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What's the point of poisoning the well, unless you plan on monitizing a clean flow?

• marginalia_nu 3y ago
  If you block a scraper, they will find a way around it, and it's very obvious in the scraper logs that something is wrong. It's like barely even an inconvenience. They're back in 15 minutes with a new set of IPs and a new configuration for their browsers, like you can even go as far as to automate this stuff. Poisoning the data is much more insidious, since it doesn't let the scrapers know that you know. It means you can work to undermine whatever purpose they have. If they try to sell your data, you'll ruin their reputation with their customers. If they use your data for decision making, you trick them into making bad calls.
  • wddkcs 3y ago
    I get the results of it, I just don't see the value in even poisoning the data, unless you plan on monitizing it in the near term. Maybe the scrapping is imposing real operational costs on you, but then poisoning the data doesn't help.
    • marginalia_nu 3y ago
      A fairly common use case for scraping is to keep track of your competition. This creates a fog of war if you will.