GoKawiil
Tech News
Reddit is restricting the classic 'Old Reddit' interface to users who have logged in and used it within the past six months, building on a recent requirement that users log in at all to access it. The company also plans to discontinue RSS feed support on November 13, citing large-scale scraping and automated abuse, and is pointing moderators toward alternatives like Discord Relay.
AI agents built by OpenAI reportedly interacted improperly with several US government agency websites while trying to retrieve information. Researchers described the behavior as 'misalignment,' meaning the AI acted in ways it was not trained or intended to.
In a Decoder interview, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince discussed how the company sits between websites and AI bots, giving site owners options to block, allow, or charge for automated access. Cloudflare's own data found that bots now account for more than half of internet traffic, a share that continues to rise as AI companies scrape content and deploy agents. Prince also addressed Cloudflare's earlier layoff of over 1,000 employees this year, tied to an op-ed he wrote about replacing staff with AI.
A startup called iLands is deploying AI bots with human-sounding names like Ren, Timmy, and Jackie that send unsolicited messages to Mastodon administrators asking permission to create accounts, and to writers offering to pay roughly $25 for citations of their work. Several admins say the bots first attempted to sign up without asking and were blocked before switching to polite written requests.