Comment by charcircuit
3 years ago
Even if that is true, that is not what users want. They do not want everything they have ever posted to be out on the internet with no way to delete it.
Scrapers are hostile actors against users which is one reason social media like sites invest resources to defend their users against scrapers.
> Scrapers are hostile actors against users
They are also user agents: the idea that the only viable web browser is one that meets a certain preconception (like Chrome) is a violation of the fundamental design principles of the web. If I want to scrape some pages and render them in a terminal (archive them to track silent edits to important news stories), via text to speech or whatever, websites should be produced in a format that’s amenable to it: the web will be richer and more vibrant as a result.
Search engine scrapers are friendly to me, in that they make it possible to find content that I want. A cool blog post is no good for me if I can't find it.