[feupan]

That’s pedantic and not even that right. The browser is an agent, not a bot. A bot takes semi-autonomous actions after being instructed by a human, for an undetermined amount of time; A browser just does something it’s told for a few seconds (or as long as the website’s open)

[withinboredom]

By your definition would a screen reader turn the browser into a bot? If not, if a I program my own “bot” isn’t it just working as my own agent?

[yreg]

Maybe depends on whether you are "driving" the agent personally?

[withinboredom]

If it’s my bot, it’s literally doing what I told it to do (how I bought a PS5 in my sleep, actually).

[aembleton]

I'll just use Selenium to direct the browser then.

[throwaway2037]

I suspect this how a large part of web UI spam occurs. Selenium combined with the latest browsers provide almost perfect control over a real web browser. It makes me wonder if this is how Google tests its "I am not a bot" test. Basically, generate billions of actions -- surfing a web UI -- with slightly different mouse movements (Selenium). Then, use machine learning to generate a network to differentiate between robots and humans. (The humans training data would come from a highly quality population... like all Googlers using internal Google assets/websites.)

[ricardo81]

Using a headless browser would muddy the waters then.