151–160 of 218 posts
https://stratechery.com/2025/an-interview-with-cloudflare-fo...
Even if some system of making crawlers pay for a content access, how could you be sure it's never used without your permission? It's not like DRM solved internet piracy.
And even if a technical solution were possible, it's natural to see this level of cynicism of how an internet giant would handle it.
> As we think about our role at Cloudflare in this developing market, it's not about protecting the status quo but instead helping catalyze a better business model for the future of Internet content creation. That means creating a level playing field. Ideally there should be lots of AI companies, large and small, and lots of content creators, large and small. Not mentioned: there would be a single gatekeeper for the…
I see what you mean, and I am divided on the issue. On one hand, I don't think it's fair to have AI companies to freely scrape the world without fairly compensating content producers. On the other hand, adding more gatekeepers to the web ends up killing it. This feels like a lose-lose situation.
LOL, what?
Many of us who use an ad blocker don't actually have a huge problem with ads. It's the tracking we object to.
I don't want Cloudflare to build an ad blocker, I want them to make a tracker blocker. Make surveillance so difficult and expensive and unreliable that companies stop doing it.
> As we think about our role at Cloudflare in this developing market, it's not about protecting the status quo but instead helping catalyze a better business model for the future of Internet content creation. That means creating a level playing field. Ideally there should be lots of AI companies, large and small, and lots of content creators, large and small. Not mentioned: there would be a single gatekeeper for the…
To be fair to apple, many billion dollar businesses have been built for and distributed by the app store. Think about all people employed to work on mobile apps, all those people going to local taco truck for lunch owned by an immigrant, that immigrant buying a nice christmas present for their kid, etc.
Everyone seems to be dismissing this without reading it. As a content publisher, I am very interested in any proposal that results in me getting residual payments from AI scrapers. That would indeed be a new internet business model. This is also being attempted by RSL with their “Crawler Authentication Protocol” ( https://rslstandard.org/guide/web-crawlers ) for demanding proof of licensing from scrapers and RSL Coll…
> As a content publisher, I am very interested in any proposal that results in me getting residual payments from AI scrapers. So you use a public resource and presumably like the upside that comes with sharing on it, but you want to limit uses now that someone has found one that you don't like, so you're fine with degrading that public resource? You could always share things privately or behind a paywall if you don't…
And, the idea being proposed is a version of what you're talking about (paywall). Not allowing crawlers to scrap your site unless they compensate you is a form of paywall, just for crawlers...
...But, I do agree with one aspect you're saying about greed, Cloudflare is probably being self serving in this. An open standard seems like it'd be a better solution than having one company control content payment.
> As we think about our role at Cloudflare in this developing market, it's not about protecting the status quo but instead helping catalyze a better business model for the future of Internet content creation. That means creating a level playing field. Ideally there should be lots of AI companies, large and small, and lots of content creators, large and small. Not mentioned: there would be a single gatekeeper for the…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But "at our own expense" is not free, is it? In the end someone has always paid the bills for things being on the Internet. That's the "never been free" in that statement. I don't think they're saying what you think they're saying.
They're not saying what you think either, there's no reward system or transfer of value in free content, offered for free. It doesn't matter if it's hosted at someone's own expense if it's done for nothing other than the fun of it.
I said that putting things on the Internet is not, and has never been, "free".
And I think that's what Cloudflare is saying too.
You're free to interpret it differently (as was OP) but I think you're wrong. ;-)