zlacker

… seems like we the HN community should find a new site to mirror with.

>>deatha+(OP)
There isn't one. As far as I know, no one really knows for sure how they bypass all these paywalls. (Most credible theory I heard: They actually just pay for the subscriptions.)

>>mr_mit+gk
What's your problem with that theory?

>>deatha+(OP)
I think there are multiple hurdles that make a new competitor very unlikely.

The first one is money. You need lots of it to run such an operation (servers, IPs, paying to bypass all these paywalls, etc.).

The second one is the legality, as no one wants to be hunted by the FBI, especially not for running a website that is also losing money.

>>mr_mit+gk
Most paywalls just allow search engines to read their content just fine. Because they do want discoverability, they want their cake and eat it.

There's a few publications that don't even do that though and archive.is is very good at bypassing them so I do imagine they use logins for those, but for the masses of sites it's not currently necessary.

>>chrisj+6E
Has people's ability to read messages and formulate sensible replies been going down of late? I see this kind of meaningless replies more and more often these days.

>>wolvol+7U
You can't impersonate Google. Sites check the source IP and they don't overlap with Google Cloud.

>>blende+FV
Yes, there's a global intelligence crisis, due to tiktok instagram et al

>>direwo+L11
You can for sites that can't afford the cost of keeping up-to-date with the Google IP list without which they can lose timely indexing. That is many.

>>blende+FV
Meaningless? Its a clear question.

>>mr_mit+gk
Many sites including Bloomberg have evolved such that even archive.today don’t have the full text of any articles. They’re doing no giveaways whatsoever.

>>chrisj+871
You're accusing him of having a problem with it, which his comment does not imply.

>>chrisj+W61
What do you mean by “afford the cost”? The list is free of charge (https://support.google.com/a/answer/10026322?hl=en-GB) and maintenance can be fully automated.

>>otterl+Lp1
I mean cost of server setup and execution.

>>mr_mit+gk
Ghostarchive does a decent job for the same sites in my experience: https://ghostarchive.org/

>>ebilge+pG1
Update: hmm seems like they're involved in this whole thing too somehow, how strange:

>>46629646

>>chrisj+Ez1
The server that is providing the content exists already. That's a sunk cost.

>>otterl+8k2
"setup and execution".

>>chrisj+ml2
What serious operator of a service isn't budgeting time to implement and operate critical maintenance functions?

>>otterl+6r2
Me for one. Adding an auto-updating IP address blocker to my personal blog site would probably cost more than setting up the whole site did in the first place.

>>direwo+L11
Google isn't the only search engine in the world of course. It probably is pretty much the only one that matters in America but the world is not just America either.

>>wolvol+7U
Then why hasn't anyone built a client-side browser addon that impersonates a suitable search engine?

>>chrisj+lt2
We're talking about sites that make their living via subscriptions. They should have a great interest at blocking archive.is, which is, by the way, the only service that can reliably bypass many paywalls. Clearly whatever they're doing is not easily replicated.

>>chrisj+6E
None

>>mr_mit+rF2
> We're talking about sites that make their living via subscriptions.

Sorry, but I wasn't. I thought that was clear from "can't afford the cost of keeping up-to-date with the Google IP list".

> They should have a great interest at blocking archive.is

Agreed, and many should have a budget to suit. So I conclude archive.is has put a lot of effort and cost into its defence. And all for free to us, the users.

>>mr_mit+PE2
They have. It's called bypass-paywalls-clean . It works pretty ok.

It just keeps getting banned from the addon catalogs because of complaints from media. The Firefox one was taken down by a french newspaper. So you have to sideload it, which is hard to do on Android.

Edit: it looks like even the github was taken down now: https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox

But yes it exists. And it works for most sites. It's just hard to get it now.

>>chrisj+lt2
Have you actually priced it, or are you just guessing?

Are you doing regular patching? Automated restarts? Watching for security breaches? Or just praying it stays up forever?

Otherwise, respectfully, I would not classify you as a "serious operator." Your site could live or die, and it would be all the same to you. Or, you've handed it to a third party for management and they don't offer much in the way of resilience or stability.

>>wolvol+lE3
It's on gitflic.ru now.

>>eipi10+T14
Hmm yeah but their adversaries did achieve their goal by pushing it away from the mainstream sites. Now we're into this situation of "how much do I trust this vague Russian site with my browsing activity".

At least the addon declares the sites it's for and ignores the rest but still I'm a lot less comfortable with it. It's more something I'd install in a container now, limiting its usefulness :(

In practice I just use archive.today now.

>>wolvol+Oy2
It's the only one websites don't block. That's one reason it's so hard to make another search engine.

>>wolvol+Rs4
Yeah it's unavoidable. Bypassing paywalls is not a good idea for tools that depend on browsers' stores distribution.

>>ebilge+KI1
That comment is weirdly confusing/confused. But if you try archiving any site on ghostarchive, or clicking on any existing ghostarchive links, it just says "site is down for maintenance".

For now I've given up on using any archiving sites until we can find a safe and reliable alternative.