The crucial context here is that archive.today provides a useful public service for free.

Jani Patokallio runs gyrovague.net in order to harass people who provide useful public services.

It's not surprising that the owner of archive.today does not like being exposed, archiving is a risky business.

Should providing a public service absolve all sins?

So far, the only sin archive.today has been accused of is retaliating against a guy attempting to dox them.

That's a pretty small sin in my book. To be written off as wildly unsuccessful but entirely justified self defense.

DDoSing gyrovague.com is silly, not evil.

The content on gyrovague.com which targets archive.today is evil, plain and simple.

The person who runs archive.today decided to involve me, and every other visitor, in their dispute. They decided to use us to hurt someone else. That's a pretty big sin in my book.

archive.today has a documented history of altering the archived content, as such they immediately lose the veil of protection of a service of "public good" in my books.

Just my 2 ¢, not that it really matters anymore in this current information-warfare climate and polarization. :/

> archive.today has a documented history of altering the archived content

Wow, I had no idea. Thanks.

Archive.org has an even worse history of this, FWIW.

It allows website owners and third parties to tamper with archived content.

Look here, for example: https://web.archive.org/web/20140701040026/http://echo.msk.r...

Archive.today is by far the best option available.

What does this example show? It shows „ad blocker detected“ for me.

Archived page from 2014 gets tampered with by this javascript from 2022: https://web.archive.org/web/20220912152218/http://echobanner...

Unless you're very technical, web.archive.org is completely untrustworthy

Deflection rather than addressing the actual accusation

Pay attention to this type of behavior, folks. It's revealing

What do you want me to address? I'm just pointing out that there are no great archival services, and the only real alternative to archive.today is worse.

>Pay attention to this type of behavior, folks. It's revealing

What does it reveal?

Lmao, did you just start bickering with yourself?

Or, wow, you just revealed your second account.

Yea, reading through the page, these two accounts have been sounding exactly the same. I suppose it is in line with the childish behavior of AT.

You're an idiot. Genuinely pants-on-head retarded.

The archive.today guy can barely form a complete sentence in English, my writing is not even remotely similar to his. Yet, you slander him and accuse him of being responsible for my posts without the least bit of evidence.

>these two accounts have been sounding exactly the same

Well duh! I literally said that I took over this account from "pschastain" (who is a real person with an extensive online identity) after the other account I was posting with was ratelimited.

Look, it's right there (with another moron accusing me of being Jani, instead of archive.today): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47486238

Reported you to mods via email.

Oh great, I might have to click "New Identity" in Tor Browser.

> So far, the only sin archive.today has been accused of is retaliating against a guy attempting to dox them.

I think you're missing that circumventing paywalls is unlawful in most parts of the world.

Respectfully, it's not, in most parts of the world.

> I think you're missing that circumventing paywalls is unlawful in most parts of the world.

And a necessity if you want to archive the content correctly, also necessary if you want the archives to be publicly available.

Not really sure if circumventing paywalls is that unlawful across the world, but basically copying and pasting an entire web page is just clear and simple copyright violation.

By this logic, the Code Green worm is ethical; forcing a security patch upon users who didn’t install one is obviously Not Evil. And that’s why operating systems aren’t wrong to force security updates on their users using invisible phone-home systems that the users aren’t aware of: it’s a small sin that is entirely justified self defense for the users and the device maker. Clearly we should all be updated to iOS 26 without our consent.

The ‘small sin’ of wielding your userbase as a botnet is only palatable for HN’s readers because the site provides a desirable use to HN’s readers. If it were, say, a women’s apparel site that archived copies of Vogue etc. (which would see a ton of page views and much more effective takedown efforts!) and pointed its own DDoS of this manner at Hacker News, HN would be clamoring for their total destruction for unethical behavior with no such ‘it’s just a evil for so much good’ arguments.

Maintaining ethical standards in the face of desire for the profits of unethical behavior is something tech workers are especially untrained to do. Whether with Palantir or Meta or Archive.today, the conflict is the same: Is the benefit one derives worth compromising one’s ethics? For the unfamiliar, three common means of avoiding admitting that one’s ethics are compromised: “it’s not that bad”, “ethics don’t apply to that”, and “that’s my employer’s problem”. None of those are valid excuses to tolerate a website launching DDoS attacks from our browsers.

People are painting this as a mutually exclusive ideological decision. Yet two things can be true:

1) The act of archive.today archiving stories (and thus circumventing paywalls) is arguably v low level illegal (computer miss-use/unauthorized access/etc) but it is up for interpretation whether a) the operator or the person requesting the page carries the most responsibility b) whether it's enforceable in third party countries neither archive.today or the page requester reside in

2) DDoSing a site that writes something bad about you is fundamentally wrong (and probably illegal too)

Not just something, it is PII i.e. doxxing

You don't understand "evil"

Of course I do, bullying someone who risks significant legal liability to provide a free service out of the kindness of their heart is nothing but evil.

Writing a blog post trying to identify the anonymous person taking risks to provide that free service? I don't know man, that feels pretty shitty to me. Even if you do a bad job at the doxing.

Are you schizo posting, or have you forgotten to log into a correct account to reply to yourself?

No, pschastain has malware on their computer. I just hit a ratelimit on another account I was using, and decided it'd be funny if I replied from their own account.

Sure, Jan.

He wasn't lying, someone got into my account here. The mods got after it pretty quickly, kudos to them, definitely appreciated.

Look at "i-pay-for-all-online-articles-always" over here.

I know it's petty. But don't act surprised when you find your garbage strewn all over your lawn next morning after you flipped off your neighbor the fourth time.

Archive today being free doesn’t excuse them using their audience to DDoS someone they don’t like or excuse them from modifying archive content. Also documenting who funds a service is in the public interest.

>Also documenting who funds a service is in the public interest.

Not really, no. It's not unlikely to result in the service ceasing to exist.

> The crucial context here is that archive.today provides a useful public service for free.

So public services should DDoS is your argument?

> Jani Patokallio runs gyrovague.net in order to harass people who provide useful public services.

I scrolled pretty far through the blog and didn't find anything of that sort. Just a bunch of travel stuff. Now I'm curious what sort of "harassment" you hallucinated in the sites that were previously targeted by archive.today's DDoS attacks.

>I scrolled pretty far through the blog and didn't find anything of that sort. Just a bunch of travel stuff.

I feel like you're being deliberately obtuse. For the past 4 years, the only writing of any substance on the blog has been about archive.today

Besides the article about archive.today, which doesn't expose much, I see one about Clash of Clans, and a random crypto product. Those are not 'public services', not sure how you can put these in the same bundle?

> Jani Patokallio runs gyrovague.net in order to harass people who provide useful public services.

I mean...investigating who runs secretive yet popular websites is a useful public service, generally called "journalism". And your comments in this thread could be seen as an attempt to harass Jani.

I do not, to be clear, think you're doing anything morally wrong, but I'm also not sure I see how you can draw a bright line between your actions and Jani's. By the rather stretched logic and loose standards you've been using in these comments, it seems like you run your HN account to harass people who provide useful public services, no?

I don't think your logic stands up to the most basic analysis:

It's unarguably easy to demonstrate the public benefit generated by archive.today, we use the links here on HN to bypass paywalls every single day.

Please demonstrate any public benefit generated by gyrovagues blog post.

Thanks. I am so confused by this social drama, I feel like I am getting too old for this.

It’s truly weird and unhinged the extent to which two rando Internet People are willing to grief each other.

Parasocialweb 2.0 I suppose.

well that exposing is hurting more than 2 for sure

You mean just to keep their secrets hidden they hurt others?

Like most companies or state ?

As an individual, keeping their identity private is the only way to prevent oppression.