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148 lines
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5.3 KiB
Markdown
148 lines
No EOL
5.3 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: "Blocking AI Crawlers"
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date: 2024-04-12
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lastmod: "2024-06-13T20:51:54Z"
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description: "Using Hugo to politely ask AI bots to not steal my content - and then configuring Cloudflare's WAF to actively block them, just to be sure."
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featured: false
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toc: true
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categories: Backstage
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tags:
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- cloud
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- cloudflare
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- hugo
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- meta
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- selfhosting
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---
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I've seen some recent posts from folks like [Cory Dransfeldt](https://coryd.dev/posts/2024/go-ahead-and-block-ai-web-crawlers/) and [Ethan Marcotte](https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/blockin-bots/) about how (and *why*) to prevent your personal website from being slurped up by the crawlers that AI companies use to [actively enshittify the internet](https://boehs.org/node/llms-destroying-internet). I figured it was past time for me to hop on board with this, so here we are.
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My initial approach was to use [Hugo's robots.txt templating](https://gohugo.io/templates/robots/) to generate a `robots.txt` file based on a list of bad bots I got from [ai.robots.txt on GitHub](https://github.com/ai-robots-txt/ai.robots.txt).
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I dumped that list into my `config/params.toml` file, *above* any of the nested elements (since toml is kind of picky about that...).
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```toml
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robots = [
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"AdsBot-Google",
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"Amazonbot",
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"anthropic-ai",
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"Applebot-Extended",
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"AwarioRssBot",
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"AwarioSmartBot",
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"Bytespider",
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"CCBot",
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"ChatGPT",
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"ChatGPT-User",
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"Claude-Web",
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"ClaudeBot",
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"cohere-ai",
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"DataForSeoBot",
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"Diffbot",
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"FacebookBot",
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"Google-Extended",
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"GPTBot",
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"ImagesiftBot",
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"magpie-crawler",
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"omgili",
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"Omgilibot",
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"peer39_crawler",
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"PerplexityBot",
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"YouBot"
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]
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```
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I then created a new template in `layouts/robots.txt`:
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```text
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Sitemap: {{ .Site.BaseURL }}/sitemap.xml
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# hello robots [^_^]
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# let's be friends <3
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User-agent: *
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Disallow:
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# except for these bots which are not friends:
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{{ range .Site.Params.bad_robots }}
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User-agent: {{ . }}
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{{- end }}
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Disallow: /
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```
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And enabled the template processing for this in my `config/hugo.toml` file:
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```toml
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enableRobotsTXT = true
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```
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Now Hugo will generate the following `robots.txt` file for me:
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```text
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Sitemap: https://runtimeterror.dev/sitemap.xml
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# hello robots [^_^]
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# let's be friends <3
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User-agent: *
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Disallow:
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# except for these bots which are not friends:
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User-agent: AdsBot-Google
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User-agent: Amazonbot
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User-agent: anthropic-ai
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User-agent: Applebot-Extended
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User-agent: AwarioRssBot
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User-agent: AwarioSmartBot
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User-agent: Bytespider
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User-agent: CCBot
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User-agent: ChatGPT
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User-agent: ChatGPT-User
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User-agent: Claude-Web
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User-agent: ClaudeBot
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User-agent: cohere-ai
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User-agent: DataForSeoBot
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User-agent: Diffbot
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User-agent: FacebookBot
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User-agent: Google-Extended
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User-agent: GPTBot
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User-agent: ImagesiftBot
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User-agent: magpie-crawler
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User-agent: omgili
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User-agent: Omgilibot
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User-agent: peer39_crawler
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User-agent: PerplexityBot
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User-agent: YouBot
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Disallow: /
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```
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Cool!
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I also dropped the following into `static/ai.txt` for [good measure](https://site.spawning.ai/spawning-ai-txt):
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```text
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# Spawning AI
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# Prevent datasets from using the following file types
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User-Agent: *
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Disallow: /
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Disallow: *
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```
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That's all well and good, but these files carry all the weight and authority of a "No Soliciting" sign. Do I *really* trust these bots to honor it?
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I'm hosting this site [on Neocities](/deploy-hugo-neocities-github-actions/), and Neocities unfortunately (though perhaps wisely) doesn't give me control of the web server there. But the site is fronted by Cloudflare, and that does give me a lot of options for blocking stuff I don't want.
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So I added a [WAF Custom Rule](https://developers.cloudflare.com/waf/custom-rules/) to block those unwanted bots. (I could have used their [User Agent Blocking](https://developers.cloudflare.com/waf/tools/user-agent-blocking) to accomplish the same, but you can only set 10 of those on the free tier. I can put all the user agents together in a single WAF Custom Rule.)
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Here's the expression I'm using:
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```text
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(http.user_agent contains "AdsBot-Google") or (http.user_agent contains "Amazonbot") or (http.user_agent contains "anthropic-ai") or (http.user_agent contains "Applebot-Extended") or (http.user_agent contains "AwarioRssBot") or (http.user_agent contains "AwarioSmartBot") or (http.user_agent contains "Bytespider") or (http.user_agent contains "CCBot") or (http.user_agent contains "ChatGPT-User") or (http.user_agent contains "ClaudeBot") or (http.user_agent contains "Claude-Web") or (http.user_agent contains "cohere-ai") or (http.user_agent contains "DataForSeoBot") or (http.user_agent contains "FacebookBot") or (http.user_agent contains "Google-Extended") or (http.user_agent contains "GoogleOther") or (http.user_agent contains "GPTBot") or (http.user_agent contains "ImagesiftBot") or (http.user_agent contains "magpie-crawler") or (http.user_agent contains "Meltwater") or (http.user_agent contains "omgili") or (http.user_agent contains "omgilibot") or (http.user_agent contains "peer39_crawler") or (http.user_agent contains "peer39_crawler/1.0") or (http.user_agent contains "PerplexityBot") or (http.user_agent contains "Seekr") or (http.user_agent contains "YouBot")
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```
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And checking on that rule ~24 hours later, I can see that it's doing some good:
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See ya, AI bots! |