this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2023

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Lemmy.ca Support / Questions

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Support / Questions specific to lemmy.ca.

For support / questions related to the lemmy software itself, go to [email protected]

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Should we block OpenAI from scrapping the server? (platform.openai.com)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

17 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Right now, robots.txt on lemmy.ca is configured this way

User-Agent: *
  Disallow: /login
  Disallow: /login_reset
  Disallow: /settings
  Disallow: /create_community
  Disallow: /create_post
  Disallow: /create_private_message
  Disallow: /inbox
  Disallow: /setup
  Disallow: /admin
  Disallow: /password_change
  Disallow: /search/
  Disallow: /modlog

Would it be a good idea privacy-wise to deny GPTBot from scrapping content from the server?

User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /

Thanks!

all 18 comments

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 11 months ago

Yes, please.

We can't stop LLM developers from scraping our conversations if they're determined to do so, but we can at least make our wishes clear. If they respect our wishes, then great. If they don't, then they'll be unable to plead ignorance, and our signpost in the road (along with those from other instances) might influence legislation as it's drafted in the coming years.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I'm on board for this, but I feel obliged to point out that it's basically symbolic and won't mean anything. Since all the data is federated out, they have a plethora of places to harvest it from - or more likely just run their own activitypub harvester.

I've thrown a block into nginx so I don't need to muck with robots.txt inside the lemmy-ui container.

# curl -H 'User-agent: GPTBot' https://lemmy.ca/ -i
HTTP/2 403

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

I imagine they rate limit their requests too so I doubt you'll notice any difference in resource usage. OVH is Unmetered* so bandwidth isn't really a concern either.

I don't think it will hurt anything but adding it is kind of pointless for the reasons you said.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Yes. Ban them.

if ($http_user_agent = "GPTBot") {
  return 403;
}

[–] jman269 6 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Probably want == instead else we will all be forbidden

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I would have thought so too, but == failed the syntax check

2023/08/07 15:36:59 [emerg] 2315181#2315181: unexpected "==" in condition in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/lemmy.ca.conf:50

You actually want ~ though because GPTBot is just in the user agent, it's not the full string.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Strangely, = works the same as == with nginx. It's a very strange config format...

https://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_rewrite_module.html#if

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Look at me! I'm the GPTBot now!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Thanks for empowering my lazyness =)

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago

1000% yes. Please block them.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Is this even possible without all federated instances also prohibiting them?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago

You take action where you can ;)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

Yes

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Are they even respecting those files?

But yeah, sure, it's worth trying!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

It's from the official documentation.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Worth trying for what reason?

[–] [email protected] -2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

No, definitely not. Our work posted in the open is done so because we want it to be open.

It is understandable that not all work wants to be open, but access would already be appropriately locked down for all robots (and humans!) who are not a member of the secret club in those cases. There is no need for special treatment here.