‹ BackHN Continuity

Thread

An update on Wayback Machine access

685 points · 362 comments · ChrisArchitect

  1. simonw · · focus · HN ↗
    > Here’s what’s going on. The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine has been hit by waves of high-volume automated traffic, and we’ve put protections in place to keep the service running.

    I'm pretty certain this is scrapers that are trying to workaround blocks on accessing original sites by hitting the Wayback Machine copy instead. Appalling behavior.

    In addition to the load it puts on this vital non-profit piece of Internet infrastructure, we've also already seen some sites opt out of the Wayback Machine to prevent their content from being scraped via this alternative route.

    1. pantsforbirds · · focus · HN ↗
      We used to always "scrape" the wayback machine for any sort of news article we actually paid to consume. I was absolutely shocked by major news sites making very important edits to an article without any sort of editorial notice!

      Sadly this sort of thing is probably not really possible anymore, but I can't really blame anyone for making this sort of decision. I can't imagine how much more traffic they get now vs 2021 when we were doing this.

      1. subarctic · · focus · HN ↗
        What if they charged money? Is it something you'd pay for?
        1. pantsforbirds · · focus · HN ↗
          I mean we already paid for the article from the source itself. I guess I'd expect a better "diff" source from them, but if they dont even update the article itself, i guess i wouldn't expect a paid service to have those updates either?
          1. pantsforbirds · · focus · HN ↗
            ah, i think i misunderstood your original post. if you mean the wayback-machine/arkive, then I suspect it'd be hard to justify? You are essentially paying a third-party source to validate that diffs didn't go through on the source material.

            with llms, at some point it probably becomes easier to use your paid api connection to manage your own cached version yourself?

Open on Hacker News to reply ↗

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.