← Back to context

Comment by nosamu

4 days ago

Has anyone else noticed that some of Archive.today's X/Twitter captures [1] are logged in with an account called "advancedhosters" [2], which is associated with a web hosting company apparently located in Cyprus? The latest post [3] from the account links to a blog post [4] including private communications between the webmaster of Archive.today (using their previously-known "Volth" alias) and a site owner requesting a takedown. Also note that the previous post [5] from the "advancedhosters" account was a link to a pro-Russia, anti-Ukraine article, archived via Archive.today of course. Seems like an interesting lead to untangle.

[1] https://archive.today/20240714173022/https://x.com/archiveis...

[2] https://x.com/advancedhosters

[3] https://x.com/advancedhosters/status/1731129170091004412

[4] https://lj.rossia.org/users/mopaiv/257.html

[5] https://x.com/advancedhosters/status/1501971277099286539

It could be a donated account. I've noticed archive.whatever also bypasses some paywalls by using legitimate account logins but I doubt there's one person going around subscribing to every news outlet that gets any coverage.

If archive.whatever wasn't so useful to the general public, it'd be hard to distinguish from a criminal operation given the way it operates, unlike say the Internet Archive who goes through all of the proper legal paperwork to be a real nonprofit.