Koko Analytics Recording SBInstitutionsBot/0.1 Requests as Visitors/Page Visits · Issue #296 · ibericode/koko-analytics by nafnlj (GitHub)
My Set-Up I run the non-pro version of Koko Analytics on my WordPress site. I disable cookies and exclude visits from all logged-in users. What Happened? On two separate days, Koko Analytics was sh...

On March `12 and 19, I received a highly unusual number of visitors and page views on The New Leaf Journal according to Koko Analytics. By “unusual,” I mean about 10X as many visitors as expected. No individual article had an unusual number of views and my Koko Analytics stats showed the usual list of referrers (mostly search engines) at usual referral numbers. I checked by server logs on the 19th and determined that the likely culprit was SBInstitutionsBot/0.1 (it appears to be a Japanese web crawler for AI), which was hammering my site with requests as I was seeing unusually high visitor numbers. I used Jeff Starr’s BBQ Pro firewall plugin to block the bot. My Koko Analytics stats quickly returned to normal. I reported the issue to Koko Analytics on GitHub, so I hope the relevant IP addresses are added to the do not count list if it turns out that my diagnosis was correct. (In any event, one of my former visitors, PoorlyConfiguredWebCrawler, was much better behaved than SBInstitutionsBot.)

Wired wrote an article about Amazon’s dream of having its AI buy stuff on behalf of customers. I am not going to dignify this inane, anti-competitive idea with my patented full analysis. Instead, I will note that Amazon’s current AI summaries of product reviews, most of which are probably fake anyway, are not ringing endorsements of the company’s prowess in this area.

Blogging and AI: A Personal Take by Greg Morris (Greg Morris)
I've been mulling over this clash between AI and the content it's trained on for some time now. As a frequent user of AI and a regular online publisher, I see both sides of the coin. I'm well aware that the articles I put out there probably end up as fodder for some AI training algorithm. And while I know many writers are upset about their work being used this way without compensation, I personally don't get too riled up about it.

I came across an interesting take on blogging and AI by Greg Morris, an independent blogger. He states that while he sees the issue of AI language models training on internet writing without compenstation or authorization, he is not personally bothered by it. From his perspective, “once I publish something online, I’ve pretty much let it go. It’s out there in the wild, free for anyone to use, maybe even to profit from. And I’m okay with that. It’s a part of the deal you accept when you decide to publish online.”

I concur in part and dissent in part.

I concur with him that there is nothing anyone can do from keeping their writing or media from being used by language models or scraped for other nefarious purposes. There are ways to limit exposure, but once one puts his or her writing online, he or she cannot fully control what happens with it. While I accept this, however, I disagree with Mr. Morris’ take that it is not a problem because “[y]our work s both yours and not yours at the same time.” I think my work is mine unless otherwise explicitly stated. I just accept that we live in an imperfect world and I do not think some of the bad or annoying things on the internet should deter people from building their own digital homes.

I have never used Linkedin. I have also never been tempted to use Linkedin. But what if Linkedin added some new feature to make me sign up? I quote from a report by Mr. Mauricio B. Holguin on AlternativeTo: “LinkedIn has introduced new AI-powered features aimed at improving professional networking, simplifying networking tasks such as making connections, job searching, and content sharing.” While using AI to help guide users’ Linkedin network interactions will surely (operative word) make Linkedin a better (other operative word) place, I will continue to sit on the sidelines.