What are robots?

[playtime]

 

[QuickHitCurepon]

These robots are getting friskier.

 

[the other mike]

Now I know why this thread has gotten 11,000 views in 1 month.
Many questions remain about 9/11 as we near the 18th anniversary.

 

[the other mike]

So far they've left me alone but my wife said she's being followed a lot.

 

[flacaltenn]

Just scrolling down and noticed The Who’s on line section. X number of members, a larger number of guests, and 141 robots. What is that? 141 robots? Can someone explain?

I read all the very not helpful but funny comments on the 1st page and nobody had yet answered..

A robot is a web crawler.. They are used by the search companies, the web rating companies, advertisers, mega social media, law enforcement -- basically ANYONE who wants to do analysis or statistics of web activity... And it's perfectly legal.. Unless it's nefarious (like foreign powers looking for popular emotions to leverage for disinformation campaigns) --- and THEN --- it's STILL LEGAL....

So there's a lot of them.. Some are helpful, others not.. But there's nothing anyone can do about it... Go Bing your USMB board name and see what pops up !!!

 

[flacaltenn]

My name comes up a lot at "site rating" sites.. Where the mouth-breathers we ban permanently from USMB go to bad mouth our fine dysfunctional member community... Thanks to the robot army I'm almost famous with reviews like this one..

“Gleeful $#*!ishness from FlaCalTenn”
7/28/18

The new senior mod is out to get all those that he has stalked. He is also in the middle of a hostile takeover to implement his way of being a dyck.

So much fun...

 

[flacaltenn]

So far they've left me alone but my wife said she's being followed a lot.

You just got to know the limits of cosplay there Angelo... Try a diff costume...

 

[Crepitus]

Well thank you B. I was over my head by the second sentence. So let’s think this through. If you know they are here, why can’t you keep them out? Or is their a symbiotic relationship where google leaves you alone or at least doesn’t punish you if you let the bots in? So bots are taking my content on here and filing it away for future reference or prosecution? I wonder who has access to this.

They are popping in a grabbing search results. The admin wouldn't want to keep them out even if they could. Potential new members might follow a link and join up.

 

[Rigby5]

People try to induce web crawler bots because that is how you get sooner in the search results.
The higher up you are in search results, the more likely you get new interested people.
People pay to get more bots.