Subj : Re: Social networks
To   : Aaron Thomas
From : Ron L.
Date : Thu Oct 02 2025 07:45:00

-=> Aaron Thomas wrote to Dr. What <=-

 AT> I don't have all the answers, but I don't understand how a big company
 AT> like X couldn't use agent-detection to block all headless browsers,
 AT> with exceptions for legitimate ones. I'm probably overlooking
 AT> something, but sometimes these big tech companies lie about things to
 AT> get their way. For example: "Due to too much spam and bot activity, the
 AT> only trusted email providers are Google and Microsoft."

You might benefit from some of Bruce Schneier's books.  He goes in depth on
topics like this.

But at a high level: A defender has to defend against all attacks.  While an
attacker only needs to perform 1 kind of attack.

So X puts something in place to filter the bots.  But then the people who
control the bots figure out a way around that X hasn't figured out (and
blocked) yet.

Then there's the "how will this change impact our legitimate users?"  If that
impact is very negative then they have to balance the negative bot impact with
the negative user experience.

 AT> This reminds me of my prior paragraph; "Due to bots and impostors,
 AT> Facebook now has no choice but to charge $5 per month to safeguard the
 AT> platform." The kind of people who they want on their platform will walk
 AT> right into that.

Maybe.  $5/month is reasonable for most people.  And Facebook can still offer
stuff for free. ex: your posts are restricted to only people on your friend
list.

 AT> How does the verification work? Do they look at your photo ID? To me,
 AT> that's the only way it could work. But they'd need to have access to
 AT> government databases to check if the ID is legit.

Right now, it's based on making it hard for bots, but not very hard for real
users.

So the "verification" is simply a credit card. It's hard to get a fake credit
card.  And if the bot owners use their own card, it's easy to see that 100
accounts are all "verifying" with the same credit card.


.... Its rarely fun, never easy, and always expensive!
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