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Whilst I am grateful that CF is helping websites fight back against this (often) unwanted and possibly illegal crawling, I think this comment should set off ala
by rtrgrd 2y ago
Whilst I am grateful that CF is helping websites fight back against this (often) unwanted and possibly illegal crawling, I think this comment should set off alarm bells:
> “In the future, we’ll continue to work to make these links harder to spot and make them fit seamlessly into the existing structure of the website they’re embedded in,” its authors wrote.
I understand that CF is has a good CA rep and that any such feature is likely opt-in, but something about legitimizing MITM-style link addition techniques to "protect against AI" seems counterproductive to a trust-free and decentralized internet. Especially given that individual small website owners probably don't have the tools/resources to win this arms race.
- theamk 2y agoI think "trust-free and decentralized internet" started to die with the first email spam message... we thought at least websites are safe but AI bots proved otherwise. CF, if anything, is only helping small websites. Compared to alternatives (make a facebook page), the control is still in the owners' hands, and the service itself is pretty fungible - cloudflare could be replaced by something else or removed completely, and most users won't even notice.