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What if LinkedIn adds a visibility option in addition to public/private profile that says "I want LinkedIn to prevent robots from scraping my profile."? What i
by hooloovoo_zoo 7y ago
What if LinkedIn adds a visibility option in addition to public/private profile that says "I want LinkedIn to prevent robots from scraping my profile."? What if LinkedIn enables that mode by default? Can they then continue preventing scrapers?
- alt_f4 7y agoI think they can, but they won't because robots includes search engines and blacklisting search engines from user profiles will very negatively impact their metrics.
- perl4ever 7y agoYou're implying they can't discriminate. So does this case make robots.txt illegal?
- alt_f4 7y agoFirst off, robots.txt is optional. It's neither a technical nor a legal limitation at this point. Second, OP's argument suggests a UI option that gives or removes user consent from all robots in general. Unless they plan to word it: "allow robots that we like that are good for us. but disallow other robots", I don't think it's okay to discriminate by either allowing/banning a particular robot, as that is not what the user agreed to.