Comment by akoboldfrying
6 hours ago
I also didn't follow that part. Their step 2 seem to be a general-purpose bot detection strategy that works independently of their step 1 ("randomly mention companies").
6 hours ago
I also didn't follow that part. Their step 2 seem to be a general-purpose bot detection strategy that works independently of their step 1 ("randomly mention companies").
It spams the bot with false-positives. Encourages the bot admins to denylist the site to protect the bot's signal:noise ratio.
That was my first thought too -- but then why would the bot company care about a few false positives?
I suppose it could have an impact if 30% of all, say, Coca Cola mentions on the web came from that site, but then it would have to be a very big site. I don't think the bot company would notice, let alone care, if it was 0.01% of the mentions.
Everyone’s definition of “big” is different, but back then it was big enough to get its own little island in a far corner of XKCD 802.
https://xkcd.com/802/
1 reply →