I mean, does archive.org get away with it, though?
They get blocked by some sites, and some sites have pro-actively opt-out. archive.org respects the opt-outs. AFAICT, archive.org gets away w/archiving non-optout cases where their bot was permitted.
And do I really have to spell out how Google gets away with caching stuff?
You might need to explain why 12ft.io gets away with sharing google’s cache, as Lemmy could theoretically operate the same way.
I’m extremely skeptical fair use could be twisted to our defense in this particular case.
When you say “twisted”, do you mean commentary is not a standard accepted and well-known fair use scenario?