If you write about the messy reality behind "free" internet services: we're seeing #OpenStreetMap hammered by scrapers hiding behind residential proxy/embedded-SDK networks. We're a volunteer-run service and the costs are real. We'd love to talk to a journalist about what we're seeing + how we're responding. #AI #Bots #Abuse
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@osm_tech might be a thing @davidgerard could do on pivot
@froztbyte @osm_tech yeah i'm getting the same AI assholes
as is @RationalWiki (i'm the sysadmin trying to keep the site up in the face of the hammering - we can either lose Google search listing, or we can be literally unusable for humans)
as is @corbet at Linux Weekly News - OSM might be relevant to LWN, a free content project getting hammered by the AI bots
they botnet suburban Android boxes
covered it a bit previously on Pivot:
https://pivot-to-ai.com/2025/06/02/fighting-the-ai-scraper-bots-at-pivot-to-ai-and-rationalwiki/
https://pivot-to-ai.com/2025/09/07/the-ai-scraper-bots-are-hammering-pivot-to-ai-again-please-test/
@davidgerard @froztbyte @osm_tech @RationalWiki @corbet An aside, but I had no idea you keep Rational Wiki running! I love that site. Thank you for all your hard work! I'm sorry the slopbros are trying to ruin it.
@theorangetheme @froztbyte @osm_tech @RationalWiki @corbet i quit the sysadmin job nine years ago, so of course i still have it
@davidgerard @osm_tech @RationalWiki @corbet Also getting and handling them (as you know), but I’d be pretty interested to hear how bigger projects have to handle them
Quick check on latest status since last #iocaine restart: 1.49TB across 1.05B requests served
they never ever stop…
Please contact me on Signal: DanArs.82
@osm_tech Tell me more. You can reach me at sjvn01 <at> gmail.com
@osm_tech I wonder if there's a way to fail2ban requests coming in faster than typically found in human requests.
@BalooUriza We use fail2ban to handle some of this with custom rules, but eventually fail2ban becomes a bottleneck after 100,000 IP addresses.
@osm_tech @BalooUriza For IPv4, a bitmask of the entire address space is a viable "efficient" implementation of blocking. I wonder if there are tools that can do it that way rather than needing a gigantic list.
@osm_tech The proxy SDK providers need to be treated like the DDOS providers they are and prosecuted.
Vielleicht ist das ein Thema für die @lagedernation?
