If you follow me and see that I have posted fresh nonsense, only to click on it and feel snubbed because I’m now a members-only club, just know it’s nothing personal.
What’s happening? Hell if I know. Lately I’ve had random notifications that my “stats are booming.” I’d love to think my writing is that compelling, but when I look at the content that’s garnering attention, it’s not a single post, but outdated political posts that are no longer relevant. They’re viewed alphabetically. I’ve been hacking away at this blog for 12-13 years, so there are thousands of entries.
My mind raced with thoughts. Could it be aliens, ICE creating a dossier, AI programmers…?
I mentioned this in a recent post and asked if anyone else was experiencing the same thing. I don’t want to name the blogger who responded (because they are under attack too) but their words articulated my experience better than I had.
“Lydia, if your views are suddenly “booming,” your blog is probably under attack from web crawlers (bots) using your posts for Al training. Starting in mid-September, my blog began receiving thousands of views from China. They started to exceed 5,000 a day at one point. Then suddenly it stopped, but started up again in early October. But this time, instead of originating from China, most were coming from the U.S., along with unusually high numbers from Chile and Bangladesh.” ~F
That is what’s happening to me. Hmm… Going private defeats the purpose of my blog. I’ll be ghosting my followers. I reached out to Jetpack for help, and this is what they said:
Maybe they should do something. I took their advice, researched, and shopped for an anti-bot plugin. I need one that is compatible with WordPress. It looks like I’ll pay for the service, which means I’ll have less money for blue clip-on hair extensions. Will my writing get lost in a transfer? What if I lose my mind, forget who I am, and lock myself out? I’m also worried about losing followers.
I found what I was looking for, but I need a Gen Z assist (my son). I’ve tried to figure it out; I will. Technology is a double-edged sword. For now, I’m going to go public for an hour or so to test the bots and maybe engage a few humans.
Don’t try this at home, wearing black.
If you engage a prompt requesting permission to view my posts I’ll try to figure out how to accept your request. 🤔 Lois is currently my only private viewer. 🙃
“If you feel pain, you are alive. If you feel other people’s pain, you are a human being.” ~Leo Tolstoy
“If you’re an inhuman web crawling bot, move along.” ~Me
A lot from Lydia 
I’m still here!
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I’ve seen a bunch of traffic from various places with the one view of various old stuff as well, but my stuff isn’t mostly political. I have not seen more comments or likes. So, vainly, I assume that it is bots not people who don’t like me, so I figured that is was AI training.
You can’t tell where the actual traffic is coming from because the technology that is a VPN can make it look like it is coming from anywhere. If I need to use the internet for financial stuff when away from home I use a VPN and can basically tell it where I want to appear to be. For banking I choose a server in my home town no matter where I am, for example.
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I’ve have the same experience, and figured pretty quickly that the traffic was produced by bots. This event happened during the two months that I was not writing new posts. Exact scenario – old posts, opened randomly. I wondered what was the purpose – It didn’t occur to me that the posts were scanned to train AI programs. That makes sense.
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Yes, the large number of views for me were old posts. The weird traffic has stopped, so I’ll do nothing but monitor the views for now and go private if it starts again. In this case, I’m sorry I’m in good company.
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