21–30 of 48 posts
While agents act on behalf of the user, they won't see nor click any ads; they won't sign-up to any newsletter; they won't buy the website owner a coffee. They don't act as humans just because humans triggered them. They simply take what they need and walk away.
While agents act on behalf of the user, they won't see nor click any ads; they won't sign-up to any newsletter; they won't buy the website owner a coffee. They don't act as humans just because humans triggered them. They simply take what they need and walk away.
Do you have an ad-blocker? If so, should website owners be able to disable your ad-blocker via a setting they send to you? It's their content, after all.
Without advertising the web would be largely unsupportable financially without per site subscriptions.
While agents act on behalf of the user, they won't see nor click any ads; they won't sign-up to any newsletter; they won't buy the website owner a coffee. They don't act as humans just because humans triggered them. They simply take what they need and walk away.
Do you have an ad-blocker? If so, should website owners be able to disable your ad-blocker via a setting they send to you? It's their content, after all.
Website owners have a right to block both if they wish. Isn't it obvious that bypassing a bot block is a violation of the owners right to decide whom to admit?
Perplexity's almost seems to believe that "robots.txt was only made for scraping bots, so if our bot is not scraping, it's fair for us to ignore it and bypass the enforcement". And their core business is a bot, so they really should have known better.
> When companies like Cloudflare mischaracterize user-driven AI assistants as malicious bots, they're arguing that any automated tool serving users should be suspect Strawmen. They aren't arguing that any automated tool should be suspect. They are arguing that an automated tool with sufficient computing power should be suspect. By Perplexity's reasoning, I should be able to set up a huge server farm and hit any websi…
> When companies like Cloudflare mischaracterize user-driven AI assistants as malicious bots, they're arguing that any automated tool serving users should be suspect Strawmen. They aren't arguing that any automated tool should be suspect. They are arguing that an automated tool with sufficient computing power should be suspect. By Perplexity's reasoning, I should be able to set up a huge server farm and hit any websi…
That's a slippery slope all the was to absurd. They're not talking about millions of requests a second. They're talking about a browsing session (few page views) as a result of user's action. It's not even additional traffic and there's no extra concurrency - it's likely the same requests a user would make just with shorter delay.
Cloudflare did explain a proper solution: "Separate bots for separate activities". E.g. here: one bot for scraping/indexing, and one for non-persistent user-driven retrieval. Website owners have a right to block both if they wish. Isn't it obvious that bypassing a bot block is a violation of the owners right to decide whom to admit? Perplexity's almost seems to believe that "robots.txt was only made for scraping bots…
> When companies like Cloudflare mischaracterize user-driven AI assistants as malicious bots, they're arguing that any automated tool serving users should be suspect Strawmen. They aren't arguing that any automated tool should be suspect. They are arguing that an automated tool with sufficient computing power should be suspect. By Perplexity's reasoning, I should be able to set up a huge server farm and hit any websi…
> By Perplexity's reasoning, I should be able to set up a huge server farm and hit any website with 1,000,000 requests per second because 1 request is not seen as harmful. That's a slippery slope all the was to absurd. They're not talking about millions of requests a second. They're talking about a browsing session (few page views) as a result of user's action. It's not even additional traffic and there's no extra co…
My statement was meant as an analogy. I'm not saying an argument against Perplexity and agents is about requests per second. I'm saying there's an analogous argument: that the power of AI to transform the browsing experience is akin to the power of a server farm and thus a net negative. Therefore, your interpretation of what I was saying is wrong.
Cloudflare did explain a proper solution: "Separate bots for separate activities". E.g. here: one bot for scraping/indexing, and one for non-persistent user-driven retrieval. Website owners have a right to block both if they wish. Isn't it obvious that bypassing a bot block is a violation of the owners right to decide whom to admit? Perplexity's almost seems to believe that "robots.txt was only made for scraping bots…
They're already doing that https://docs.perplexity.ai/guides/bots There's PerplexityBot and Perplexity‑User .
To me this invalidates their whole claim that Cloudflare fails to tell the difference between scraper and user-driven agent. Instead, distinguishing them is trivial, and the block is intentional.