7 ms·
Why not offer a public api? Logging in seems like a small hurdle for a bot but enough of a hassel that customers lose interest.
by wolco 7y ago
Why not offer a public api? Logging in seems like a small hurdle for a bot but enough of a hassel that customers lose interest.
- rocqua 7y agoLogin with re-captcha, and banning of accounts that are obviously scraping could be quite effective I guess.
- paranoidrobot 7y agoWe did have an API, but it wasn't public - because search traffic is expensive. Both, as mentioned, in compute resources, but also in pissing off and/or outright crashing vendors. Logging in - requiring an email validation loop - would be simple for bots, but again, anti-bot tech stops them from doing it en-masse.