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

Problem one is they do not honor the conventions of the web and abuse the sites. Problem two is they are taking content for free, distilling it into a product, and limiting access to that product.

Problem one is not specific to AI and not even about AI.

Problem two is not anything new. Taking freely available content and distilling it into a product is something valuable and potentially worth paying for. People used to buy encyclopedias too. There are countless examples.

At present, problem one is almost entirely AI companies.

And a few decades ago, it would have been search engine scrapers instead.

There's actually not much evidence of this, since the attack traffic is anonymous.

And that problem was largely solved by robots.txt. AI scrapers are ignoring robots.txt and beating the hell out of sites. Small sites that have decades worth of quality information are suffering the most. Many of the scrapers are taking extreme measures to avoid being blocked, like using large numbers of distinct IP addresses (perhaps using botnets).

HN people working in these AI companies have commented to say they do this, and the timing correlates with the rise of AI companies/funding.

I haven't tried to find it in my own logs, but others have said blocking an identifiable AI bot soon led to the same pattern of requests continuing through a botnet.

Did HN people present evidence?

Problem one _is_ about AI.

It was a similar problem with cryptocurrencies. Out comes some kind of tech thingy, and a million get-rich-quick scammers pop out of the woodwork and start scamming left, right and center. Suddenly everyone's in on the hustle, everyone's cryptomining, or taking over computers and using them for cryptomining, they're setting the world on fire with electricity consumption through the roof just to fight against other people (who they wouldn't need to fight against if they'd just cooperate).

A vision. A gold rush. A massive increase in shitty human behaviour motivated by greed.

And now here we are again with AI. Massive interest. Trillions of dollars being sloshed around, everyone hustling to develop something so they'll get picked and flooded with cash. An enormous pile of deeply unethical and disrespectful behaviour by people who are doing what they're doing because that's where the money is. The AI bubble.