Study Reveals: Major News Outlets Playing Hard to ‘Catch’ with Elusive AI Web Crawlers!

“Major news sites are increasingly blocking AI web crawlers, says study”

“It’s starting to feel a bit like digital Whack-a-Mole, really. Researchers at the Web Policy Forum found that almost half of the top newspapers and online news sites in the world are now actively blocking web crawlers that companies use to ‘read’ and aggregate articles.”

Well, would you look at that? These feisty major news organizations have suddenly reached their threshold and started wagging their fingers at AI web crawlers. Gone are the days where web crawlers could seamlessly browse, aggregate and translate news articles, all while sipping on their digital espressos.

It appears that nearly half of the top-notch newspapers and digital news sites across the globe are firing up their defensive shields against these harmless, little web crawlers. When did these under-the-hood operators become such an annoyance?

The diligent folks at the Web Policy Forum delivered this startling revelation. Bless their hearts. Without their hard work, we’d be blissfully ignorant, thinking these AI web crawlers were still dancing the merry jig across the interwebs.

This thrilling development has left us on the edges of our seats. What will be the fate of these poor, unsuspecting AI web crawlers? Will they be blocked, redirected, or worse, relegated to fetching dusted-off archives? The anticipation is intense. Then again, the big question is, will anyone shed a tear if they were slightly inconvenienced? After all, they’re just algorithms with a task list as long as the digital river they float on.

One could argue that this newfound quarrel with web crawlers goes beyond the usual technology kerfuffle. The battle seems rooted in the pursuit of preserving original content and protecting the much-cherished digital real estate. Perhaps the free-spirited days of the Wild, Wild Web are maturing into a civilized digital society, where every byte and bit has its defined place.

Whatever the future holds, these are exciting times indeed. It’s like watching a digital evolution unfolding right before our screens, bringing along its share of entropy, adaptation, and maybe even some form of Darwinism. Let’s watch and see what becomes of these web crawlers – the unsung heroes who once roamed the limitless expanse of cyberspace.

Read the original article here: https://dailyai.com/2024/02/major-news-sites-are-increasingly-blocking-ai-web-crawlers-says-study/