Bots are currently scraping the internet for LLM training data at unprecedented rates[1][2][3], driving up costs and destabilizing public-facing websites. I want to talk about how this has been particularly difficult for wikis, and has gotten much worse in the last few months.
  • OptimusPrimeDownfall@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    8·
    4 days ago

    The problem is that you can’t block all scraping. The scrapers make their bots look like regular traffic, so even if you block all known scrapers, there will be tons that just look like humans visiting your site.

      • Kissaki@beehaw.orgEnglish
        1·
        3 days ago

        They rent IPs, they can look like residential IPs.

        I don’t know how these IP services work, but blocking them seems like blocking AWS - suddenly you didn’t just block telegram but various websites and services don’t work anymore.

        /edit: the article goes into this and also blocking

        Enter residential proxies, where anyone with a credit card can get all of their scraping requests “laundered” through a network of millions of IP addresses. The wikis get hit sometimes by scraper runs that cycle through a million IPs a day, and they >look like< they’re coming from legit places: mostly residential ISPs (Comcast, AT&T, Charter, etc) where the customer probably doesn’t even know their IP is being used as an exit node for a residential proxy.

        There are companies out there selling realtime databases of residential proxy IPs, although it’s not clear to me how actionable that is when most residential proxies are also used by real people at the same time.

        • Hazelnoot [she/her]@beehaw.orgEnglish
          4·
          4 days ago

          IP addresses can’t really be spoofed, but there are other issues that make IP-based filtering impractical. (VPNs, IPv6, malicious reporting, shared IPs, NAT, etc)