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> This is the hidden bot economy. I still have to hear a compelling argument about why I should use computers “by hand” and ignore these powerful tools. Price
by jt2190 1y ago
> This is the hidden bot economy.
I still have to hear a compelling argument about why I should use computers “by hand” and ignore these powerful tools. Price checking, comparison shopping, buy when released for sale… All of these things point me to using bots.
This feels a lot less like “fraud” and a lot more like “the world has moved on”. Maybe it’s time to route traffic that looks like bots to a bot-optimized shopping experience.
- MASNeo 1y agoSo are you saying it needs a an agent.txt along the robots.txt?
- jt2190 1y agoI’m just the idea guy… I’ll let the market decide on the exact implementation. ;-) (That’s not a bad idea BTW.)
- dpoloncsak 1y agoI don't think anyone was arguing against those? The post seems mostly focused on bots that are being used to facilitate ad-fraud or manipulate rankings on marketplace sites with 3rd party vendors. I guess to check a price, you would need to scrape the site, but repeatedly adding and abandoning items, abusing referral systems.... That feels a lot more like 'fraud' than 'the world evolving'