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

(positiveblue.substack.com)
454 points positiveblue | 1 comments | 29 Aug 25 16:35 UTC | HN request time: 0.205s | source
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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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gausswho ◴[29 Aug 25 17:26 UTC] No.45066945[source]▶
What we need is some legal teeth behind robots.txt. It won't stop everyone, but Big Corp would be a tasty target for lawsuits.
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quectophoton ◴[29 Aug 25 17:44 UTC] No.45067195[source]▶
I don't know about this. This means I'd get sued for using a feed reader on Codeberg[1], or for mirroring repositories from there (e.g. with Forgejo), since both are automated actions that are not caused directly by a user interaction (i.e. bots, rather than user agents).

[1]: https://codeberg.org/robots.txt#:~:text=Disallow:%20/.git/,....

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blibble ◴[29 Aug 25 18:00 UTC] No.45067379[source]▶
> This means I'd get sued for using a feed reader on Codeberg

you think codeberg would sue you?

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1. quectophoton ◴[29 Aug 25 18:11 UTC] No.45067519[source]▶
Probably not.

But it's the same thing with random software from a random nobody that has no license, or has a license that's not open-source: If I use those libraries or programs, do I think they would sue me? Probably not.