcha issue is limited to CloudFlare users is incorrect.

It’s the same for me

Same with me for a few weeks now. Turned on my vpn and things worked. So the other suggestion to not use cloudflare dns is probably what is happening under the covers. Archive doesn't like CF at all.