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That reads a lot like doxxing; if someone isn't open about their identity, they don't want it out, and doing sleuthing work like this (or linking to it) can be considered doxxing.

If archive.is hosts content that has been removed due to oppressive regimes' policies (including western ones), exposing their identity may put them at risk.

>>Cthulh+(OP)
That would be security by obscurity- something which the creator of such an important website does not have the privilege of relying on.

>>sweetb+m4
The parent comment is pointing out the moral/etiquette/guideline issue, not making a judgement about security posture.

>>Cthulh+(OP)
I find this highly implausible, all of the accounts archive.is is "logged into" would have to be put there in a very explicit manner. I'd assume that all of the accounts are fake or appropriated accounts.

For example @volth on Github - as a person - is still around in other places, so I'm guessing that account was stolen and they don't have a way to get it back.

>>Cthulh+(OP)
I think the question asked on SE "On which country are the creators and servers of archive.today / archive.is based?" incurs not a 'who is he', but 'should I trust them based on their national allegiance'. A similar idea could be presented of large Twitter misinformation accounts that have influenced the 2016-2020 (and future) elections - they're not open about their identity, but the actions they're doing most people would disagree with, so most would decide that it is morally justifiable to go digging for clues to find the source of the misinformation.

For archive.is, it's lower-stakes, but you might not be able to trust the site as an authoritative source in $x years should (for example) their home government take it over and strategically modify archives for their own purposes.

>>Cthulh+(OP)
The operator of archive.is is circumventing copyright law in close to every country on earth, including all the democratic ones. Its unique selling point is that they do not comply with site owners' requests not to archive content or to delete content archived in the past.

While that doesn't exclude them from the protection of law, my conviction is slightly weaker when it comes to arbitrary standards of behaviour people on reddit invented. How many pages to they happily serve that contain private information long deleted from the actual websites? When they mutter under their breath, "information wants to be free" (as they are want to be, at least how I imagine it), does their definition of information include their identity?

(I'm slightly irritated by the "research" in that post, though... I really don't need Wikipedia to believe that -vich is a jewish name. And jewish names of Ukrainian/Russian origin are certainly not specific to that location today. I bet there are more people with that last name in Florida than in all of Eastern Europe combined)

>>KarlKe+Pa
Archiving the Internet is not stealing the history books. It’s writing them.

>>random+ob
I don't think we need metaphors to grasp what it is. Its importance is so obvious, even the people that wrote copyright law created an exemption for.

That exemption includes an opt-out provision. And while I could see how ignoring such requests could be in the public interest in some cases, ignoring them wholesale is fundamentally incompatible with any view of morality that condemns "doxing".

>>KarlKe+qg
I condemn doxing in principle. But if it’s out there once, it’s out there. To try to stuff the genie back only harms those who lack the information, regardless of intent.

I understand you don’t care for metaphors but I can’t help wondering who you mean by “we”? Perhaps “we” are not the intended audience. Please let “we” know “we” are free to ignore.