this post was submitted on 30 Mar 2025
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Lemmy newb here, not sure if this is right for this /c.

An article I found from someone who hosts their own website and micro-social network, and their experience with web-scraping robots who refuse to respect robots.txt, and how they deal with them.

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[–] elbarto777@lemmy.world 1 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Specifically blacklisting a group of users because of the technology they use is, by definition, “targeting”, right? I mean, if not, what qualifies as “targeting” for you?

You may be right. I guess it's a matter of semantics. But the way you described it sounded more nefarious. "I'll target this group of VPN users because fuck them, I hope they all die in a tsunami!!!!" when it's more like "ugh, another VPN bot. The 9th this hour and I'm hungry. You know what - I'll just block VPN altogether and go fix me a sandwich." Maybe that's just my perception.

But anyway - it's Joe Blogger's machine, at his home, for him to do whatever he likes. Some rando from the street knocks on the door and says "excuse me, do you mind if I send an e-mail from your computer?" Joe Blogger can perfectly say no, not even an excuse is owed.

You'd have a point if it was a business or a corporation. Some home machine? Out of billions? Why bother?

I guess we're two pedantic folks. I enjoy these discussions. I sometimes gain some new knowledge out of them.

[–] sxan@midwest.social 1 points 2 hours ago

But the way you described it sounded more nefarious

Oh. Yeah, I don't think they're being malicious; I just get frustrated with that sort of behavior. The primary DNS servers for usps.com, neakasa.com, and vitacost.com all block DNS queries from Mullvad's DNS servers, and one of them blocks all traffic from at least some of Mullvad's exit nodes. It means I have to waste time working around these blocks, because I'll be damned if I'm going to take down the house VPN just to visit their stupid sites. So, I hard-code DNS entries for them, and route traffic to the one through one of my VPSes. It's annoying, a waste of my time, and I'm just generally offended by the whiff of surveillance state about it, even when that's not the reason why they're doing it.

Really, it boils down to the fact that I'm offended by the presumption that their (not OP, but VPN-hostile companies in general) anti-spam or whatever they're trying to accomplish takes priority over my right to privacy. So, yeah; I generally have a bone to pick with any site that's hostile to VPNs.

Maybe that's just my perception.

I have no doubt at all that you're right. And, they have no obligation to accommodate me (which I think is not true for companies I'm trying to do business with).

I'm just uppity about the topic, is all.

I enjoy these discussions. I sometimes gain some new knowledge out of them.

I'll happily have a cordial disagreement with anyone arguing in good faith. It's echo-ey enough, and these are good conversations.