> they had archive.is blacklisted

What do you mean by this? Wikipedia actively encourages people to use archive.is links in citations:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Archiving_a_source#Archiv...

Well, it was last I checked, which may have been some time ago (I couldn't easily find the changes with the WikiBlame tool).

That would be 7 years ago. It indeed was blacklisted on 2014 but restored on 2016.

2016 was 9 years ago, but thanks for the heads-up.

The difference is that we know who's running archive.org. We don't know who's running archive.is. That's perfectly fine for private use but unacceptable for a site like Wikipedia.

It's not that difficult.

Are there examples of archive.is falsifying information? I care more about "what you do" than "who you are".

When you don't know who runs archive.is, you can also never know if he sold it to someone else (except if either party publically announces it).

This type of possibility really worries me. Archive.is is much closer to actual history in many ways. If the data there starts getting corrupted or biased, there’s no way to know if what was truly there.

The idea that the permanent record of the internet could hinge on the ethics of one stranger behind a server rack is deeply unsettling.

This happens on .gov websites a lot now, and it is deeply unsettling.

Knowing the current owner of archive.is doesn't help; we need more full, independent Internet mirrors that can be compared against each other.

Archive.is does not archive the page exactly as is.

And when the information on archive.is starts getting corrupted, those links can be adjusted or removed.

Who will catch it, when and how?

I never said there are examples. However, "who you are" matters, even if you don't care. At least when the who is known, we can guage the trustworthiness and what bias exists, because there's always a bias. When who is not known, you don't know what bias to account for. That's not trustworthy and not reliable. And when the site is closed source and you have no idea how it's being run, nor by whom, you don't know "what you do" either.

Does wiki only allow people to vote sources where the owner is known?

"wiki"?

I never concluded that but this actually allows someone, the anonymous here to change the history/info backwards if needed. For russians as an example this would be powerfull tool to manipulate narrative, which is cultural there at this point. Pretty smart and dangerous if it is really operated by them.

Such practices are by no means limited to Russia.

Absolutely. They we're just example which came to my mind first.

Also happens to likely be where the site owner is based

https://gyrovague.com/2023/08/05/archive-today-on-the-trail-...

Ignoring the fact that one of this service's primary reason for existing is that corporations and governments are already abusing their ability to retroactively change history.

If this is truly a concern then the answer is to have more than one publicly-accessible independent archive service. Archivebro has never taken any steps towards securing a monopoly on archiving things. The FBI are the only ones doing that.

Also not everybody in Russia is on the FSB payroll. News media always stops investigating as soon as there is credible information that somebody or their server is located in Russia because if they learn too much then it becomes difficult to discredit them as "possibly being linked to the kremlin". If you used any other nationality to imply that somebody is acting in bad faith on behalf of a hostile foreign government without additional evidence those same journos would call you a racist and try to get you canceled.

> We don't know who's running archive.is.

I always assumed it was officially sanctioned by the Israeli government, for some unspecified (but almost certainly nefarious) purpose.

Not sure if your assumption was based on the TLD, but `.is` is Iceland, not Israel (which is `.il`).

Ty to everyone who pointed this out. I have a feeling I've googled it several times, and then promptly forgot. Maybe it will stick this time.

.is is Iceland, not Israel (that's .il).

Why Israel? From the TLD? IS is Iceland. Israel would be IL.

We also know archive.org has removed pages some "important" people didn't like.

Where did you check this? While neither are listed on WP:RSP, I know many cites are changed into web.archive.org links once they go down.

I heard stories of incriminating stuff for higher-ups disappearing from archive.org.

I heard stories about a potential Oracle data breach (I think mainly affecting their customers) being removed from Archive.org too. It’s because in general, they comply with requests to remove stuff, which is understandable from an ethical perspective. But do they at least try to explain the reason for the takedown? Is it just not feasible to do that?

Archive.org honors robots.txt retroactively. So anybody can take down their own stuff by adding a link to their robots.txt file.

This is no longer true. They changed their policy to ignore robots.txt in 2017. I seem to recall that they still respected robots.txt later, though I can’t find any more information on it and may be misremembering. Currently, they do not.

Does it mean archive.org works for any sites?

My main use for archive.is is for sites that somehow cannot be archived (a message will show up mentioning this site cannot be archive or something along these lines).

archive.is is generally pretty good in forcibly attempting to get an archive, if the HTML doesn't work, the screenshot will work fine. Although archive.is doesn't seem to handle gifs/videos.

> Does it mean archive.org works for any sites?

They respected exclusion requests after they stopped to respect robots.txt. I don't know their policy for new exclusion requests.

Oh. Did not know that.

> Last I checked, they had archive.is blacklisted; the people with power there had (as far as I can tell) come to the conclusion that people using that site to prove that websites had stated X on date Y were the bad guys.

Or they're worried about the paywall by-passing functionality (which is probably what a good portion of people use it for) and copyright claims against archive.today potentially having it taken down and thus breaking a lot of links.