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skybrianyesterday at 3:16 PM2 repliesview on HN

It’s less weird if you think there’s a difference between good bots and bad bots. They can provide services for good bots to use while helping people keep out the bad ones.

If a bot is simulating mouse movement but doing it badly then that’s a strong signal of shenanigans. A good bot will obey robots.txt and do nothing to hide that it’s a bot.


Replies

pryelluwyesterday at 3:24 PM

Who gets to decide what is a good bot?

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mcmcmcyesterday at 5:00 PM

The problem is they have a strong incentive to consider any bot they get paid to host as a good bot, and they can bully competitors by declaring bots they host as bad bots

show 1 reply