Wikipedia's English-language edition is implementing a ban on Archive.today. This decision follows the discovery that the archive site was used to facilitate a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack against a blogger.
During discussions regarding the site's deprecation, Wikipedia editors found that Archive.today had modified webpages it archived, inserting the name of the DDoS-targeted blogger. This action appears linked to a dispute over a post revealing how Archive.today's maintainer concealed their identity.
"There is consensus to immediately deprecate [archive.today], and, as soon as practicable, add it to the spam blacklist (or create an edit filter that blocks adding new links), and remove all links to it," stated a recent update on Wikipedia's Archive.today discussion. The consensus highlights concerns that Wikipedia should not direct users to a site involved in DDoS attacks and that Archive.today's content alterations render it unreliable.
Over 695,000 links to Archive.today are present across approximately 400,000 Wikipedia pages. The archive site, also facing an FBI investigation into its founder's identity, is frequently used to circumvent news paywalls.
While some argued for Archive.today's utility for verifiability, an analysis indicated that most of its uses are replaceable. Editors are now being urged to remove and replace links to various Archive.today domains, including archive.is, archive.ph, and others. Options include replacing links with those from alternative archives like the Internet Archive or removing them entirely if the original source remains accessible.