New study finds bots and fraud farms responsible for 73% of web traffic::undefined
“73% of web traffic” does not mean 73% of comments, posts, content, etc.
New study finds bots and fraud farms responsible for 73% of web traffic
Submitted 5 months ago by L4s@lemmy.world [bot] to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
sennheisenberg@lemmy.sdf.org 5 months ago
indepndnt@lemmy.world 5 months ago
It amazes me when I spin up some random server on a cloud provider and it’s immediately getting tons of traffic from bots searching for insecure ssh servers and default WordPress admin credentials and then like. If that’s the short of stuff they’re counting, I’d believe it. But yeah, it’s not like all the commenters on this post are bots.
Enigma28@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Yeah we had a presentation at work from AWS , they said expect all ports and protocols on any aws server you spin up to be scanned in less than 1min of any instance being created
CosmicCleric@lemmy.world 5 months ago
But yeah, it’s not like all the commenters on this post are bots.
What percentage would you guess that are bots as commenters?
1984@lemmy.today 5 months ago
The web is like a shitty neighborhood now, with stalkers and unpleasant people coming up to you frequently to sell their shady stuff.
vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
Depends does hentai count as entertainment cayse if so. Yes.
Goldmage263@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
Based. That and comics of culture.
arandomthought@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
Holy shit, thinking of all the resources that are just wasted for this shit… Imagine you could just slash all web infrastructures by two thirds.
JDubbleu@programming.dev 5 months ago
I really hate the phrase “bots” because it gives the appearance that they’re all useless and malicious. I guarantee you they lumped in the following extremely valid uses of “bots”:
- Automated personal scripts that many programmers use, these are technically bots. Hell, I use a “bot” to auto-clip digital Safeway coupons
- Moderation bots on sites like Lemmy/Reddit
- Archive efforts
Are AI chatbots bots? If they use a loose enough definition all this means is humans utilize fuck tons of automation over the Internet, both programmers and not.
Touching_Grass@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Tech journalism is fucking garbage. Its always trying to tell me what to think rather than present legit unbiased information. It seems to get worse every year as if these journalist have a hate on for the tech they write about
Eheran@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Why do you think that such bots cause a relevant amount of traffic?
Riccosuave@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I use a “bot” to auto-clip digital Safeway coupons
How?
jaybone@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I use a bot to convert source code into executable binaries.
arandomthought@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
That’s a very good point, thanks!
fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 5 months ago
Not really, as with many others the headline is sensationalist. It’s missing the “… on login page attempts for sites that pay for and or use bot protection services.”
arandomthought@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
That’s very good to know and makes the situation a lot less bleak. Thank you for the additional context!
banneryear1868@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Soon there will be content created and consumed entirely by generative “ai,” an almost shadow-culture.
grayman@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Horse shit.
Sandvine still released traffic reports. So does Cable Labs.
Maybe attempted connections, but not volume / tonnage / bytes.
dag__@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Okay, bot. I believe it, doesn’t surprise me at all. Lemmy is also full of bots.
zzx@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I’m a bot
Nacktmull@lemm.ee 5 months ago
And I thought porn and cat pictures where responsible for 70% of web traffic… TIL
geogle@lemmy.world 5 months ago
This is just what the bots are into.
Thetimefarm@lemm.ee 5 months ago
It’s why AI porn is so popular all of a sudden, all the bots thought human porn was weird.
Alchemy@lemmy.world 5 months ago
70% of my web traffic, anyways.
JeffKerman1999@sopuli.xyz 5 months ago
Yeah dead internet. And I hope this news will kill online marketing for good
3TH4Li4@feddit.ch 5 months ago
As long as real users exist on the internet, marketing will follow. If centralized social media will be even more of a shithole than already is, then they will slowly target the decentralized. You won’t escape marketing.
CaptainSpaceman@lemmy.world 5 months ago
But if 73% of traffic is fake, and they monitor traffic to determine sentiment and marketing strategies, then who are they actually marketing TO?
JeffKerman1999@sopuli.xyz 5 months ago
Man they caught
Googleevil actors using Google’s infra that pumped up view numbers for video impressions and milking advertisers.They got swindled millions by the 3ve “scandal”.
There’s botfarms clicking ads and following brands.
There’s warehouses full of smartphones that fake download and fake use apps and fake watch video ads…
At this point it’s a money laundering scheme. I refuse to believe that those people responsible are that stupid.
affiliate@lemmy.world 5 months ago
i hate it when i open my laptop and there’s an error sign blocking the trackpad
A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I miss the days when the internet was a fad that most people were apathetic towards.
AlecSadler@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
banner exchange 😂
A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Internet yellow pages and ring networks and word of mouth and slips of paper with weird urls written out on them.
lolcatnip@reddthat.com 5 months ago
So the same as snail mail and phone calls?
ThePrivacyPolicy@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
I recently switched cell providers to save a pile of money, but the new one doesn’t have call control like the old did. 100% of my calls over the last two weeks were spam calls. I keep telling myself the savings are worth it, but my God it’s annoying.
tpd6@futurology.today 5 months ago
Giving india access to to the internet was a mistake
WhiteOakBayou@lemmy.world 5 months ago
None of the Indians I’ve met are bots
tpd6@futurology.today 5 months ago
They are the ones who make bots that flood the internet. But yes most of them act like bots too.
ZeroCool@feddit.ch 5 months ago
Bravely said on a throwaway. 🙄
tpd6@futurology.today 5 months ago
Good morning sir
leekleak@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Oh no! Poor people…
3TH4Li4@feddit.ch 5 months ago
Jokes on you majority of internet users are not from India, but from English speaking countries. Any other language takes a smaller percentage.
RGB3x3@lemmy.world 5 months ago
No I’m not!
Daxtron2@startrek.website 5 months ago
No I’m… Doesn’t…
Newguy@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Bot wars
Synthead@lemmy.world 5 months ago
!veryrealtechpics@lemmy.world
thelastknowngod@lemm.ee 5 months ago
Wonder what the engineering solution to this could look like…
Thinking something like a zero trust model being required for all web requests… Like the target address would need to receive a validated identity token from some third party but that token couldn’t contain identifying info about the requester. Likewise, the validating third party would need to verify the identity of the requester without having knowledge of the target address.
Then that raises more questions like who would we all be comfortable trusting as a verifier and what data would we use for that validation? The validation system and the data used to validate would need to be provided for free too to account for low income people so no subscription services or hardware MFA keys. Also who counts as an identity to be validated?
What do enforcement mechanisms look like if this does get built? Are the validators entirely passive or do they actively participate in the process? Like do we have rate limits imposed by the validation engine or do we just leave that to the target address/organization to impose themselves? What happens if someone is banned from a site? Does the site notify the validators to drop requests earlier in the lifetime of a request? Do individuals get a lower request quota than corporations? Would you have to form a company just to prototype a new tool/product?
If someone seriously wanted to work on this I’d jump on the opportunity to work with them. It sounds like a fascinating project.
Rodeo@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
It’s called Google’s “Web Integrity API” and it’s a horrifically bad idea.
paddirn@lemmy.world 5 months ago
More evidence for the Dead Internet Theory
3TH4Li4@feddit.ch 5 months ago
Not yet but soon it will be
CosmicCleric@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Death by a thousand
cutsbot posts.qooqie@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad thing if people were good, but it can easily be abused as we’ve seen with election manipulation.