I don't see the point in doxing anyone, especially those providing a useful service for the average internet user. Just because you can put some info together, it doesn't mean you should.
With this said, I also disagree with turning everyone that uses archive[.]today into a botnet that DDoS sites. Changing the content of archived pages also raises questions about the authenticity of what we're reading.
The site behaves as if it was infected by some malware and the archived pages can't be trusted. I can see why Wikipedia made this decision.
It's also kind of ironic that a site whose whole premise is to preserve pages forever, whether the people involved like it or not, is seeking to take down another site because they are involved and don't like it. Live by the sword, etc.
> It's also kind of ironic that a site whose whole premise is to preserve pages forever, whether the people involved like it or not
Oddly, I think archive.today has explicitly said that's not what they're there for, and the people shouldn't rely on their links as a long-term archive.
For a very brief time, "doxing" (that is, dropping dox, that is, dropping docs, or documents) used to mean something useful. You gathered information that was not out in public, for example by talking to people or by stealing it, and put it out in the open.
It's very silly to talk about doxing when all someone has done is gather information anyone else can equally easily obtain, just given enough patience and time, especially when it's information the person in question put out there themselves. If it doesn't take any special skills or connections to obtain the information, but only the inclination to actually perform the research on publicly available data, I don't see what has been done that is unethical.
Did they actually run the DDoS via a script or was this a case of inserting a link and many users clicked it? They are substantially different IMO
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46624740 has the earliest writeup that I know of. It was running it via a script and intentionally using cache busting techniques to try to increase load on the hosted wordpress infrastructure.
> It was running
It still is, uBlocks default lists are killing the script now but if it's allowed to load then it still tries to hammer the other blog.
Ah good to know. My pi-hole actually was blocking the blog itself since the ublock site list made its way into one of the blocklists I use. But I've been just avoiding links as much as possible because I didn't want to contribute.
Thank you this is exactly the information I was looking for.
"You found the smoking gun!"
Given the site is hosted on wordpress.com, who don't charge for bandwidth, it seems to have been completely ineffective.
The speculation that I saw was that they'd try to get Wordpress.com to boot him off for being a burden on the overall infrastructure.
As if Wordpress.com was that dumb...
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they silently ran the DDoS script on their captcha page (which is frequently shown to visitors, even when simply viewing and not archiving a new page)
> Changing the content of archived pages also raises questions about the authenticity of what we're reading.
This is absolutely the buried lede of this whole saga, and needs to be the focus of conversation in the coming age.
As far as I understand the person behind archive.today might face jail time if they are found out. You shouldn't be surprised that people lash out when you threaten their life.
I don't think the DDOSing is a very good method for fighting back but I can't blame anyone for trying to survive. They are definitely the victim here.
If that blog really doxxed them out of idle curiosity they are an absolute piece of shit. Though I think this is more of a targeted campaign.
> As far as I understand the person behind archive.today might face jail time if they are found out. You shouldn't be surprised that people lash out when you threaten their life.
One of the really strange things about all of this is that there is a public forum post in which a guy claims to be the site owner. So this whole debacle is this weird mix of people who are angry and saying "clearly the owner doesn't want to be associated with the site" on the one hand, but then on the other hand there's literally a guy who says he's the one that owns the site, so it doesn't seem like that guy is very worried about being associated with it?
It also seems weird to me that it's viewed as inappropriate to report on the results of Googling the guy who said he owns the site, but maybe I'm just out of touch on that topic.
There are even YouTube videos (of GamerGate-time, thus before AI era) with a guy claiming to be the site owner. A bit difficult to OSINT :)
Somebody who a) directs DDOS attacks and b) abuses random visitors' browser for those DDOS attacks is never the victim.
You don't know their motives for running their site, but you do get a clear message about their character by observing their actions, and you'd do well to listen to that message.
The character is completely irrelevant to whether they are a victim of doxxing.
They might be the worst person ever but that doesn't matter. People can be good and bad, sometimes the victim sometimes the perpetrator.
Is it morally wrong to doxx someone and cause them to go to jail because they are running an archive website? Yes. It is. It doesn't matter who the person is. It does not matter what their motivations are.