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The web does not need gatekeepers: Cloudflare’s new “signed agents” pitch

positiveblue.substack.com

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Re: The web does not need gatekeepers: Cloudflare’s new “signed agents” pitch

#121

Post by blibble »

quectophoton wrote: post #106
gausswho wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What we need is some legal teeth behind robots.txt. It won't stop everyone, but Big Corp would be a tasty target for lawsuits.

I don't know about this. This means I'd get sued for using a feed reader on Codeberg[1], or for mirroring repositories from there (e.g. with Forgejo), since both are automated actions that are not caused directly by a user interaction (i.e. bots, rather than user agents). [1]: https://codeberg.org/robots.txt#:~:text=Disallow:%20/.git/,....

> This means I'd get sued for using a feed reader on Codeberg

you think codeberg would sue you?

Re: The web does not need gatekeepers: Cloudflare’s new “signed agents” pitch

#122

Post by gausswho »

quectophoton wrote: post #106
gausswho wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What we need is some legal teeth behind robots.txt. It won't stop everyone, but Big Corp would be a tasty target for lawsuits.

I don't know about this. This means I'd get sued for using a feed reader on Codeberg[1], or for mirroring repositories from there (e.g. with Forgejo), since both are automated actions that are not caused directly by a user interaction (i.e. bots, rather than user agents). [1]: https://codeberg.org/robots.txt#:~:text=Disallow:%20/.git/,....

To be more specific, if we assume good faith upon our fine congresspeople to craft this well... ok yeah, well for hypothetical case I'll continue...

What legal teeth I would advocate would be targeted to crawlers (a subset of bot) and not include your usage. It would mandate that Big Corp crawlers (for search indexing, AI data harvesting, etc.) be registered and identify themselves in their requests. This would allow serverside tools to efficiently reject them. Failure to comply would result in fines large enough to change behavior.

Now that I write that out, if such a thing were to come to pass, and it was well received, I do worry that congress would foam at the mouth to expand it to bots more generally, Microsoft-Uncertified-Devices, etc.

Re: The web does not need gatekeepers: Cloudflare’s new “signed agents” pitch

#123

Post by buyucu »

TIPSIO wrote: post #20

Everyone loves the dream of a free for all and open web. But the reality is how can someone small protect their blog or content from AI training bots? E.g.: They just blindly trust someone is sending Agent vs Training bots and super duper respecting robots.txt? Get real... Or, fine what if they do respect robots.txt, but they buy the data that may or may not have been shielded through liability layers via "licensed d…

Everyone loves a free for all and open web because it works really well.

Basic tools like Anubis and fail2ban are very effective at keeping most of this evil at bay.

Re: The web does not need gatekeepers: Cloudflare’s new “signed agents” pitch

#125

Post by Klonoar »

supriyo-biswas wrote: post #48
TIPSIO wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I obviously agree with you. My comment's point is missed a little I think by you. CF is making these tools and giving access to it to millions of people.

Well there's open source stuff like https://github.com/TecharoHQ/anubis ; one doesn't need a top-down mandated solution coming from a corporation. In general Cloudflare has been pushing DRMization of the web for quite some time, and while I understand why they want to do it, I wish they didn't always show off as taking the moral high ground.

Anubis doesn’t necessarily stop the most well funded actors.

If anything we’ve seen the rise in complaints about it just annoying average users.

Re: The web does not need gatekeepers: Cloudflare’s new “signed agents” pitch

#126

Post by positiveblue »

avtar wrote: post #114
positiveblue wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An allowlist run by one company that site owners chose to engage with. Exactly, no problem with that, just hinting that's not a protocol. > But the irony of taking an ideological stance about fairness while using AI generated comics for blog posts Wait, what?

> Wait, what? I was referring to the following image: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!zRK-!,w_1250,h_703,c...

I know the image, what I do not understand is the argument between using it being incompatible with "fairness" and "openness"

Re: The web does not need gatekeepers: Cloudflare’s new “signed agents” pitch

#127

Post by deadbabe »

TIPSIO wrote: post #20

Everyone loves the dream of a free for all and open web. But the reality is how can someone small protect their blog or content from AI training bots? E.g.: They just blindly trust someone is sending Agent vs Training bots and super duper respecting robots.txt? Get real... Or, fine what if they do respect robots.txt, but they buy the data that may or may not have been shielded through liability layers via "licensed d…

I care more about the dream of a wide open free web than a small time blogger’s fears of their content being trained on by an AI that might only ever emit text inspired by their content a handful of times in their life.

Re: The web does not need gatekeepers: Cloudflare’s new “signed agents” pitch

#128

Post by hoppp »

Gud wrote: post #100
Analemma_ wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does an agent help my website not get crushed by traffic load, and how is this proposal any different from the gatekeeping problem to the open web, except even less transparent and accountable because now access is gated by logic inside an impenetrable web of NN weights? This seems like slogan-based planning with no actual thought put into it.

Whatever is working against the AI doesn’t have to be an AI agent.

So proof of work checks everywhere?

Re: The web does not need gatekeepers: Cloudflare’s new “signed agents” pitch

#129

Post by TYPE_FASTER »

I think the reality is, we need identity on both the client and server sides.

At some point soon, if not now, assume everything is generated by AI unless proven otherwise using a decentralized ID.

Likewise, on the server side, assume it’s a bot unless proven otherwise using a decentralized ID.

We can still have anonymity using decentralized IDs. An identity can be an anonymous identity, it’s not all (verified by some central official party) or nothing.

It comes down to different levels of trust.

Decoupling identity and trust is the next step.

Re: The web does not need gatekeepers: Cloudflare’s new “signed agents” pitch

#130

Post by Galanwe »

gausswho wrote: post #71
TIPSIO wrote: post #20

Everyone loves the dream of a free for all and open web. But the reality is how can someone small protect their blog or content from AI training bots? E.g.: They just blindly trust someone is sending Agent vs Training bots and super duper respecting robots.txt? Get real... Or, fine what if they do respect robots.txt, but they buy the data that may or may not have been shielded through liability layers via "licensed d…

What we need is some legal teeth behind robots.txt. It won't stop everyone, but Big Corp would be a tasty target for lawsuits.

- Moral rules are never really effective

- Legal threats are never really effective

Effective solutions are:

- Technical

- Monetary

I like the idea of web as a blockchain of content. If you want to pull some data, you have to pay for it with some kind of token. You either buy that token to consume information if you're of the leecher type, or get some by doing contributions that gain back tokens.

It's more or less the same concept as torrents back in the day.

This should be applied to emails too. The regular person send what, 20 emails per day max ? Say it costs $0.01 per mail, anyone could pay that. But if you want to spam 1,000,000 everyday that becomes prohibitive.

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