112 pointsby DeepLogin5 hours ago8 comments
  • Bender4 hours ago
    still have the ability to disable the crawler via robots.txt flags

    Never rely on robots.txt. Configure it, but do not rely on it. A bot will do what a bot can do. Their bots are trivial to spot so close the connection, bonus if done silently closing the socket and inhibiting first RST from web daemon and second RST from the OS.

    • xmcp12325 minutes ago
      I have been writing bots and scrapers for almost 20 years.

      Not once have I had someone I work for in this capacity even ask about robots.txt

    • saghman hour ago
      Yeah, calling this "disabling" it is inaccurate, it's just "asking nicely".
      • ameliusan hour ago
        Yeah it reminds me of the typical copyright notice found in a book, even decades ago:

        > All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

        For AI, wasn't the book first "reproduced or transmitted" into a training system?

        How would we reformulate it today?

        • mitxelaan hour ago
          Legal notices are designed to be as scary as possible so they usually say you can't do things that you actually can do.
    • cowlevel2 hours ago
      Wouldn't feeding them false data be even better?
      • usrnm2 hours ago
        That could consume as much, if not more, resources as returning real data
        • literalAardvarkan hour ago
          Returning some text files from the server fs is _wayyy_ lighter than letting the bot go through the search, middleware, and db while crawling your stuff.
      • zeryxan hour ago
        Angel banning is better, 100% agreed on giving it false data that the scraper builders can't easily detect. Give it seemingly correct and useful but totally wrong answers
        • throwaway613746an hour ago
          Would you mind explaining what "angel banning" is? I've never heard this term before and even Google doesn't seem to know what it is.
          • LoganDark42 minutes ago
            I would assume it's exactly what they described, banning something by pretending to still helpfully assist them while silently undermining them instead.
      • esseph2 hours ago
        We've already been using AI to target military strikes without human intervention.

        Make of that what you will.

  • newhotelowneran hour ago
    And they spend huge resource so that we can't scrap Facebook - our own feed.
    • herodoturtle32 minutes ago
      > so that we can't scrap Facebook

      Whilst I assume you meant to say “scrape”, I can’t help but appreciate the poetry of that typo.

    • mitxelaan hour ago
      You can but you'll probably want to do it with a browser extension or an undetectable webdriver.

      I suggest doing it, actually. Could be a fun project. I suggest not making the script make any extra requests on your main account just in case - anything already on the page is free for scraping.

  • jareklupinski3 hours ago
    just rename the company to Meta Law or Zuckerberg & Associates already
    • shevy-java3 hours ago
      [flagged]
      • wongarsu2 hours ago
        [resource]+[mountain/stone/field/valley/tree] in German is a very common pattern for Jewish surnames. A quirk of how surnames were adopted in German-speaking regions in the 18th century

        Sugar mountain at least makes sense, unlike e.g. wine stone

        • 37 minutes ago
          undefined
      • fuzzy22 hours ago
        Not strange. It's a Jewish name.
      • Scrapemist2 hours ago
        What about Altman?
        • drooopy2 hours ago
          I read somewhere once that Sam Altman sounds like a name for a fictional villain made up by Hideo Kojima for Metal Gear Solid, and it will never not make sense.
        • N_Lens2 hours ago
          Saltman
  • DivingForGoldan hour ago
    DON'T TOUCH META's apps. Zuck is PUBLIC ENEMY #1
    • jampekka35 minutes ago
      I for sure don't love any of the oligarchs, but how is Zuck worse than e.g. Musk?
      • lokar19 minutes ago
        Similar resources and anti-social intent, but better organized and disciplined.
  • mitxelaan hour ago
    Does it really matter what they have "permission" for when they'll do it anyway?
  • cyanydeez3 hours ago
    Humanity experts warn oligarchs, "not good"

    News at never.

  • Heronsunny2 hours ago
    Blocking by UA is pointless now, meta-externalagent rotates and a chunk comes off non-Meta ASNs. We matched on ASN plus TLS JA4 and that actually stuck.
  • shinyshadowdonu44 minutes ago
    [dead]