I'm in the #webbotauth meeting at #ietf124. #thanksihateit
Discussion
Loading...
Post
WebBotAuth is a proposed standard for signing HTTP requests so the server knows who is requesting the data. All fine so far; it's what we use for ActivityPub for domain blocking, for example.
Unfortunately, it's being billed as a way for content owners to grant access to their data to only certain AI bots.
And the plan is to use an allowlist -- only certain bots can get the data.
And it will be implemented by CloudFlare, which protects 20% of all Websites.
ActivityPub has a lot of server-to-server communications. Those servers are unlikely to buy their way onto a bot allowlist. If their requests are going to fail for servers on CloudFlare, we've got a problem.
bonfire.cafe
A space for Bonfire maintainers and contributors to communicate
Automatic federation enabled