> 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.
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.
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.
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. :/
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
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)
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
> 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?
