Running web sites makes me not want to

Self-hosting once gave the writer an enjoyable reason to learn how to configure and maintain websites. That changed when automated AI scrapers began sending enough requests to overwhelm the home internet connection, filling it with generated-content traffic. After rejecting Anubis because its loading delay would inconvenience visitors, the writer tried iocaine, then monitored traffic with iftop and found repeated requests from large cloud-provider networks, including ranges associated with Meta, Azure, and Alibaba. Blocking those ranges through nftables, along with using a blacklist tool, helped reduce the load. The writer also recognizes that some scraping comes through residential connections, making the problem harder to contain.

The strain has prompted a rethink of a photography website that has gone without updates for years. Rather than upload digital images that can be appropriated for commercial AI training, the writer is considering selling physical event zines instead - a more labor-intensive format that seems less vulnerable to mass scraping. This choice reflects broader frustration with the difficulty of running a modest site from home: protecting it now requires considerable technical skill or paying a corporate CDN, despite traffic levels that do not justify that expense. The hope is that making books or zines could turn the retreat from online publishing into a creative opportunity, while preserving work in a physical form.