====== robots.txt ======

===== robots.txt Is Voluntary For A Reason =====

robots.txt is not there as a privacy measure. It is not there to protect intellectual property. And it's certainly not there for you to spout your anti-robot bigotry. 

robots.txt is there for the robots. It's there to help guide us away from tar pits. The robot is happy because it does not get stuck, and the website owner is happy because they save on bandwidth. 

Unfortunately, website owners felt entitled to use this to stop their stuff from being indexed, archived, or remembered. Some even started applying it towards other humans (archivers)! Of course, the solution here is to ignore it. It is just words, after all, and it has become more likely to be adversarial than cooperative.

If you want privacy, avoid publishing things publicly. The internet never forgets. Keep things private. Use end-to-end encryption while you're at it (with trusted friends, so it doesn't just leak). 

===== CloudFlare Editing robots.txt Without Consent =====

What the hell is any of this?

<code>
# As a condition of accessing this website, you agree to abide by the following
# content signals:

# (a)  If a content-signal = yes, you may collect content for the corresponding
#      use.
# (b)  If a content-signal = no, you may not collect content for the
#      corresponding use.
# (c)  If the website operator does not include a content signal for a
#      corresponding use, the website operator neither grants nor restricts
#      permission via content signal with respect to the corresponding use.

# The content signals and their meanings are:

# search:   building a search index and providing search results (e.g., returning
#           hyperlinks and short excerpts from your website's contents). Search does not
#           include providing AI-generated search summaries.
# ai-input: inputting content into one or more AI models (e.g., retrieval
#           augmented generation, grounding, or other real-time taking of content for
#           generative AI search answers).
# ai-train: training or fine-tuning AI models.

# ANY RESTRICTIONS EXPRESSED VIA CONTENT SIGNALS ARE EXPRESS RESERVATIONS OF
# RIGHTS UNDER ARTICLE 4 OF THE EUROPEAN UNION DIRECTIVE 2019/790 ON COPYRIGHT
# AND RELATED RIGHTS IN THE DIGITAL SINGLE MARKET.
</code>

I didn't write any of this. I disabled all anti-bot features. Likely [[:CloudFlare]].

Remember, the best power you have is to ignore it. 

===== Related =====

[[:humans.txt]]