Archived something someone doesn't want to be seen by the world... like any and all since-removed misinformation for one...

I have zero proof of this so take it for the musing it is, but the Internet Archive/Wayback Machine can be used to view articles that have been taken offline (sometimes for political reasons). The IA is a very accessible way to prove that once something is on the Internet, it's out there forever. I used it in a recent post to show an Israeli newspaper article that argued Israel had a right to not just Palestine, but Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and other territories. It was taken off the newspaper's website a few days later, but IA had it.

This may explain why no one is taking credit, and there are no demands. Or it could very well be another reason, including people just being assholes.

Yeah, this is a bit like vandalizing a library. They are providing a valuable public service, leave them alone.

It's probably for the lulz I guess. There's only a few places left on the internet that are decent and good, archive being one, so why not shit all over it? People are so dumb.

There's currently a fuck ton of hacking going on everywhere maybe just prior to the US elections maybe something unrelated but there's definitely a concerted effort to turn the internet on its head.

In this case it’s looking like people trying to showcase their skill and possibly get bragging rights or at least a reputation for doing these attacks which they can use to earn money from others for these types of services.

We just need to accept that there's terrible people in this world

We see this and think of an amazing and essential public service. A capitalist sees this and tries to find a way to make money with it, and the first step is to ruin the free product.

https://archive.org/donate This would be it if it were up and running. I wonder if there's any other avenues?

For e-mails, you can just get firefox relay with your own subdomain and generate infinite e-mail masks for 1$ a month. I usually take "nameofshop@mysubdomain.mozmail.com" for example. It's pretty great because you just make the masks on the fly.

with as long as this has been going on it really surprises me that nothing has come out as a motive. it seems kind of pointless to do this sort of thing and not make your intentions known

maybe it's a government or organization upset that they are keeping archives of things they don't like

I take it you've never had to log into a printer with an AD account before?

Yeah, I went out to 32 characters once. Until I needed to work on a printer.

Spare a thought for the users with accounts who upload content to IA for you to enjoy.

Who would take down what is the digital equivalent to the Library of Alexandria?

I can think of a few possibilities

1: peddlers of misinformation

2: people who love the poorly educated and want the misdeeds of their political allies to be forgotten.

3: copyright trolls.