# Internet Archive 132 Hacker News commenters recommended Internet Archive and 53 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** A nonprofit archive of web pages and books preserving history found nowhere else; critics fault its risky lending stunt and snapshots site owners can alter or delete. ## Why people recommend it - Preserves history found nowhere else (7 comments): "I'm more confident in the long-term operational resiliency of the Internet Archive globally than I am in the longevity of a functioning US government" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49235425)) "basically hosting a second copy of the internet with sufficient bandwidth to serve whatever is currently down" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50136074)) "Its maybe the most important site on the Internet because of all the history that exists nowhere else." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45830395)) - Huge free library of books (7 comments): "Public domain catalogs are huge now. Standard Ebooks, Internet Archive, Gutenberg - tens of thousands of well-formatted free EPUBs." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47838994)) "supports full-text search on (AFAIK) its entire scanned book collection, even books that aren't available for borrowing" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46770025)) "For public domain books, I use Standard Ebooks, Project Gutenberg, and Internet Archive, generally in that order." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47684550)) - Easy place to preserve content (6 comments): "Putting static copies on Github Pages, Cloudflare Pages, and the Internet Archive would make pretty good odds it's preserved." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46643959)) "All the content I've judged to be of public interest and uploaded to Internet Archive, is still online there today." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49287318)) "I donated a copy of Systems Bible (out of print, hard to find imho) and paid for it to jump the digitization queue" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49389254)) - Trustworthy, accountable nonprofit (4 comments): "IA is responsive. I had to cancel my donation earlier this year due to some financial circumstances and it was a quick and easy email." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49597685)) "It is more trustworthy and accountable, but it cannot realistically stand against government-imposed censorship." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46870683)) "I donate to them every year b/c I fully agree they're doing a thankless critical job very well." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49718856)) ## What people warn about - Emergency Library invited legal damage (7 comments): "IA would have still lost their case if they hadn't done the National Emergency Library" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49069592)) "Its likely a lot of what internet archive is doing is fair use (not all though, they do push the envelope, e.g. their covid library stunt)." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49596791)) "This wasn't a very smart move of them. I get why they did it but they put themselves at a huge legal risk." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49069798)) - Snapshots alterable or deletable by owners (5 comments): "For some inexplicable reason, IA responds to that by wiping out past, present, and future archivals of that site." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45937221)) "nothing more unhinged than archive.org facilitating the page's originator to make alterations after the snapshot" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46871079)) "IA archives the page as loaded, then when you view hamfistedly injects its header bar and executes the source JS" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47098898)) - Censors, excludes or deletes content (4 comments): "Archive.org are left wing activists that will agree to censor anything other left wing activists or large companies don't want online." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47097640)) "There has been instances where they delete files without warning with the only explanation being that they don't meet TOS" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49286381)) "It is more trustworthy and accountable, but it cannot realistically stand against government-imposed censorship." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46870683)) - Scans have muddy gray backgrounds (2 comments): "books scanned by IA use a compromise exposure setting in which halftones are passable but text ends up on a muddy gray background" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49285186)) "produces text (the vast majority of the pdf) as black letters on a dirty dishwater background" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47060239)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [archive.today](https://hackerapproved.com/p/archive-today.md): 138 recommend - [Archive.org](https://hackerapproved.com/p/archive-org.md): 48 recommend - [Unwall](https://hackerapproved.com/p/unwall.md): 12 recommend ## Where to get it - [Visit the official site](https://archive.org/) ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Internet Archive", https://hackerapproved.com/p/internet-archive/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).