Re: <nettime> Fwd: [Internet Policy] There are now more bots than humans on the internet.

[GM - tedbyfield via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

Adam —

I’ve seen this news bubble up in a few places, and it seems to 
conflict with what I’ve heard elsewhere from sources I thought at the 
time were reliable, FWIW. The numbers they mentioned were far *worse*, 
in the 70–80% range. In particular, they said a huge segment of that 
was bots of unknown origin: maintainers and purposes not disclosed at 
best, or deliberately and effectively obscured at worst. But those 
people were talking about specific contexts like libraries, so that 
might be a factor in the different numbers — obviously, I don’t 
know.

By the same token, it’s worth asking what Cloudflare’s context is 
and how that would shape how they present things. It isn’t hard to 
imagine why many internet infrastructure companies might be reluctant to 
admit to numbers like that — for example, paying clients might object 
to subsidizing robot invasions and demand the companies actually do 
something to mitigate it. It seems like that’d be a serious risk for 
Cloudflare in particular, for a few reasons: (1) they *are* unusually 
well-positioned to suppress bot traffic, but (2) doing so could cost a 
lot and be very error-prone — all downside in terms of reputational 
risk and their bottom line.

But that suggests Cloudflare is lying, maybe brazenly. For a company 
whose business rests largely on trust, that’d be unwise, so I doubt 
they are. But, following the same distinction about known-vs-unknown 
bots, their 57% number could includes *only* traffic they know with 
absolutely certainty is a bot. If so — *if* — it’d be a good 
example of a phenomenon we all know well: using ‘rigorous 
methodology’ to hide the truth.

To be clear: this is all just my speculation. In a pinch, I’d trust 
Cloudflare first.

Cheers,
Ted
- -
https://counter.ink


On 15 Jun 2026, at 3:53, Adam Burns wrote:

> there goes the neighbourhood.
>
> .a
>
> -------- Forwarded Message --------
> Subject: 	[Internet Policy] There are now more bots than humans on the 
> internet.
> Date: 	Tue, 9 Jun 2026 17:57:46 +0200
> From: 	Carsten Schiefner via InternetPolicy 
> <internetpolicy@elists.isoc.org>
> Reply-To: 	Carsten Schiefner <carsten@schiefner.de>
> To: 	internetpolicy@elists.isoc.org <internetpolicy@elists.isoc.org>
>
>
>
> Dear all -
>
> I consider this remarkable, e.g. in terms of a potentially coming 
> change of money flows or why civil society would and/or should still 
> be interested in Internet Governance when most stuff on the Internet 
> is now of non-human origin.
>
> Best,
>
>     -C.
>
> -------- Forwarded Message --------
> Subject: 	[ih] There are now more bots than humans on the internet. 
> (Elias Al)
> Date: 	Mon, 8 Jun 2026 11:45:12 -0700
> From: 	the keyboard of geoff goodfellow via Internet-history 
> <internet-history@elists.isoc.org>
> Reply-To: 	the keyboard of geoff goodfellow <geoff@iconia.com>
> To: 	Internet-history <internet-history@elists.isoc.org>
>
>
>
> For the first time in history.
>
> Cloudflare just confirmed it.
>
> Bots and AI agents now generate more web traffic than humans for the 
> first
> time in internet history. Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince described it 
> as a
> major turning point. Automated bot requests account for roughly 57% of
> traffic to ordinary webpages worldwide, compared with about 43% 
> generated
> by humans.
>
> And the CEO who announced it did not do so with a polished press 
> release or
> a prepared statement.
>
> He posted four words on X on June 3, 2026: "Welp, that happened 
> faster." [
> https://x.com/eastdakota/status/2062212701414187452]
>
> Here is the full context behind those four words.
 <. . .>
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