If they are I'm sure it's in some obscure way you'd never be able to prove anyway. I think it's more likely they're just being abused if that is the case. It can happen to anyone offering a service.
It's just such a low hanging fruit and it makes hosting incrementally more expensive and complex. The average small-time hoster will get pummeled without an modern active defense and a solid 50mbps minimum copper or fiber uplink. You can get lucky for a while as long as you aren't hosting anything of crawling value.
I've been hosting mostly the same stuff for almost 14 years now, and it wasn't until about late 2024 that bot traffic has steadily increased to the point where there the bot traffic averages to 10mbps stream. I haven't wanted to know what that would look like if over 70% of my bot traffic wasn't already being heavily attenuated.
It's just a centralizing force and it's a bummer as it's getting more difficult for me to suggest people self host, because most of the traffic will be abuse.
I've been hosting mostly the same stuff for almost 14 years now, and it wasn't until about late 2024 that bot traffic has steadily increased to the point where there the bot traffic averages to 10mbps stream. I haven't wanted to know what that would look like if over 70% of my bot traffic wasn't already being heavily attenuated.
It's just a centralizing force and it's a bummer as it's getting more difficult for me to suggest people self host, because most of the traffic will be abuse.
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