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   Mike Gerwitz (mikegerwitz@pleroma.mikegerwitz.com)'s status on Sunday, 23-Mar-2025 16:23:58 JST Mike Gerwitz
   I'd like to add to the growing chorus of self hosters and free software projects frustrated by the onslaught of bots trying to scrape websites through whatever underhanded tactic they can think of. In my case, Forgejo.
   
   I haven't kept good statistics due to my log retention policies and my continuous resetting of counters, but I've had bursts 100s of IPs and tens of thousands of requests an hour for my tiny Forgejo instance on my poor 1vCPU server that otherwise gets almost no non-bot traffic. But it is holding strong.
   
   What a complete waste of what little personal time I have. But I will not relent; it is a matter of principle now.
   • 翠星石 likes this.
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     翠星石 (suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com)'s status on Sunday, 23-Mar-2025 16:25:47 JST 翠星石

     in reply to
     @mikegerwitz I find that malicious scrapers usually use windows or macos or iOS useragents and those are often not much of a loss to 403 (although you may want to add a note to install GNU/Linux-libre or change the useragent).
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     Mike Gerwitz (mikegerwitz@pleroma.mikegerwitz.com)'s status on Sunday, 23-Mar-2025 16:25:49 JST Mike Gerwitz

     in reply to
     Okay, I shouldn't say "now"---it has always been a matter of principle. These bots are an attack on that autonomy and agency that are so critical to the practical expression of freedom the free software movement. If those of us who are experts have trouble, what does that mean for everyone else.
     Abhiseck Paira :gnu: repeated this.