this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2025
303 points (97.8% liked)
Technology
74003 readers
3418 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I think your starting point (allowing bot user agents to crawl the web has overlooked benefits) is a good one, but things aren't black and white--there are clear drawbacks, too. Bots obviously have an orders of magnitude higher potential for abuse; to the point where bot traffic--as it currently stands in the real world--is qualitatively different from human traffic.
Sure, but targeted regulation based on heuristics (in this case, user agent) is also a widely accepted practice. DUI laws exist, even though the goals (fewer murders and safer roads) are already separately regulated.
Would it be nice if we didn't have to do this? Or there were some other solution? Sure, but I have no idea where to even start, unfortunately.