This post is locked. You won't be able to comment.

METAArchive.today is presently unreliable; a discussion of alternatives

submitted by wafflegaffWoman. SuperBi. from self.LGBDropTheT

As some of you might have noticed it's virtually impossible to access archive.today (or .ph, .vn, .is, .md, etc.) reliably or at all since Russia invaded Ukraine a few days ago.

An interesting discussion about this has popped up on one of the Reddit subs most responsible for abusive censorship (of course): https://web.archive.org/web/20220227202654/https://www.reddit.com/r/AgainstHateSubreddits/comments/t0ugbc/we_are_now_disallowing_the_future_use_of/

(Original: https://www.reddit.com/r/AgainstHateSubreddits/comments/t0ugbc/we_are_now_disallowing_the_future_use_of/)

I don't have time to explore alternatives they mentioned, or others, this weekend, but you might want to at least grab the new, improved Wayback Machine browser add-on for your browser. It's not 100% reliable that it will archive something, so you'll have to wait for it to finish (don't leave the page) and then click the button presented to see if it actually did anything, but it seems to at least work okay with Reddit pages. The official extension links are under "Tools" on their home page.

There are a few blockchain-based efforts to permanently archive web pages. The one I've played with a bit is etched.page, which uses the Bitcoin BSV (NOT "Bitcoin" as you are used to thinking of it, but the history of why there are multiple "Bitcoin" blockchains with that word in the name is beyond the scope of this post) blockchain. If you visit that link above you should be presented with a text field that you can paste the to-be-archived URL into.

Always grab the resulting link from etched.page to share though, because their search / history functions don't work very well and you might not find it again. I wouldn't call this a good long-term solution but it's better than not having a quick alternative to the Wayback Machine, so for redundancy's sake while other alternatives are explored, I'd recommend using it. Don't use it frivolously however because it continuing to work depends on donations to cover the miner fees for the archive-creation process. It'll show you the cost breakdown for each page you save. (They have a donation page on their site if that interests you.)

Here is the one it made for the Reddit thread I linked above:

https://etched.page/?url=https://www.reddit.com/r/AgainstHateSubreddits/comments/t0ugbc/we_are_now_disallowing_the_future_use_of/

If you've tested out other alternatives, please share them in the comments.

all 4 comments
sorted by:
top
newinsightfulfun

[–][deleted] [score hidden] stickied comment (0 children)

u/wafflegaff, we love you! Why in gods name would you ever listen to AHS and Bardfinn and use them as a source for reliable information, and then present it in this sub?

I haven't had any problem accessing the archive.today (etc) site. I archive pretty much every post I encounter on SaidIt, Reddit, and other forums. I archived your post here right as I saw it, and there was zero lag, not even a countdown with where I was in line.

Feel free to keep archiving peeps, the site is up. Unless you feel strongly about using a service that may have technology in no-no countries. It's your decision how to preserve information and participate on the internet.

It's not an LGB decision, however. So this thread is locked.

[–]soundsituationI myself was once a gay 6 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Thanks for this. I haven't had any issues with the archive sites, but I also wasn't aware that they were hosted in Russia. Definitely a good idea to be aware of alternatives.

[–]lunarstrain 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The only recommendation I see on that thread is PushShift and it's down right now. I did however find another archival site, Ghost Archive. It may be slower than archive.today but it's simple, free, and archives video. Here's an example using the thread you posted: https://ghostarchive.org/archive/KFQQD

Edit: Don't use it to archive illegal (duh) or pornographic content, those may get deleted. No looping videos, either.

[–]Q-Continuum-kin 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It's funny the best current way to bypass censorship is to use Russian servers which itself censors it's own country. Basically find countries which don't like each other. I know Chinese people living in the us bypass US copyright by using Chinese words on torrent sites. Probably a bit more difficult to have that crossover for English speakers.