Making requests is inherently cheaper than delivering responses, even with caches. Efficiency improvements can buy a little time on a given resources but won't solve the problem of bot saturation now that everybody can spawn a custom bot in about 12 seconds and is being encouraged to do so.
Rate limits, blocking, and pay-per-use are the only roads out and even those might not last as models get better at hacking and masquerading.
The internet we want to use LLM's with is simply not one that can support LLM's, and with LLM's not going anywhere, the whole experience of the internet is going to be forced into some radically less open and more expensive paradigm.
Policies like this just represent the beginning of the transition.
We need a new non-commercial version of the internet. Free of bots, free of ads, ... you pay to access social media optimized to be interesting enough to be worth paying instead of addictive enough to keep you scrolling to show you more ads.
It may look impossible right now. But what is impossible for real is to continue as we are. The damage that internet does to society is increasing by the day while its value is reduced (economic value, social value).
You'd need a force strong enough to prevent it from falling prey to this tragedy of the commons, and that force would need to be stronger than the incentives to commercialize it. And that's where plenty of contemporary scraping-based salaries lay.
I'm not so certain. I used to buy a broadsheet newspaper, which was full of ads. Now I pay a few hundred a year, and get the same newspaper online, with no ads at all.
So, the precursor to online media has already gone through this paradigm shift.
I mean, what you're saying is "If I pay for a product ads go away"
Which is partially true, but it only shifts the distribution of the problem. Once your service gains enough popularity network effects cause it to gain value. You have to worry about high priced buyouts of the entire service (great for the site owner, terrible for the users).
It's not, it just requires creativity. One example I can think of is limiting connectivity by distance between nodes. Something like Meshtastic seems unlikely to ever be commercialized in the same way that the Internet has been. Sure, you would lose some useful applications of the Internet, but you would gain other things.
That's this internet. Nothing precludes you from dropping big tech and solely engaging with the "indie web"[0][1] if you so choose. You're free to build your own website with its own RSS feed, join webrings[2] of like-minded people, and engage organically.
[0] One of many similar initiatives, I'm sure. Not an endorsement.
Careful what you wish for. The ticket to entry will (have to) be a proof of identity, the ultimate nail in the coffin of privacy and anonymity on the web.Outside of that, chaos.
We need a new non-commercial version of the internet.
you pay to access social media optimized to be interesting...
So is it commercial or non commercial?
Nothing is stopping you from creating a social network that is pay gated. Go build it. If you can't get anyone to sign up perhaps you'll realize it's not so easy as scapegoating addictive social media.
There is a whole cottage industry of people who legitimately make their living criticizing Facebook. It's a consumer software product. Yet few of these people seem to have their conviction extend to building an alternative that ever catches an audience. Why is that? Because addiction? Any other excuses?
Average, yes, but the way they phrase it, it could be a token bucket or similar, where you can do 60 quick requests and then be blocked for a bit while the bucket refills
I noticed that recently Github.com has some kind of weird bot detection on public repos. I have a browser extension for switching User Agents for a specific legacy site, sometimes i forget to turn it off and Github will require me to login to view public repos.
All of this is most likely due to mass scraping by LLMs. Welcome to the total shitification of the web.
I think it's because people are building agentic flows, reducing the amount of developer seats needed. It's the first step towards usage based pricing.
Providing kickbacks to the repos being scraped would be a good way to help fund open source projects and pay creators like streaming services do. Seems like they're headed in this direction - it would be a massive product differentiator over GH
Three minutes after kickbacks were announced there would be a flurry of new repos being created with bots repeatedly scraping them just to get those kickbacks.
My first reaction was that I really like this idea.
If we had a system where people who access projects pay and popular FOSS developers get paid for it we'd have much better alignment.
My second thought was that bots would immediately try to circumvent such a plan. They'd probably spam Gitlab with fake repos to try to harvest those payouts.
I would spend thousands of dollars for gitlab in terms of:
1) better UX for admin panel, I'm not sure what I've enabled and what not. Several buttons do not disable the rest of the settings, leaving me with some doubts (e.g. if I disabled grafana, why is there a setting that talks about where/how I store?)
2) a minimal version of gitlab without all the AI
Getting that so I do not know exactly what they are doing. From the title I am guessing they are restricting or throttling if downloads exceeds some value.
I assume this is because of LLM scraping.
Presumably but I wish they'd also focus on optimizing code/making pages fully cacheable instead of rate-limits and blocking
Making requests is inherently cheaper than delivering responses, even with caches. Efficiency improvements can buy a little time on a given resources but won't solve the problem of bot saturation now that everybody can spawn a custom bot in about 12 seconds and is being encouraged to do so.
Rate limits, blocking, and pay-per-use are the only roads out and even those might not last as models get better at hacking and masquerading.
The internet we want to use LLM's with is simply not one that can support LLM's, and with LLM's not going anywhere, the whole experience of the internet is going to be forced into some radically less open and more expensive paradigm.
Policies like this just represent the beginning of the transition.
We need a new non-commercial version of the internet. Free of bots, free of ads, ... you pay to access social media optimized to be interesting enough to be worth paying instead of addictive enough to keep you scrolling to show you more ads.
It may look impossible right now. But what is impossible for real is to continue as we are. The damage that internet does to society is increasing by the day while its value is reduced (economic value, social value).
Except it's non-commercial, therefore valuable, therefore commercialized, therefore commercial.
You'd need a force strong enough to prevent it from falling prey to this tragedy of the commons, and that force would need to be stronger than the incentives to commercialize it. And that's where plenty of contemporary scraping-based salaries lay.
Impossible to create
I'm not so certain. I used to buy a broadsheet newspaper, which was full of ads. Now I pay a few hundred a year, and get the same newspaper online, with no ads at all.
So, the precursor to online media has already gone through this paradigm shift.
I mean, what you're saying is "If I pay for a product ads go away"
Which is partially true, but it only shifts the distribution of the problem. Once your service gains enough popularity network effects cause it to gain value. You have to worry about high priced buyouts of the entire service (great for the site owner, terrible for the users).
It's not, it just requires creativity. One example I can think of is limiting connectivity by distance between nodes. Something like Meshtastic seems unlikely to ever be commercialized in the same way that the Internet has been. Sure, you would lose some useful applications of the Internet, but you would gain other things.
Also for better or for worse the ad-centric model to some extent has allowed more people to access information.
Gating everything behind paid (but with no ads) likely would hurt a significant amount of lower income users.
That's this internet. Nothing precludes you from dropping big tech and solely engaging with the "indie web"[0][1] if you so choose. You're free to build your own website with its own RSS feed, join webrings[2] of like-minded people, and engage organically.
[0] One of many similar initiatives, I'm sure. Not an endorsement.
[1] https://indieweb.org/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webring
This is fine when you hide in the dark forest, small and unassuming, but the moment something discovers you, then you get ate by a predator.
Your human engagement will attract said predators because it's a unique information signal.
Careful what you wish for. The ticket to entry will (have to) be a proof of identity, the ultimate nail in the coffin of privacy and anonymity on the web.Outside of that, chaos.
So is it commercial or non commercial?
Nothing is stopping you from creating a social network that is pay gated. Go build it. If you can't get anyone to sign up perhaps you'll realize it's not so easy as scapegoating addictive social media.
There is a whole cottage industry of people who legitimately make their living criticizing Facebook. It's a consumer software product. Yet few of these people seem to have their conviction extend to building an alternative that ever catches an audience. Why is that? Because addiction? Any other excuses?
AT Protocol and PDS’. BitTorrent to share and distribute bundles of data.
One request per minute.
Average, yes, but the way they phrase it, it could be a token bucket or similar, where you can do 60 quick requests and then be blocked for a bit while the bucket refills
More like you have 60 requests, you can exhaust them in a single second or spread them differently as per your choice.
I noticed that recently Github.com has some kind of weird bot detection on public repos. I have a browser extension for switching User Agents for a specific legacy site, sometimes i forget to turn it off and Github will require me to login to view public repos.
All of this is most likely due to mass scraping by LLMs. Welcome to the total shitification of the web.
Congrats on making the world worse with AI. All this performative data scraping and uploading and no progress at all.
No progress?!
what are you talking about? it's progressing a lot of money into specific people's pockets
Making the privileged money and giving them the power to manipulate the mass is progress to some.
I think it's because people are building agentic flows, reducing the amount of developer seats needed. It's the first step towards usage based pricing.
Providing kickbacks to the repos being scraped would be a good way to help fund open source projects and pay creators like streaming services do. Seems like they're headed in this direction - it would be a massive product differentiator over GH
Three minutes after kickbacks were announced there would be a flurry of new repos being created with bots repeatedly scraping them just to get those kickbacks.
Presumably whoever is doing the scraping would need to pay, to get rate limits conducive to scraping.
Also known as the Cobra effect
My first reaction was that I really like this idea.
If we had a system where people who access projects pay and popular FOSS developers get paid for it we'd have much better alignment.
My second thought was that bots would immediately try to circumvent such a plan. They'd probably spam Gitlab with fake repos to try to harvest those payouts.
I would spend thousands of dollars for gitlab in terms of: 1) better UX for admin panel, I'm not sure what I've enabled and what not. Several buttons do not disable the rest of the settings, leaving me with some doubts (e.g. if I disabled grafana, why is there a setting that talks about where/how I store?) 2) a minimal version of gitlab without all the AI
Github would hit four nines if they followed suit. no clue why the dont try
Doesn't GitHub already have rate limiting especially if you are not logged in?
I understand why they're doing this, but the anticausative title kinda rubs me the wrong way.
I am honestly surprised they aren't going lower at this point.
Gitlab must pay a fortune to bot traffic, most of which is malicious or garbage at best.
Damn, we’re even having Claude write important press releases now
Getting that so I do not know exactly what they are doing. From the title I am guessing they are restricting or throttling if downloads exceeds some value.