March 29, 2026
Poison for bots, popcorn for us
Miasma: A tool to trap AI web scrapers in an endless poison pit
Miasma promises to feed AI bots junk — fans cheer, skeptics shrug, namers say “-1”
TLDR: Miasma is a tiny server that lures AI web scrapers into endless self-linking pages filled with junk. Commenters are split between cheering the resistance, mocking it as a trendy nothing-burger, and doubting it works at all—with some warning that publicizing it just helps scrapers adapt faster.
Meet Miasma, a cheeky little server that claims to trap AI web scrapers—those bots that copy websites to train chatbots—in an endless loop of garbage. It serves up “poisoned” text (yes, a literal poison fountain) and links that point back to itself, so bots keep slurping slop forever. The dev even says AI-generated contributions will be auto-closed, which only added spice to the drama.
But the crowd is deliciously split. One commenter slammed the branding with a cold “-1 for the name.” Another roasted the whole idea as yet another trendy side project, dropping the mic with “the new To-Do List app” jab. Civil libertarians chimed in wishing for rules forcing scrapers to identify themselves, while pragmatists asked the brutal question: do these traps even work against professional crawlers? A meta-take warned that posting tools like this is basically free bug reports for AI companies—if it breaks their bots today, it might be patched tomorrow.
So is Miasma a hero’s slop cannon or a performative protest? The vibe: half vigilante energy, half eye-roll. Either way, the comments turned this into a popcorn moment—with people debating whether we finally have a way to fight back, or just another internet booby trap that bots will breeze past.
Key Points
- •Miasma is a server tool designed to counter AI web scrapers by serving poisoned training data and self-referential links.
- •It aims to be fast and lightweight, minimizing compute overhead for site operators.
- •Installation is available via cargo (cargo install miasma) or by downloading a pre-built binary.
- •Key options include port (9999), host (localhost), max-in-flight (500) with HTTP 429 on exceed, link-count (5), link-prefix (/), and poison-source (https://rnsaffn.com/poison2/).
- •The project welcomes contributions but will automatically close issues or pull requests that are primarily AI-generated.