[just-tom]

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.

[1gn15]

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.

[Rebelgecko]

As a frugal person it's frustrating when websites block me for using an ad blocker, but I also don't think publishers should be required to send me data

[beardyw]

They may, and do, refuse to send you the page. That is a more realistic parallel.

Without advertising the web would be largely unsupportable financially without per site subscriptions.

[skeledrew]

Without advertising, the web would be a far healthier place today, free of click-bait and ad-infested, low effort, low quality content. Bad business models wouldn't've survived the light of day.

[Tokumei-no-hito]

fair point.

where's the front page CF callout for google search agent? they wouldn't dare. i don't remember the shaming for ad and newsletter pop up blockers.

that being said, agree with you that sites are not being used the way they were intended. i think this is part of the evolution of the web. it all began with no monetization, then swung far too much into it to the point of abuse. and now legitimate content creators are stuck in the middle.

what i disagree on is that CF has the right to, again allegedly, shame perplexity on false information. especially when OAI is solving captchas and google is also "misusing" websites.

i wish i had an answer to how we can evolve the web sustainably. my main gripe is the shaming and virtue signaling.

[skybrian]

As far as I know Google's bot respects robots.txt and doesn't try to evade detection?

[Tokumei-no-hito]

maybe. the allegations against perplexity are being challenged and i haven't seen any research on google agent. CF can demonstrate nonpartisanship, and gain credence for their claims against perplexity, by being transparent about other players in the space.

(as an aside, not to shift the goalpost to the elephant in the room, but i didn't see any blog posts on the shameless consumption of every single thing on the internet by OAI, google and anthropic. talk about misuse..)

[skeledrew]

Funnily enough this would also mean some humans are not human, like me. I exhibit that behavior exactly as well. Maybe I'm an agent acting on behalf of myself, whatever that means.

[skybrian]

Yep, also true of something like curl -s $url | llm --system 'summarize this article'

[vouaobrasil]

It's also true that you could dismantle a building with a hammer, which accomplishes the same as dynamite. So why not just sell dynamite at the local hardware store along with hammers?

[lofaszvanitt]

And Cloudflare is the police entity to enforce this, right?