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Archive.today Accused of Using Its Massive Traffic to Overwhelm a Small Independent Blog

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▶ Watch Video Overview A serious dispute has emerged between a small independent blog and archive.today , one of the largest web archiving services in the world. The blog owner claims that archive.today was responsible for generating repeated automated requests that overwhelmed his website. What Was Discovered According to publicly shared evidence, JavaScript running in visitors’ browsers caused repeated requests to be sent to the blog’s server. When multiplied across archive.today’s large user base, these requests allegedly created a denial-of-service–like effect. Why This Matters Archive services are widely trusted by journalists, researchers, and the public. Any behavior that can unintentionally or deliberately flood smaller sites raises concerns about responsibility, transparency, and abuse of scale. Escalation and Alleged Threats The blog owner later published correspondence that he says came from the operator of archive.today. These messages...

Archive.today Accused of Using Visitor Traffic to Overwhelm a Small Blog

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▶ Watch Video What Happened A small independent blog has accused archive.today , one of the largest web archive sites on the internet, of using its traffic in a way that overwhelmed the blog’s server. According to the blog owner, archive.today was running JavaScript that caused visitors’ browsers to repeatedly send requests to his site. When many users opened the same archive page, those repeated requests added up quickly. The result was heavy load, slowdowns, and service disruption. Why This Matters Archive.today is a powerful service with enormous reach. When a platform of that size interacts with a much smaller website, the balance of power matters. If traffic is generated repeatedly and automatically, the effect can resemble a denial-of-service attack, even if no traditional botnet is involved. Community Reaction After the blog post was published, developers and researchers discussed the findings on Hacker News, Reddit, and Lobsters. Many r...