Clearing up a couple of things about “bot checks”. Who you should be mad at, why you’re seeing them — and why we’re most likely only going to see more of them.
Mastodon user Alex Kunz has clarified the reasons behind the increased prevalence of "bot checks," such as CAPTCHAs, across the web. These checks are primarily a response to sophisticated scraping activities, often driven by large AI models seeking to train on vast amounts of online data. Kunz suggests that while these measures are a nuisance, they are becoming a necessary defense against unauthorized data harvesting. AI
IMPACT Increased bot checks may impact the accessibility of online content for AI training and general web users.