I’ve turned off comments and other minor features to improve site performance here because I think AI bots are hogging things.
The scourge of internet traffic currently are data scraping bots slurping up the web. I don’t know why there are so many, why the requests are so often, or if there will ever be an effective way to block them. But it stinks that one must now live in fear and turn off features of one’s website to exist on the web. Sort of like installing bars on our windows or building tall fences to keep out the neighbors.
I don’t know if what Chris was experiencing was all data scraping bots… go look at his comments section for that post. Looks like he was also getting inundated with comment spam as well.