Will we try to prevent google (and other) scrapers?
The headline is pretty much a summary. “Google Says It will Scrape Everything You Post Online for AI” https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2023/07/google-says-it-will-scrape-everything-you-post-online-for-ai/
The first question is obviously; do we as a community on Lemmy even want to try and stop them from scraping our content here? If no; well. ok then.
If yes; how? I’m not sure if “preventing access” to unregistered users would really prevent this. Pretty sure google has enough money and manpower to figure out a way to make it their mission to get around “can only accessed by members” content.
- Why would we want to stop that? It’s a public forum, so it should get scraped. - I personnaly agree with you. If content is not supposed to be searchable, maybe don’t post it online. It is a different problem for writers, artists and possibly even journalists. - But I think it’s a fair debate - unfortuantely one that was one (or the only?) reason the whole reddit API debacle startetd. - On the other hand maybe Lemmy should allow certain communities allow an “only for members” view? - The reddit API thing started because reddit thought they owned the content and could lock it behind a paywall for people who want training data. But that fundamentally isn’t the case, so that whole thing backfired. - If someone wants to own the content and restrict access, they have to distribute it on their own instead of using a public platform. Lemmy is the wrong tool for that. 
- The reddit scraping thing was always just a smokescreen for killing 3rd party apps 
 
 
- I think it will eventually be scrapped one way or another. If not Google some other company will. 
- Really hard to prevent this, as copying its contents to other places is more or less the point of the Fediverse. 
- Literally already posting to a public space everyone everywhere can access if they were so inclined. I don’t see how scraping that same content would make any difference, unless it significantly impacted site stability. 
- The more of my posts the AI scrapes the better its opinions will be 




