Cloudflare's new marketplace will let websites charge AI bots for scraping (techcrunch.com)
from morrowind@lemmy.ml to technology@lemmy.ml on 23 Sep 2024 15:39
https://lemmy.ml/post/20621812

#technology

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InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world on 23 Sep 2024 16:09 next collapse

CF needs some good PR after the gambling website stuff.

morrowind@lemmy.ml on 23 Sep 2024 16:26 next collapse

The what

sunzu2@thebrainbin.org on 23 Sep 2024 16:34 collapse

i think he is talking about 🤡strike debucle from fee month back.

Canadian_Cabinet@lemmy.ca on 23 Sep 2024 16:41 next collapse

No, its about CF taking down a gambling site (Reddit link)

InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world on 23 Sep 2024 17:10 collapse

This, and I think the firing of some ppl but might be confusing it

Orbituary@lemmy.world on 23 Sep 2024 17:22 collapse

Debacle.

“debucle” is what happens before CF dry-humps you.

thefartographer@lemm.ee on 23 Sep 2024 17:29 collapse

Debuckle is what my dad did before I got the belt

Whoever says parents aren’t hitting their kids enough either weren’t abused much as a child or were abused far too much. I was abused just enough to avoid ever having kids.

delirious_owl@discuss.online on 24 Sep 2024 15:23 collapse

Or protecting jihadist websites? They have a pretty bad track record

Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 23 Sep 2024 17:06 next collapse

Does that mean scraping without paying access to scrape it is circumventing a protection and so can be treated like cracked software/piracy of movies? /s

ashley@lemmy.ca on 23 Sep 2024 17:17 next collapse

Why the /s?

Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 23 Sep 2024 17:46 collapse

Because this will never actually happen

General_Effort@lemmy.world on 23 Sep 2024 23:42 collapse

Why do you believe that?

didnt1able@sh.itjust.works on 02 Oct 2024 11:25 collapse

Because corpos don’t pay

morrowind@lemmy.ml on 23 Sep 2024 19:29 collapse

Do you want it to be?

Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 23 Sep 2024 19:50 collapse

Preferably. You do not?
Maybe something like fair-use for the common folk but any commercial product has to pay?

morrowind@lemmy.ml on 23 Sep 2024 21:10 collapse

Technically it’s only for AI stuff, so honestly it doesn’t matter if you’re doing other stuff

SerotoninSwells@lemmy.world on 23 Sep 2024 20:39 next collapse

I guess if you can’t beat them it’s the next best thing.

toastal@lemmy.ml on 24 Sep 2024 02:21 next collapse

The gall of Cloudflare to think they can be the arbitrator of scraping… this is what happen when all y’all give a singular publicly-traded, US-based major control of the general internet infrastructure by purposefully letting them man-in-the-middle your production sites. Now they get to sell access to what was once an open internet. Instead every time Clouflare or Fastly go down, half of the internet goes down with them.

morrowind@lemmy.ml on 24 Sep 2024 02:34 next collapse

They don’t think they’re the arbitrer of scraping dumbass, this is a service they’re selling to websites who don’t want AI scrapers taking adnatage of them.

toastal@lemmy.ml on 24 Sep 2024 07:47 collapse

They are precisely deciding who can scrape what by sitting in the middle of like 30% of internet traffic & denying access. There is no way to tell if this ‘scraping’ is for research, hobby, commercial, or “AI” purposes; conveniently if it can make Cloudflare money, they’ll let you charge a toll. If Cloudflare cared about AI issues, they wouldn’t be having unpaid users solve/train their hCAPTCHA models just for visiting a site from Tor, a VPN, or even just a non-‘Western’ IP address. The fact that folks/businesses bought into this centralization is frightening—with little open access to information or allowing folks to stay anonymous (whatever their motivation).

Also don’t dare call someone “dumbass” if you can’t be bothered to turn on spell check or understand how commas work.

themusicman@lemmy.world on 24 Sep 2024 08:29 collapse

Them being able to offer this service, and them proxying 30% of the internet are completely unrelated. Any other company could offer this scrape protection if they wanted, with roughly the same cost of entry.

You can hate cloudflare all you like, but only a certified dumbass would try to pretend this feature is somehow enabled by their market dominance…

toastal@lemmy.ml on 24 Sep 2024 10:42 collapse

A US corporation cornering the market then charging their own fees to use the service (surfing & scraping are basically the same action)? Never seen this before. Sounds uber evil—I couldn’t airbnbelieve it.

piyuv@lemmy.world on 24 Sep 2024 08:10 collapse

“We can scrape open internet” is such a CEO take. I’m no fan of Cloudflare but what they’re doing here is good for open web and bad for AI bros

toastal@lemmy.ml on 24 Sep 2024 10:38 collapse

This assumes that just since abuse could happen means we should block access for everyone. Folks might make illegal photocopies of books so we should ban libraries. I & others have done general scraping for our own uses that isn’t done in some abusive manner. But to assume a company beholden to US shareholder is going to “to the right thing” would be to go against the history of US corporations.

And you know who is going to be able to afford to do the scraping? Big US-based “AI Bros” that can do it with venture capital preventing the average user or researcher from grepping the net.

piyuv@lemmy.world on 24 Sep 2024 13:22 collapse

Good points, you made clear this is no black/white case, it depends on how much we can trust cloudflare. It’s a US based for-profit company so the answer is “not much”.

However, if you check the link, you’ll see that they’re able to distinguish AI bot scrapping from other forms of scrapping. They also give the website owners a choice, so if it’s about principles, owners can choose to boycott, as most are already doing with robots.txt, which AI bros have no respect for.

Cloudflare does not benefit from a handful of websites getting all the traffic, and their track record is good so far. They also don’t profit from people visiting websites with a browser, they don’t show/own ads. To me, they have enough credit for me to believe they can protect open web.

We’ll see how this take ages though. I still won’t put all my eggs in a single basket.

theverge.com/…/cloudflare-matthew-prince-internet…

delirious_owl@discuss.online on 24 Sep 2024 15:22 next collapse

God damn it, stop seeing scrapers as a bad thing. If we rate limit, there’s nothing wrong with scraping.

VirtualOdour@sh.itjust.works on 24 Sep 2024 17:42 collapse

Another wall to try and make it so only the rich corporations can make AI, what a shock.

This is what all the useful idiots bleating against ai have been working towards.

poplargrove@lemmy.world on 24 Sep 2024 21:05 collapse

There are models that have only used data with permissive licenses.