this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2025
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A pseudonymous coder has created and released an open source “tar pit” to indefinitely trap AI training web crawlers in an infinitely, randomly-generating series of pages to waste their time and computing power. The program, called Nepenthes after the genus of carnivorous pitcher plants which trap and consume their prey, can be deployed by webpage owners to protect their own content from being scraped or can be deployed “offensively” as a honeypot trap to waste AI companies’ resources.

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[–] [email protected] -3 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (6 children)

Actually, it does specifically target AI trainers, as it poisons their training data. These webcrawlers are just a means to an end.

[–] HexadecimalSky 4 points 6 days ago (5 children)

It affects them, yes, but it doesn't only affect them. It's just a poison in the well tactic that can affect them. but because it isn't specific even more companies will work to "fix it". Also while it can waste resources, it doesn't stop A.I. training in most cases or render them incompetent.

For example if I add rat poison to all the local water ways, it would get rid of the pigeon problem, so it targets pigeons?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (4 children)

The first part of what you said, contradicts itself, and the second part of what you said is a terrible metaphor. Especially considering that these web crawlers that crawl for AI training data only target that. And this specifically target AI training web crawlers.

So, it’s more like putting a very specific rat poison in the waterways that is only poisonous to rats.

It seems like you don’t understand how this works.

[–] HexadecimalSky 4 points 6 days ago

From reading the article it just seems it targets web crawlers, by having a infinitely looping url. How does it target A.I. training webcrawls specifically?

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