130
Cloudflare offers to make AI pay to crawl websites
(www.computerworld.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2025
130 points (99.2% liked)
Privacy
39584 readers
301 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
They can and do. What is blocked depends on what the website owner sets as settings in cloudflare.
If they have to crawl the web while behaving like a normal human, it will be magnitudes slower and more costly.
And how does the owner know which connections are bots?
They don't care, they have trillions of dollars of VC money to power through.
The owner sets the level. If they set strict level, all bots are blocked.
They do care. VC funding happens because the result is profitable. If it is less profitable, there will be less funding because of higher investment risk.
I don't know what you don't understand. These bots are not labeling themselves as bots. They are camouflaging themselves to look like any other type of traffic.
No, VC funding happens because investors are duped into thinking the result is profitable.
You keep pulling bullshit statements out of your ass.
https://www.nber.org/digest/may01/how-high-are-vc-returns
VC funding IS profitable in general.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/technology/titanium-ventures-builds-ai-tools-to-unearth-next-1bn-tech-unicorn/news-story/5e36720b2977704ce672ea4c3bfc1321
AI VC funding IS also profitable overall.
I'm not and your tone is completely unnecessary so maybe dial it back a bit.
Yes, VC funding can be profitable. It's also often not. Like any other investment. Corporations will absolutely lie and blow smoke up their ass if they think it can get them more money.