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tiffanyh | karma 7280 | avg karma 4.69 · 2020-09-17 14:57:19+00:00

Is this basically Archive.org becoming a customer of Cloudflare CDN to reduce load off their servers?

toomuchtodo | karma 88050 | avg karma 2.82 · 2020-09-17 14:58:39+00:00

It's Archive.org being provided URL telemetry for archiving public sites they have not yet found through traditional means (crawling or users submitting requests through the Wayback Save page) by a Cloudflare product.

The next step would be for Cloudflare to point to Archive.org Wayback links when an origin isn't available (similar to browser extensions that point to Archive.org when sites 404 or are down, but in Cloudflare's core).

Cool stuff. Thanks Cloudflare folks.

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GekkePrutser | karma 10335 | avg karma 2.08 · 2020-09-17 15:46:43+00:00

I really doubt their customers would want that. Usually when a page is 404 it's because the company in question wants to forget about it :)

jedberg | karma 72921 | avg karma 5.98 · 2020-09-17 16:31:49+00:00

You would return the archived page for a 5xx error, not a 4xx error.

GekkePrutser | karma 10335 | avg karma 2.08 · 2020-09-17 20:35:10+00:00

Ah I see. But this is precisely a usecase for cloudflare's own caching service.

It wouldn't be fair to use archive.org's community-sponsored resources for propping up businesses which are too cheap to pay for proper IT :)

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pronoiac | karma 2333 | avg karma 2.1 · 2020-09-17 22:10:51+00:00

While it's not explicitly mentioned, I think Cloudflare is providing financial support to the Internet Archive.

FlyMoreRockets | karma 1361 | avg karma 2.0 · 2020-09-17 19:49:04

One would hope so. Considering the timing relative to the IA's potentially very expensive legal battle, I full expect this to be the case. Still, considering CF's anti-privacy/anti-TOR stance this is a deal with the devil. Guess I should give money directly to the IA. Considering how much value they provide, I'll do this immediately after updating this post.

shomin | karma 2 | avg karma 1.0 · 2020-09-20 11:25:38+00:00

In what ways is CF anti-privacy?