[permo-w]

I could be wrong, but I think I've seen it fail on more obscure sites. But yeah it seems unlikely they're maintaining so many premium accounts. On the other hand they could simply be state-backed. Let's say there are 1000 likely paywalled sites, 20 accounts for each = 20k accounts, $10/month => $200k/month = $2.4m a year. If I were an intelligence agency I'd happily drop that plus costs to own half the archived content on the internet.

Surely it wouldn't be too hard to test. Just set up an unlisted dummy paywall site, archive it a few times and see what the requests looks like.

[Jordan-117]

Interesting theory. It would also be a good way to subtly undermine the viability of news outlets, not to mention the insidious potential of altering snapshots at will. OTOH, I'd expect a state-sponsored effort to be more professional in terms of not threatening and smearing some blogger who questioned them.

[permo-w]

If I were an intelligence agency wanting to throw people off my scent, maybe I'd set up or pay off a blogger to track down my site's "owner" and then do some immature shit in response to absolutely confirm forever that the blogger was right.

Not saying this is true, just saying it could be