Honeypots (and tarpits, oh my!)

Posted Feb 15, 2025 10:28 UTC (Sat) by malmedal (subscriber, #56172)
In reply to: Honeypots (and tarpits, oh my!) by mb
Parent article: Fighting the AI scraperbot scourge

> If the "sacrificial servers" don't exhaust the bots, then the bots will just go back to the real servers.

Yes, obviously. That's why I called this a "mitigation", not a "cure".

LWN does not want to do things like captcha, js-challenges or putting everything behind a login, can you think of a better approach while adhering to the stated constraints?

Honeypots (and tarpits, oh my!)

Posted Feb 15, 2025 10:35 UTC (Sat) by mb (subscriber, #50428) [Link] (1 responses)

>can you think of a better approach while adhering to the stated constraints?

No. That was my original point.

Honeypots (and tarpits, oh my!)

Posted Feb 15, 2025 10:53 UTC (Sat) by malmedal (subscriber, #56172) [Link]

Then I don't understand what we are quarreling about? I think a sacrificial server is going to be a cheaper solution than expanding real capacity, I don't see a third option.