There are N amount of job postings, but recruiters and other "middle-men" have made it so that there are N * X * Y places a candidate has to apply to.

Where X are the amount of recruiters and Y are the recruitment platforms/boards.

They literally take their clients' requirements, shuffle them around, repackage them, adding editorial fluff and then post them to Y amount of platforms. This is information warfare and we are losing the battle.

This is the net-consequence of all the "distributed" effects we've been wanting for years. Instead, there should be one database. Or at the very least an identifiable entity even if you want to repackage something. I.e. each one of these postings needs to have an agreed UID for employer, employer's job posting, recruiter, and the type of roles it applies to. We need more structure to the data, not less and more distribution across the greater internet.

That is why they don't like scrapers, because they lead to consolidation, aggregation or deduplication of data that has been needlessly duplicated in order to confuse and obfuscate.

On a side, tech-related note, this is the same reason why I hate microservices architectures: a good chunk of them distribute and duplicate pieces of data.

That said I wouldn't be surprised if you get declined if the company realizes you did so.