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

While I concur with the effective tech, I don't think this is something that's a net win for society.

Just because you can, doesn't mean you should and I don't feel any one entity (private or public) should be an arbiter on these matters.

This is something that can, and should, be negotiated at the "last virtual mile".

100% needs to be done at the last mile.

>Just because you can, doesn't mean you should and I don't feel any one entity (private or public) should be an arbiter on these matters.

What do you mean by private? Should I not be allowed to block AI agents on my sites using Cloudflare?

More precisely, Cloudflare should not be able to offer this service. AI agents should be blocked at the hosted API endpoint ("last mile"), not at a CDN or other sort of intermediary.

That said, if you're using Cloudflare Workers, where the endpoint itself is hosted by Cloudflare, that would be ethical.

If the CDN is implementing the explicitly-configured preferences of the specific site, what difference does it make if the blocking happens at the CDN vs. the site's origin server?