After Show HN: Targeting the Bot Storm

A developer reported that posting a Show HN on Hacker News triggered a bot storm, with 175 bots generating over 1,300 hits and no real human visitors. The developer published a list of 50 bot user agents, later expanded to include 90 more, available at scraptrap.de/botlist.php, for use in bot blocking and analysis.

After posting a Show HN on this platform, a veritable bot onslaught occurred within minutes. 175 bots were involved, generating over 1300 hits. Unfortunately, not a single real person was among the "visitors"—apparently not even out of pure curiosity. However, here is a list shortened to 50 entries the input field doesn't allow more . The rest of the list, which has since been expanded to include another 90 bots, can be found via the link below. This list can be freely used for bot blocking, analysis, or whatever else you need it for. 1. Agent incident monitor/0.1 2. ai-freebie-radar/0.1 +https://github.com/ 3. AI-NewsBot/3.0 article-extractor 4. AICUIScout/0.1 +https://example.local; product research 5. AIToolCompareBot/1.0 +https://sortaitech.com/bot 6. AppWatchBot/0.1 +https://appwatch.ai/bot 7. AppWatchBot/0.1 +https://appwatch.ai/bot; freshness check only 8. AppWatchBot/0.1 +https://appwatch.ai/bot; liveness check only, no content stored 9. arschiv-ngx/1.0 10. axios/1.13.5 11. BergaTools-ForumAggregator/1.0 +https://github.com/BergaDev/PersonalTools 12. Bryf/1.0 Article Processor 13. BubblemediaCrawler/1.0 +https://bubblemedia.app/crawler 14. CalatheaNews/2.0 +https://github.com/nbitslabs/calathea-content-curator 15. ClarFlow/2.0 +https://clarflow.cn 16. CheKakStartupBot/1.0 +https://startup.chekak.store/about 17. crawlberg/1.3.0 18. curl/7.4.0 19. directree-ingest/1.0 +https://www.directree.io 20. directree-outreach/1.0 +https://www.directree.io 21. Drakma/2.0.10 SBCL 2.6.1; FreeBSD; 15.0-RELEASE-p10; http://weitz.de/drakma/ 22. Earthshine/1.0 earthshine.fibonacci.ai; contact: hello@fibonacci.ai 23. emerging-apps-monitor/2.0 research; +https://hn.algolia.com/ 24. EnrichHatBot/0.1 +https://hatos.internal/bot; first-party enrichment 25. FixBeforeLaunchBot/0.1 +https://fixbeforelaunch.com/bot; readiness scanner 26. FlamingoBot +https://hackernews.pink 27. FoundryScope/1.0 startup analysis bot; contact: amine.1.mestour@gmail.com 28. FreshRSS/1.29.1 Linux; https://freshrss.org 29. GitHubCopilotRuntime-WebFetch 30. Go-http-client/1.1 31. go-resty/2.16.5 https://github.com/go-resty/resty 32. GreenWebChecker/1.0 https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/green-web-checker-faq/ 33. HackerNews/1569 CFNetwork/3860.700.1 Darwin/25.6.0 34. HakuLabCollector/0.1 +https://n8n.hakulab.cc 35. Harmonic-HN-Android/3.1.2/fossRelease 36. Harmonic-HN-Android/3.1.2/playRelease 37. hermes-newsroom/0.1 research project; +https://github.com/hermes-newsroom 38. Hermes-SallyPageFetch/1.0 39. humanet-page-scraper/1.0 40. icon.horse/2.0 41. iHerd-surfer/0.1 +https://i-herd.com; content discovery agent 42. Indexaro/1.0 +https://indexaro.com 43. InfomateBot/1.0 +https://infomate.club 44. InsuranceLeadMachine/1.0 +lead discovery; contact: ops@insuranceleadmachine.com 45. InterestingFindsBot/0.1 +https://nikhilkulkarni1755.com/bot 46. IronReader/0.1 +https://example.com; RSS reader 47. Java/21.0.11 48. ken/0.1 +https://github.com/zcag/ken 49. KnisNewsCollector/1.0 +local 50. Ktor http-client An expanded list with approximately 90 additional bots can be found at https://www.scraptrap.de/botlist.php Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49545488 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49545488 Points: 1 Comments: 0