The current phenomenon of large websites "going dark" in response to LLM scraping kind of reminds me of what happened with free-as-in-beer CI systems after people realized they could be co-opted to mine Bitcoin. Silicon valley hype cycles have significant negative externalities.
https://drewdevault.com/2021/04/26/Cryptocurrency-is-a-disaster.html
@wlach Unauthenticated SMTP all over again. The service can't be considered "stable" until it got seriously exploited by spammers/griefers and successfully defended. Or busted.
(The Fedeiverse is yet to pass this "great filter", btw.)
@dpwiz Agreed, this type of thing exploits a weakness in the system that wasn't previously seen as being worth exploiting. I suppose one bright side is that CI abuse seems to be more or less be under control at this point. So perhaps it's possible to adapt.