When companies like Cloudflare mischaracterize user-driven AI assistants as malicious bots, they're arguing that any automated tool serving users should be suspect—a position that would criminalize email clients and web browsers, or any other service a would-be gatekeeper decided they don’t like.
I wonder if Perplexity or others mix the traffic of the two types so they’re indistinguishable, specifically to make this argument.
@viraptor above mentions that they actually do try first with an explicit perplexity-agent: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44797682 . So there's no ambiguity. The worst they could accuse Cloudflare, is that they don't give website owners an easy way to only block scrapers while allowing user-driven agents (do they?).
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I wonder if Perplexity or others mix the traffic of the two types so they’re indistinguishable, specifically to make this argument.
@viraptor above mentions that they actually do try first with an explicit perplexity-agent: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44797682 . So there's no ambiguity. The worst they could accuse Cloudflare, is that they don't give website owners an easy way to only block scrapers while allowing user-driven agents (do they?).