We have paused all crawling as of Feb 6th, 2025 until we implement robots.txt support. Stats will not update during this period.
this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2025
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Robots.txt is a lot like email in that it was built for a far simpler time.
It would be better if the server could detect bots and send them down a rabbit hole rather than trusting randos to abide by the rules.
It was built for the living, free internet.
For all ita dark corners, it was better than what we have now.
Already possible: Nepenthes.
I’m sold
Ooh, nice.
that website feels like uncovering a piece of ancient alien weaponry
Because of AI bots ignoring robots.txt (especially when you don't explicitly mention their user-agent and rather use a * wildcard) more and more people are implementing exactly that and I wouldn't be surprised if that is what triggered the need to implement robots.txt support for FediDB.
It is not possible to detect bots. Attempting to do so will invariably lead to false positives denying access to your content to what is usually the most at-risk & marginalized folks
Just implement a cache and forget about it. If read only content is causing you too much load, you're doing something terribly wrong.
While I agree with you, the quantity of robots has greatly increased of late. While still not as numerous as users, they are hitting every link and wrecking your caches by not focusing on hotspots like humans do.
You need a bigger cache. If you dont have enough RAM, host it on a CDN
Sure thing! Help me pay for it?
False positives? Meh who cares ... That's what appeals are for. Real people should realize after not too long
Every time I tried to appeal, I either got no response or met someone who had no idea what I was talking about.
Occasionally a bank fixes the problem for a week. Then its back again.