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The Internet Archive is under attack, with a popup claiming a ‘catastrophic’ breach
(www.theverge.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I just sent a DMCA takedown last week to remove my site. They've claimed to follow meta tags and robots.txt since 1998, but no, they had over 1,000,000 of my pages going back that far. They even had the robots.txt configured for them archived from 1998.
I'm tired of people linking to archived versions of things that I worked hard to create. Sites like Wikipedia were archiving urls and then linking to the archive, effectively removing branding and blocking user engagement.
Not to mention that I'm losing advertising revenue if someone views the site in an archive. I have fewer problems with archiving if the original site is gone, but to mirror and republish active content with no supported way to prevent it short of legal action is ridiculous. Not to mention that I lose control over what's done with that content -- are they going to let Google train AI on it with their new partnership?
I'm not a fan. They could easily allow people to block archiving, but they choose not to. They offer a way to circumvent artist or owner control, and I'm surprised that they still exist.
So... That's what I think is wrong with them.
From a security perspective it's terrible that they were breached. But it is kind of ironic -- maybe they can think of it as an archive of their passwords or something.
Wah wah wah, my stuff's been preserved and I dont like it.
Lmao you think Google needs to go through Archive to scrape your site? Delusional.
The mechanisms used to serve ads over the internet nowadays are nasty in a privacy sense, and a psychological manipulation sense. And you want people to be affected by them just to line your pockets? Are you also opposed to ad blockers by any chance?
And how do you suggest a site which has been wiped off the face of the internet gets archived? Maybe we need to invest in a time machine for the Internet Archive?
What do you mean by "engagement", exactly? Clicking on ads?
In SEO terms user engagement refers to how people interact with the website. Do they click on another link? Does a new blog posting interest them?
Any activiity from Google is easier to track and I have a record if who downloaded content if it's coming from my servers.
I agree that many sites use advertising in a different way. I use it in the older internet sense -- someone contacts me to sponsor a page or portion of the site, and that page gets a single banner, created in-house, with no tracking. I've been using the internet for 36 years. I'm well aware of many uses that I view as unethical, and I take great pains not to replicate them on my own site.
I disapprove of ad blockers. I approve of things that block tracking.
As far as "lining my own pockets" goes, I want to recoup my hosting costs. I spend hours researching for each article/showcase, make the content free to view, and then I'm expected to pay to share it with anyone who's interested? I have a day job. This is my hobby, but it's also my blood, sweat, and tears.
archive.org could archive the content and only publish it if the page has been dark for a certain amount of time.
SEO killed the internet. You're literally part of the reason why people go look for alternatives to viewing your website, no one wants ads.
I don't think you know what SEO is. I think you know what bad SEO is.
Anyhow, Wikipedia is always free to link somewhere else if they can find better content.