@ostechnix New dirt on #DDG: Weinberg is now endorsing the web top privacy adversary (#Cloudflare): http://web.archive.org/web/20210730102406/blog.cloudflare.com/crawler-hints-how-cloudflare-is-reducing-the-environmental-impact-of-web-searches/.
@1ll173r47 @ostechnix It should 1st be realized that #Cloudflare is inherently harmful to the environment b/c of all the #CAPTCHA images it needlessly pushes. Bitmaps are the biggest burdon on the environment & CF probably pushes more than any company in the world. Cloudflare claims all non-search robots are "malicious". This exposes the deception in their claim that Tor is mostly malicious (overcount).
@1ll173r47 @ostechnix Because #Cloudflare is the top offender of privacy on the web & probably the top environmental abuser on the net, it's actually best just to avoid Cloudflare sites altogether. So the most environmentally friendly search engine is one that does not crawl CF sites, & does not send people to CF sites either (where CAPTCHAs would be presented).
@ostechnix @1ll173r47 In fact, a project that benefits the environment would be one that identifies websites that are anti-bot, & websites that push #CAPTCHA, both characteristics of which favor heavy image-rich web sessions. Paragraph 9 on this page covers CF environmental issues: https://git.disroot.org/cyberMonk/liberethos_paradigm/src/branch/master/rap_sheets/cloudflare.md
@1ll173r47 @ostechnix It's particularly disgusting that #DuckDuckGo is proactively keen to support crawling #Cloudflare sites, which is ultimately an abuse of #privacy & environmentally detrimental. Weinberg is such a scumbag for taking his already insanely high level of propaganda into the realm of corporate #greenwashing. Microsoft (DDG's supplier) is itself falsely positioned as a "green" corp.
@resist1984 @ostechnix Not disagreeing that cloudflare and DDG are problematic. But the idea that content providers notify search engines when there is additional or updated content is good. WordPress uses pingomatic for that. There should be no reason for search crawlers to actually crawl on their own.
@1ll173r47 @ostechnix yes, it's an advancement by an environmental abuser. It's a good advancement, but they hope to get a reputation for being environmentally sound when in fact environmentalists should be boycotting Cloudflare entirely. Ideally, non-CF sites should have a way to signal which pages they've updated in a generic way, so the footprint is improved on all sites.
@ostechnix @1ll173r47 So #Cloudflare is trying to get credit for DoSing beneficial bots that it has mislabelled as "malicious", & at the same time fails to acknowledge that bots actually represent the most environmentally friendly traffic there is: bots fetch text not images (generally), giving bots a naturally small footprint.