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I'm not sure myself but I wonder if it is more common to use robot to refer to a crawler/scraper in this space. These tools are basically screen scrapers. I hav

I'm not sure myself but I wonder if it is more common to use robot to refer to a crawler/scraper in this space. These tools are basically screen scrapers. I have seen web crawlers referred to as robots (robots.txt files are used to configure crawlers). These days we tend to shorten "web robot" and use "bot" to refer to these programs. It kind of makes sense if you look at it from the perspective of it being a "machine that resembles a human". Not that I agree with it.

ethbr0 6y ago
Because some jackass hype VP coined the term, and by the time anyone with technical knowledge opined there had already been a bunch of ad fluff and mindshare pieces using it. It's a terrible name and a terrible acronym, superceded only by the absurdity of the "post-RPA" terms that companies are now trying to differentiate themselves via (e.g. "intelligent process automation").