New study finds bots and fraud farms responsible for 73% of web traffic::undefined
The fact that this post is by a bot makes it sound so ironic
The headline stat is a misinterpretation of the study which was done by Arkose Labs which “provides businesses with lasting bot prevention and account security by sapping the financial motivations of cybercriminals.”
That’s pretty vague but skimming it sounds like they prevent automated account creation and takeover. The stat comes from the companies they have access to (who need bot protection enough to pay for it), and 76% of activity on the login/account creation was malicious. That makes a lot more sense. All the various hacks and credential leaks result in bots banging in stolen credentials on high value sites.
The headline stat is a misinterpretation of the study
and 76% of activity on the login/account creation was malicious.
Are you assuming though that that’s 76%, once they’ve created an account, would do no fuether interaction with the Internet after that?
I’m not sure of the point that you’re trying to make?
You think these bots are streaming movies and music? 73% of Internet traffic is not bots. It’s all YouTube, Netflix, Insta, TikTok, Spotify, etc media consumption. 73% of login traffic may be bots, but it’s a teeny drop of global traffic.
73% of login traffic may be bots, but it’s a teeny drop of global traffic.
So you are assuming they’re just logging in and not doing anything else, yes?
That there are no bots that (for example) watch YouTube videos and then gives them a like up or down, depending how they’ve been paid to do so, etc?
Well, I mean, if a bot protection company found malicious activity in account creation, I’m assuming they stopped the account from completing it…?
I’m assuming they stopped the account from completing it…?
They could have let it continue to monitor it, in a honey-pot sort of way, to learn more about the bot, and it’s network.
But I was asking towards intent, not success. Why would people have bots create accounts and then do absolutely nothing with those accounts afterwards?
I mean, that commenter said the headline was a misinterpretation because it’s not 73% of web traffic, but only account creation attempts.
If the attempts are stopped, and the bot fails in creating an account, it isn’t able to post/comment/do whatever it needed to do, and isn’t contributing to “web traffic” as much as the other 27% of real people (or, well, uncaught bots).
Arkose does log-in protection for Roblox (and others but that’s the one I’m familiar with) where the user has to do something like rotate a picture before logging in.
More evidence for the Dead Internet Theory
I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad thing if people were good, but it can easily be abused as we’ve seen with election manipulation.
Holy shit, thinking of all the resources that are just wasted for this shit… Imagine you could just slash all web infrastructures by two thirds.
Soon there will be content created and consumed entirely by generative “ai,” an almost shadow-culture.
100% on Twitter, 150% on Facebook. Or maybe the other way around 🤷
Was scrolling through Facebook as I still use it to keep in touch with family. 20 sponsored posts for every one actual post. Facebook is terrible.
I just went on my annual visit. I’m not sure if it was ublock or what, but it was actually a fairly pleasant experience with no ‘sponsored’ content. Reminded me of the Facebook of old. Accessed through the browser, of course. I don’t want that cancerous app on my phone.
I am on mobile. I’ll try desktop!
I was on mobile too, just on Firefox with ublock.
I caught that after I replied. Firefox with ublock is now my default android browser. You’re right…going into feed mode to see posts chronologically with ad block is the Facebook of old. Thanks for the tip.
How are you about to do that on Facebook? I can’t even sign up without it asking for my ID
I had an account for about 10 years which I never used at first, then a fair bit for 3-4 years, linked it to Instagram and WhatsApp. Then I didn’t sign into Facebook for 2-3 years and when I tried, despite having the same email and using the linked IG accounts, they demanded my drivers license. Uh, no way in hell I’ll ever do that, so guess I’m not signing into stupid Facebook. Not sure who the hell they think they are or why they believe I’d consider their awful website so important as to send them my ID.
I didn’t sign into Facebook for 2-3 years and when I tried, despite having the same email and using the linked IG accounts, they demanded my drivers license. Uh, no way in hell I’ll ever do that, so guess I’m not signing into stupid Facebook.
Curious if you give Discord your phone number?
I don’t but I am aware that it can be used to identify you, as well as from other people if they give open access to their contacts. They only have my email.
I haven’t used discord but I’m sure I’ve supplied plenty of personally identifiable information to other companies.
And I thought porn and cat pictures where responsible for 70% of web traffic… TIL
This is just what the bots are into.
It’s why AI porn is so popular all of a sudden, all the bots thought human porn was weird.
70% of my web traffic, anyways.
Yeah dead internet. And I hope this news will kill online marketing for good
Horse shit.
Sandvine still released traffic reports. So does Cable Labs.
Maybe attempted connections, but not volume / tonnage / bytes.
Okay, bot. I believe it, doesn’t surprise me at all. Lemmy is also full of bots.
I’m a bot
I miss the days when the internet was a fad that most people were apathetic towards.
before we even had search engines, and had to rely on websites listing links to every website.
banner exchange 😂
Internet yellow pages and ring networks and word of mouth and slips of paper with weird urls written out on them.
1px midis with auto play.
oh man… and frames. and tables.
Whens the last time you saw a classic html table?
Well, I work in web dev as a career so unfortunately the answer to that is not long enough ago :/
Last week when a “Senior Fullstack Developer” who has had “senior” in his title for more than 4 years used a table for layout.
i hate it when i open my laptop and there’s an error sign blocking the trackpad
Bot wars
No I’m not!
How much of the internet is automated should be the real question.
Wonder what the engineering solution to this could look like…
Thinking something like a zero trust model being required for all web requests… Like the target address would need to receive a validated identity token from some third party but that token couldn’t contain identifying info about the requester. Likewise, the validating third party would need to verify the identity of the requester without having knowledge of the target address.
Then that raises more questions like who would we all be comfortable trusting as a verifier and what data would we use for that validation? The validation system and the data used to validate would need to be provided for free too to account for low income people so no subscription services or hardware MFA keys. Also who counts as an identity to be validated?
What do enforcement mechanisms look like if this does get built? Are the validators entirely passive or do they actively participate in the process? Like do we have rate limits imposed by the validation engine or do we just leave that to the target address/organization to impose themselves? What happens if someone is banned from a site? Does the site notify the validators to drop requests earlier in the lifetime of a request? Do individuals get a lower request quota than corporations? Would you have to form a company just to prototype a new tool/product?
If someone seriously wanted to work on this I’d jump on the opportunity to work with them. It sounds like a fascinating project.
It’s called Google’s “Web Integrity API” and it’s a horrifically bad idea.
