Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bandwidth isn't free, not at the volume these crawlers scrape at; serving them random data (for example by leading them down an endless tarpit of links that no human would end up visiting) would still incur bandwidth fees. Also it's not identifiable AI bot traffic that's detected (they mask themselves as regular browsers and hop between domestic IP addresses when blocked), it's just really obviously AI scraper traffi…
arnt a lot of these bots now actively loading javascript? you could just load a simple script that does the job .
If they agree to mine crypto for you then you send valid data.
Is this a win-win?
(I feel I need to preemptively state that I am being sarcastic.)