Wikipedia Blacklists Archive.today Following DDoS Attack and Content Manipulation Allegations

Wikipedia editors have reached a consensus to remove all references to Archive.today, a web archiving service that has been linked over 695,000 times across the online encyclopedia. The service, which operates under multiple domain names including archive.is and archive.ph, is widely utilized to bypass paywalls and access restricted content, making it a popular resource for Wikipedia citations.

According to the official Wikipedia discussion page on this matter, the community has decided to immediately deprecate archive.today and add it to the spam blacklist, with all existing links to be removed. This marks the second time the service has been blacklisted, following a previous ban in 2013 that was later reversed in 2016.

Primary Reasons for Blacklisting:

1. DDoS Attack Execution: The platform allegedly hijacked users' computers to conduct a distributed denial of service attack against blogger Jani Patokallio
2. Content Manipulation: Evidence suggests that Archive.today operators have altered archived webpage content, compromising its reliability as a reference source

The DDoS incident came to light when Patokallio documented that starting January 11, users loading Archive.today's CAPTCHA page were unknowingly executing JavaScript code that sent automated search requests to his Gyrovague blog. This attack appeared designed to inflate his hosting costs and force a response.

The conflict traces back to a 2023 blog post by Patokallio investigating Archive.today's ownership structure, which he described as "an opaque mystery." His research suggested the platform was likely operated by a single Russian individual with considerable technical expertise and European infrastructure access.

According to correspondence shared by Patokallio, Archive.today's webmaster requested removal of the investigative post, citing concerns about mainstream media misrepresentation. When Patokallio declined, the webmaster allegedly responded with escalating threats. Subsequently, Wikipedia editors discovered archived snapshots that had been manipulated to insert Patokallio's name, further undermining the service's credibility.

Wikipedia's updated guidance now instructs editors to systematically remove all Archive.today links and replace them with either original sources or alternative archiving services such as the Wayback Machine.

In a blog post linked from the Archive.today website, the apparent operator acknowledged the situation, stating they would "scale down the 'DDoS'" and suggesting that the service's value to Wikipedia extended beyond paywall circumvention to "the ability to offload copyright issues."

Sources:
Wikipedia Discussion Page
Ars Technica Report
Gyrovague Blog - DDoS Analysis
Gyrovague Blog - Archive.today Investigation
Email Correspondence
Wikipedia Archive.today Guidance