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>having an entire company about exterminating the viability of bots is horrifying. I have a website I use to make money to feed my family. Shitty bots mess up

>having an entire company about exterminating the viability of bots is horrifying. I have a website I use to make money to feed my family. Shitty bots mess up my website, cost me money. A SaaS offers a solution, which saves me money. What about that line of logic is horrifying to you?

jeltz 7y ago
How do bots fuck up your website? I have been involved in running multiple websites (some of them which had plenty of bots crawling them) and only has had issues once or twice.
- Kiro 7y ago
  Not all sites are valid targets for malicious bots. I presume your sites were not multiplayer web games. I have a serious bot problem in my game where bots ruin the fun for everyone if I let them be. As soon as you add a competitive element to your game you will have a bot problem.
- syndacks 7y ago
  More bots, more EC2s, more money More bots, more noise, bad analytics More bots, IP theft at scale, competitors now have my content I don't understand how this is hard to wrap one's head around. This is why we can't have nice things. Edit - I offer 3 points to refute parent and I'm getting downvoted. This site is moderated by a bunch of bots!
  - neurobro 7y ago
    With a few exceptions like HD video hosting or sites doing a ton of computation for every request, the best response to point 1 is to just lighten the site, which reduces the load from bots and also improves the UX for humans. Rate limiting can also help in some circumstances. Or maybe consider... charging money. If you don't force botters to take extreme camouflage measures, bots are easily filtered out of logs (and offer a potentially useful metric of their own). If a business is threatened by "competitors" simply scraping published information, it's probably already doomed from the start. And I would posit that most site owners with this mindset originally got their data by scraping other sites, which is why they feel vulnerable. Compete over elements that are actually valuable!
- meowface 7y ago
  There are many different kinds of websites. For some, bots are a nuisance at most. For others, they can impact or debilitate the entire service. Obviously they're not going to be a significant issue for your read-only cat picture static site.
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  For a site I run, people mine my data to host their own competing services to get a slice of my pie. You can reverse engineer my database by hitting my service with millions of requests, a database I spent a lot of time and money putting together. Sure, you can try, but it's my right (and sport) to make it as hard as I can for you. :) People like to imagine feel-good abstract ideas behind both bots and Tor like "the freedom/openness of information" or some journalist trying to visit your website under some strict regime. In reality, 99% of it is just abuse or someone trying to make a buck off you. It's not really as romantic as you think.

jeltz 7y ago

How do bots fuck up your website? I have been involved in running multiple websites (some of them which had plenty of bots crawling them) and only has had issues once or twice.

Kiro 7y ago
Not all sites are valid targets for malicious bots. I presume your sites were not multiplayer web games. I have a serious bot problem in my game where bots ruin the fun for everyone if I let them be. As soon as you add a competitive element to your game you will have a bot problem.
syndacks 7y ago
More bots, more EC2s, more money More bots, more noise, bad analytics More bots, IP theft at scale, competitors now have my content I don't understand how this is hard to wrap one's head around. This is why we can't have nice things. Edit - I offer 3 points to refute parent and I'm getting downvoted. This site is moderated by a bunch of bots!
- neurobro 7y ago
  With a few exceptions like HD video hosting or sites doing a ton of computation for every request, the best response to point 1 is to just lighten the site, which reduces the load from bots and also improves the UX for humans. Rate limiting can also help in some circumstances. Or maybe consider... charging money. If you don't force botters to take extreme camouflage measures, bots are easily filtered out of logs (and offer a potentially useful metric of their own). If a business is threatened by "competitors" simply scraping published information, it's probably already doomed from the start. And I would posit that most site owners with this mindset originally got their data by scraping other sites, which is why they feel vulnerable. Compete over elements that are actually valuable!
meowface 7y ago
There are many different kinds of websites. For some, bots are a nuisance at most. For others, they can impact or debilitate the entire service. Obviously they're not going to be a significant issue for your read-only cat picture static site.
hombre_fatal 7y ago
For a site I run, people mine my data to host their own competing services to get a slice of my pie. You can reverse engineer my database by hitting my service with millions of requests, a database I spent a lot of time and money putting together. Sure, you can try, but it's my right (and sport) to make it as hard as I can for you. :) People like to imagine feel-good abstract ideas behind both bots and Tor like "the freedom/openness of information" or some journalist trying to visit your website under some strict regime. In reality, 99% of it is just abuse or someone trying to make a buck off you. It's not really as romantic as you think.