> Here’s what’s going on. The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine has been hit by waves of high-volume automated traffic, and we’ve put protections in place to keep the service running.
I'm pretty certain this is scrapers that are trying to workaround blocks on accessing original sites by hitting the Wayback Machine copy instead. Appalling behavior.
In addition to the load it puts on this vital non-profit piece of Internet infrastructure, we've also already seen some sites opt out of the Wayback Machine to prevent their content from being scraped via this alternative route.
Unfortunately I sometimes have to browbeat Claude into acting like an agent of the user is supposed to. Usually it works, though last time it refused to recognize my moral argument (on the grounds that it's not bound to my interests exclusively and needs to protect the interests of its maker too).
Do you think there should be a way for a site to tell an agent it isn't allowed access? I'm not sure where I land on this exactly tbh, so no judgment cast.
I suspect most people would be ok with this if they could only do it at the rate and frequency you yourself can do it. The problem is largely one of scale.
Because not enough people do this earnestly, and many more do it maliciously (bot endpoints that lie, or provide significantly less information than people endpoints) or put it behind a business contract (yes, APIs), so the bots or agents can't trust it in general.
Also let's not forget that innocent sites suffering from floods of scrapers are actually the minority here - this is just a special case; the main reason for the tension is simply that most websites and businesses on-line rely on users wasting their time, and cannot abide any form of end-user automation. Their business plans hinge on their ability to force themselves on you.
simonw · · focus · HN ↗
I'm pretty certain this is scrapers that are trying to workaround blocks on accessing original sites by hitting the Wayback Machine copy instead. Appalling behavior.
In addition to the load it puts on this vital non-profit piece of Internet infrastructure, we've also already seen some sites opt out of the Wayback Machine to prevent their content from being scraped via this alternative route.
bradly · · focus · HN ↗
> Hacker News and the Rails forum are blocking the text fetcher, so I'm using the browser workflow to inspect the pages directly
TeMPOraL · · focus · HN ↗
Unfortunately I sometimes have to browbeat Claude into acting like an agent of the user is supposed to. Usually it works, though last time it refused to recognize my moral argument (on the grounds that it's not bound to my interests exclusively and needs to protect the interests of its maker too).
bradly · · focus · HN ↗
Analemma_ · · focus · HN ↗
compiler-guy · · focus · HN ↗
cruffle_duffle · · focus · HN ↗
fineIllregister · · focus · HN ↗
TeMPOraL · · focus · HN ↗
Also let's not forget that innocent sites suffering from floods of scrapers are actually the minority here - this is just a special case; the main reason for the tension is simply that most websites and businesses on-line rely on users wasting their time, and cannot abide any form of end-user automation. Their business plans hinge on their ability to force themselves on you.
account42 · · focus · HN ↗
TeMPOraL · · focus · HN ↗