The Wayback Machine service, which lets you track changes to your websites and pages over time, is no longer available to some users. The online archiving platform that owns the service responded to user complaints by explaining the problem as an intrusion by artificial intelligence bots.
Image source: archive.org
“We hear you: ‘Fix the time machine!’ That’s what’s happening. The Wayback Machine is subject to large amounts of automated traffic, and we have security measures in place to ensure the service continues to operate.”,— Tell In a company blog post, service director Mark Graham said. Unfortunately, real users are blocked because of these protections. When blocked, error code 429 will be displayed, indicating that the user has sent too many requests within a certain period of time.
“We apologize if this is happening to you and thank you for your patience as we continue to work to minimize disruption.<..>We’re doing a better job of distinguishing between bots and people who rely on the Wayback Machine. “Mr. Graham added, victims are advised to send complaints via email, specifying the operating system, browser and IP address.
In 2023, when an artificial intelligence system developer began sending tens of thousands of requests for text data per second, the online archive platform went offline for a time. For the same reason, some website owners are now blocking the Internet Archive itself – they fear artificial intelligence bots will download their material from the platform.
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