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Precursor

blog.cloudflare.com

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Re: Precursor

#101

Post by linksbro »

The examples of mouse movement, really reminds me what bot scripts looked like for Runescape back in 00s-10s. Early scripts were color-based and jumped the mouse around, and those were quickly caught. But over time, bot scripts developed into complex orchestrations; taking breaks, doing random actions spontaneously, moving the mouse naturally, logging sessions on different platforms (mobile, PC), even responding in chat.

There's been plenty of effort put into mimicking realistic / "human" behavior in writing video game bots, and every video game still has tons of bots despite the best efforts of the game devs.

You definitely can't win against bots - but you can definitely make the entire "game" (web at large, in this case) worse off for everyone else through this "always-online DRM" parallel.

Re: Precursor

#102

Post by stronglikedan »

reluctant_dev wrote: post #8

What prevents bots/agents from just adding "jitter" to their movements that mimics how humans move their cursor? I know there are other signals being used but this one in particular seems like it wouldn't be hard to beat with a small amount of sophistication from the bot.

Does anyone besides me try to beat the jitter to fail the captcha? It never works, and yet I continue to try.

Re: Precursor

#105

Post by mcmcmc »

skybrian wrote: post #13
sudb wrote: post #5

Cool product launch, though it feels a little weird to me that Cloudflare sells agentic products alongside this new service that seems designed to block agentic usage of the web? I expect there's much more going on than just mouse path detection but I can imagine that this is already tricky for touchscreens and for people using non-traditional mouse inputs (the thinkpad nub comes to mind - but it would also be bad op…

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.

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

Re: Precursor

#106

Post by wmf »

pryelluw wrote: post #26
skybrian wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Who gets to decide what is a good bot?

According to their plan, the good bots pay for scraping.

Re: Precursor

#107

Post by LoganDark »

Havoc wrote: post #12

It’s a bit alarming how cloudflare is establishing itself as arbiter of all things bots…both on blocking and allowing. Doesn’t seem healthy for the internet as a whole

It's really telling that they're starting to block anything automated ever that hasn't gone through their ID verification process. It's like literally every company that exists in the world is taking advantage of the dystopia at once

Re: Precursor

#108

Post by skybrian »

mcmcmc wrote: post #105
skybrian wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Arguments based on incentives can prove anything. We could just as easily say they have incentives to provide tools to both sides and let them fight it out.

It would be like Gmail automatically whitelisting email from other Gmail accounts or blacklisting email from competitors. Why should Google do that? Their customers are mostly strangers to each other and they want spam filters that work well.

Re: Precursor

#109

Post by mcmcmc »

skybrian wrote: post #108
mcmcmc wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Arguments based on incentives can prove anything. We could just as easily say they have incentives to provide tools to both sides and let them fight it out. It would be like Gmail automatically whitelisting email from other Gmail accounts or blacklisting email from competitors. Why should Google do that? Their customers are mostly strangers to each other and they want spam filters that work well.

> It would be like Gmail automatically whitelisting email from other Gmail accounts or blacklisting email from competitors. Why should Google do that? Their customers are mostly strangers to each other and they want spam filters that work well.

Crazy to post this when Google basically does do that with Gmail addresses. They may shove it into your “other” folder but they do absolutely nothing to stop free Gmail accounts from spamming and phishing. Gmail spam is the biggest threat by volume I’ve seen in years of managing email security for clients

Re: Precursor

#110

Post by mark212 »

LoganDark wrote: post #107
Havoc wrote: post #12

It’s a bit alarming how cloudflare is establishing itself as arbiter of all things bots…both on blocking and allowing. Doesn’t seem healthy for the internet as a whole

It's really telling that they're starting to block anything automated ever that hasn't gone through their ID verification process. It's like literally every company that exists in the world is taking advantage of the dystopia at once

no, they're giving tools to their customers who can choose freely to block or not block bots. Without those tools, the people who run sites and offer content are just flying blind. I struggle to see how this is a bad thing in any way
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