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This extension just seems to strip tracking data and pretend to be a Google bot. It baffles me that this is somehow concerning enough to be taken down. And anyw
by giornogiovanna 8y ago
This extension just seems to strip tracking data and pretend to be a Google bot. It baffles me that this is somehow concerning enough to be taken down. And anyway, isn't making exemptions for Google's robots sort-of against their policy?
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66355 https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66355
- blakesterz 8y agoThat's exactly what I thought too, not even " sort-of " it seems "without a doubt" against that policy. It seems really tricky for Google to enforce though. Wouldn't they need to send out bots crawling without the GoogleBot agent? That also seems wrong, somehow.
- Forge36 8y agoIt does seem wrong. I wonder if they could double crawl and penalize sites that throw up a paywal
- Mirioron 8y agoThey could add the ability to report sites that do this. That way there would be less sites to double crawl.
- saalweachter 8y agoIf I recall correctly, this rule is why googling for an article and then clicking on it from Google frequently works. The rule is something like "a user clicking from Google can't see something (meaningfully) different than what the Googlebot sees". So you can paywall direct traffic or links from Reddit or internal links, but that first one from Google is supposed to work.
- Confusion 8y agoYou are not allowed to circumvent paywalls, just like you are not allowed to circumvent locks, no matter how easy they are to circumvent. As far as I have always understood, you may publish a locksmithing guide, even an “entering your home when locked out” guide, but not a “how to commit burglary” guide.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- justinph 8y agoA paywall is not a lock. It is code that someone else wants to ship to my computer to run. It's up to me to decide what parts of it I run or not.
- Confusion 8y agoNo, it’s not. The jurisprudence is pretty clear.
- fiatjaf 8y agothe jurisprudence of whom? In my own jurisprudence paywalls are viruses.
- Confusion 8y agoThe US of course. Look at the list of sites the plugin works for: none of them cares if you ignore their paywall. The likelihood that you would subscribe is negligible. It’s American readers they are after. And for them the jurisprudence is clear. No deliberate subversion of access controls allowed.
- Confusion 8y ago
- mike22223333 8y agoThere are exceptions for paywalls.
- jobigoud 8y agoIs there another use case for cloaking?