Under what conditions are bots allowed on Scratch?

Maximouse

It looks like bots that read and write cloud variables are allowed – see this.

The Terms of Use say that using alternate accounts or organizing voting groups to manipulate site statistics, such as purposely trying to get on the “What the Community is Loving/Remixing” rows of the front page is not allowed. This means that bots which follow people, love/favorite projects etc. are against the terms. Someone made “F4F bots” (the bots followed everyone who followed him), but one of them was banned so he also deleted the others.

What about bots that comment on projects or reply to comments? Are they allowed? If so, under what conditions? One Scratcher made a “remind me” bot but a Scratch Team member said “bots that crawl projects are not permitted”. Why? That bot only commented on profiles of people who commented on a project specifically for that – what's wrong with this?

apple502j

This is a word from thisandagain(link - warning: it probably won't load)

thisandagain wrote:
Correct, bots of any kind and most types of 3rd party access to our APIs are not permitted, but I can't control the code that people write. :-)

I'm not sure if it still applies or not (that comment was in May 2019)

It's also worth mentioning that things listed in 3.5 is NOT exclusive - it says "Prohibited activities include, but are not limited to:"

Last edited by apple502j (June 9, 2020 08:07:58)

Maximouse

apple502j wrote:
This is a word from thisandagain(link - warning: it probably won't load)
thisandagain wrote:
Correct, bots of any kind and most types of 3rd party access to our APIs are not permitted, but I can't control the code that people write. :-)

I'm not sure if it still applies or not (that comment was in May 2019)

OK, so why are cloud variable bots permitted then? Some projects that really on such bots became very popular and ST didn't remove them.

apple502j

IIRC I also have comment from thisandagain that 3rd-party access to Cloud Data WS is prohibited. I'll have to search for the useless link again

CatsUnited

Maximouse wrote:
apple502j wrote:
This is a word from thisandagain(link - warning: it probably won't load)
thisandagain wrote:
Correct, bots of any kind and most types of 3rd party access to our APIs are not permitted, but I can't control the code that people write. :-)

I'm not sure if it still applies or not (that comment was in May 2019)
OK, so why are cloud variable bots permitted then? Some projects that really on such bots became very popular and ST didn't remove them.

I believe as long as you aren't spamming the server with too many requests, you should be good.

apple502j

Isn't this for unauthenticated GET requests? I believe there are more restrictions for other requests (such as login, love, follow, post comment, cloud WS)

CatsUnited

apple502j wrote:
Isn't this for unauthenticated GET requests? I believe there are more restrictions for other requests (such as login, love, follow, post comment, cloud WS)

Yeah I think so - I remember hearing about a 10 req per second limit for GET requests, but I thought that also applied to all requests

Maximouse

apple502j wrote:
Isn't this for unauthenticated GET requests? I believe there are more restrictions for other requests (such as login, love, follow, post comment, cloud WS)

For setting cloud variables, authentication is needed.

apple502j

I'm replying to CatsUnited

Maximouse

apple502j wrote:
I'm replying to CatsUnited

OK.

Maximouse

Bump.

Maximouse

Bump.

Maximouse

Bump.

Maximouse

Bump.

jettypumpkin07

Maximouse wrote:
Bump.

Why?

Maximouse

jettypumpkin07 wrote:
Why?

I need an answer.

-InsanityPlays-

Well namesnipe bots are definitely not allowed.

LankyBox01

It depends.
note by kaj: NO CONDITIONS

Last edited by kaj (Tomorrow 00:00:00)

Maximouse

Bump.

Maximouse

Bump.

Discuss Scratch