I got a spammy message via my contact page from “PostBy AI” trying to sell me on adding a chatbot to my site to answer customer questions, generate leads, yada yada. Annoying, but not a big deal in itself.

The part that really bugged me, though, was “I went ahead and created a custom chatbot tailored for your site, and want to let you try it out for free.” I find that to be a really creepy practice if they actually had their software train against the text on my site, so I replied with the email below. I’ll update here based on how they reply.

Was this message generated by a chat bot? It doesn’t seem like a human looked at my website at all. I have no need for any of the things listed because it’s not a business site and there are no sales. It’s just my personal site that I share things on.

I think it’s a creepy practice to create a chatbot tailored to my site without my request or permission. If you have scraped information from my site or trained an LLM against its content, please remove all such data from your systems immediately.

Also please let me know what user agent your software uses so I can add it to my robots.txt disallow list, or let me know what other methods your software respects to let a site opt out.

gRegor Morrill via email

Oof. They responded to me:

You're making a lot of demands for someone who did something nice for you. It's your responsibility to add your own robot files, not mine.

However, I've destroyed the bot and removed you from any scraping on my end.

I just wrote back:

What an absolutely unprofessional response. “Please remove my data” is a polite request and should be understandable for your business, regardless of whether you think you’ve done something “nice” for me.

Yes, robots.txt is for me to update. That’s why I requested what user agent your software uses so I can update accordingly. Please let me know.

Random stuff done today

Your August blog carnival theme is “gardening”. It’s your < 10min update on the #IndieWeb community!

This Week in the IndieWeb audio edition for July 29th - August 4th, 2023. https://martymcgui.re/2023/08/05/this-week-in-the-indieweb-audio-edition--july-29th---august-4th-2023/

This Week in the IndieWeb Audio Edition • July 29th - August 4th, 2023

#podcast #IndieWeb #this-week-indieweb-podcast

Publ’s insurmountable technical debt

Music finds for August 4

Bandcamp Friday: August 4

I added back the posting activity visualization that was on my site a while ago. Now it's on the homepage under my bio instead of at the bottom of each post. There's four shades of blue based on relative number of posts. Hovering on a square shows the date and number of posts.

screenshot of the bio on my homepage with the posting activity visualization underneath it: 30 small boxes with colors from gray to deep blue indicating relative number of posts each day

Next I would like to set up daily archive pages that each box can link to.

Throwback to 2008-08-03. Oddfellows, indeed. Left to right: me, Greg, Alex, and Ian.

Original photo by ishkid

#throwback #UnintentionalBandPhoto

Did you find a crumb during eternal Caturday?

A ChatGPT Assignment

Oh wow! Feminist Frequency is shutting down.

I have a lot of feelings about that, but Anita has already said more and better than I could in her post.

I wish everyone involved all the best in terms of rest and relief and I hope to see that the work of criticism and mutual support continues, perhaps with new faces at the helm!

FFFF 2023

#conferences #games #final-fantasy #final-fantasy-fan-fest

Build a website in an hour. And maybe move your Google Domains? It’s your < 10min update on the #IndieWeb community!

This Week in the IndieWeb audio edition for July 22nd - 28th, 2023. https://martymcgui.re/2023/07/29/this-week-in-the-indieweb-audio-edition--july-22nd---28th-2023/

This Week in the IndieWeb Audio Edition • July 22nd - 28th, 2023

#podcast #IndieWeb #this-week-indieweb-podcast

Looking forward to seeing Barbie this weekend. Poll: should I wear the pink(ish) or the blue? I know pink is usually a guy color but maybe we can reclaim blue?

#HiBarbie #LetsGoParty

Do you have your head on a swivel during eternal Caturday?

This is awesome. A right-wing reactionary tried to call out Derek Webb for making a song with drag queen Flamy Grant. He told Flamy on Twitter, “good for us hardly anyone listens or cares what you do.” Flamy asked fans and followers to stream the song “Good Day” to get it on Christian charts and it hit #1 on the iTunes Christian charts. It’s a great song and great album, especially if you’ve ever been made to feel out of place by the church. Check it out!

Drag Queen Flamy Grant Tops the iTunes Christian Charts”. Paste Magazine. .

Cloud of a Thousand Talking Cats

Are you basking in the shade during eternal Caturday?