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The web does not need gatekeepers: Cloudflare’s new “signed agents” pitch

(positiveblue.substack.com)
454 points positiveblue | 7 comments | 29 Aug 25 16:35 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
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TIPSIO ◴[29 Aug 25 16:57 UTC] No.45066555[source]▶
Everyone loves the dream of a free for all and open web.

But the reality is how can someone small protect their blog or content from AI training bots? E.g.: They just blindly trust someone is sending Agent vs Training bots and super duper respecting robots.txt? Get real...

Or, fine what if they do respect robots.txt, but they buy the data that may or may not have been shielded through liability layers via "licensed data"?

Unless you're reddit, X, Google, or Meta with scary unlimited budget legal teams, you have no power.

Great video: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/M0QyOp7zqcY

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1. andy99 ◴[29 Aug 25 17:29 UTC] No.45066979[source]▶
> But the reality is how can someone small protect their blog or content from AI training bots?

A paywall.

In reality, what some want is to get all the benefits of having their content on the open internet while still controlling who gets to access it. That is the root cause here.

replies(2): >>45067033 #>>45067053 #
2. littlecranky67 ◴[29 Aug 25 17:32 UTC] No.45067033[source]▶
This. We need to get rid of the ad-supported free internet economy. If you want your content to be free, you release it and have no issues with AI. If you want to make money of your content, add a paywall.

We need micropayments going forward, Lightning (Bitcoin backend) could be the solution.

replies(1): >>45067113 #
3. notatoad ◴[29 Aug 25 17:34 UTC] No.45067053[source]▶
Which is really all that cloudflare is building here that people are mad about. It’s a way to give bots access to paywalled content.
replies(1): >>45067204 #
4. rustc ◴[29 Aug 25 17:38 UTC] No.45067113[source]▶
> If you want your content to be free, you release it and have no issues with AI. If you want to make money of your content, add a paywall.

What about licenses like CC-BY-NC (Creative Commons - Non Commercial)?

replies(1): >>45068234 #
5. positiveblue ◴[29 Aug 25 17:45 UTC] No.45067204[source]▶
Where everyone needs a cloudflare account to be able to pay*
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6. notatoad ◴[29 Aug 25 17:51 UTC] No.45067278{3}[source]▶
“Everyone” in this context being bot operators who want to access websites who have decided to use cloudflare to block unauthenticated bot traffic.

Which is not everyone.

7. notpushkin ◴[29 Aug 25 19:17 UTC] No.45068234{3}[source]▶
What about them? As we can see scrapers don’t care about copyright at all, so public licenses don’t really matter to them either.