I don’t pay much attention to site stats, actively avoiding digging into them. I’m not interested in optimizing for traffic, or that SEO nonsense, but as the administrator for this site I’ve got this little toolbar at the top of the window that graphically shows how many visits the site gets. It’s not something I really care about, but I did like the predictable wave-like plot — visits rise until about noon, and then slowly decline over the course of the afternoon and evening, before starting to rise in the early morning. The tide goes in, the tide goes out, and you can’t explain that…OK, except that I can, because it tells me I have a predominantly American audience and it’s just a reflection of human daily activity levels in my hemisphere. That’s another reason to not attach much significance to those numbers.
Except…over the last few weeks, the rhythm has been disrupted. The waves are gone. I’m getting site activity all night long, which makes me suspect this isn’t human activity. On closer inspection, site views have also been more than doubled, which sounds like a good thing, except that I seem to be talking to non-human entities. Not aliens, though — AIs scouring the web.
Then I saw this comment on Mastodon:
It’s all artificial, and not at all intelligent. They’re not contributing anything, they’re not the audience I want to talk to, and I think all they’re going to do is jack up my hosting expenses.
If it is aliens, though, welcome. Leave a comment. I’m sure many people here would love to have a conversation with you.
There are configuration options that can block AI-bots, but they require direct control of your webserver.
…and with a rapidly changing landscape of AI monetization/grifting, what worked last week might not work so well this week.
Nuke them from orbit, amirite?
Possibly useful link:
https://perishablepress.com/ultimate-ai-block-list/
@ Snarki: “This is clearly an important species we’re dealing with, and I don’t think you-or I, or anyone else, has the right to arbitrarily wipe them out.”
⊑⟟, ⊑⍜⍙ ⊬⍜⎍ ⎅⍜⟟⋏☌?
Handy that Larper in @4 already had Unicode code points to use!
timmyson @5
I’m clueless. I used https://alientextgenerator.com/.
Traffic increase is not even over 9000%.
The Bill O’Reilly reference brought back memories.
Our webmaster suspects a surge in traffic may be hacker and AI bots scraping your site and harvesting info on you and the commenters. If not them, it’s probably the krash patel fbi.
I suggest you go listen to The Byrds ‘mister spaceman’. It’s probably been pirated and posted on youtube.
PZ wrote: It’s all artificial, and not at all intelligent. They’re not contributing anything
I reply: it’s the wave of the AI bullshit future washing up on the shore of chaotic society. And, we are being drowned in it.
I myself don’t ever respond to advertising. Unlike humans, apparently.
(Heh)
—
As for the thesis, well… surely that is culturally-based.
(Also, that Harry Chapin song)
Could it be …..SPIDERS?!
A few years ago, articles about “that godawful bird app” and the chi-thing which ate it had varying guesses about the numbers of the bodiless among the readers & posters thereof; today, reports seem to accept the “followers” counts uncritically.
I doubt the bots went away – so what happened to the assessments thereof?
@nomdeplume#11: I can almost picture a large spider typing by dancing across the keyboard.
But yeah, AI scrapers seems to be a problem these days. I frequent a niche forum running antiquated software, and lately it’s been completely swamped by guest users.
“I’m sure many people here would love to have a conversation with you.” – What can I say? I’ll have to admit that for me it’s true.