We can't have nice things because of AI scrapers

kept by eddie jan 14

AI scrapers ignoring robots.txt and bypassing bulk downloads are overloading volunteer-run open data projects like MetaBrainz, forcing them to restrict access and harming legitimate users.

2002: Last.fm and Audioscrobbler Herald the Social Web
The article recounts how Last.fm and Audioscrobbler pioneered social music tracking and recommendation in the early 2000s.
also on ListenBrainz, MusicBrainz, #open-source
How Markdown took over the world - Anil Dash
Markdown, created by John Gruber in 2004 as a simple plain-text formatting tool for blogging, has become the ubiquitous standard for annotating everything from AI prompts to code repositories.
also on #web-history, #open-source
Internet Handle
The piece argues that domains should serve as universal internet handles, and AT Protocol-based apps like Bluesky already enable this.
also on #web-history, #open-source
Social Media Scraping APIs for YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X & LinkedIn
SocialKit provides a unified API that extracts transcripts, summaries, comments, and stats from YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X, and LinkedIn as clean JSON.
also on #data-extraction, #api
Connect — Exa
Exa Connect aggregates data from over a dozen third-party providers — including Crunchbase, Similarweb, and ZoomInfo — into a single API request for AI agents.
also on #data-extraction, #api