And if they would today, it seems like a trivial think to fix - just don't click on incorrect/suspicious links?
And another "classic" solution is to use white link text on white background, or a font with zero width characters, all stuff which is rather unlikely to be analysed by a scraper interested primarily in text.
Modern bots do this very well, plus the structure of the Web is such that it is sufficient to skip a few links here and there, most probably there will dxist another path toward the skipped page that the bot can go through later on.
What is being blocked here is violent scraping and to an extent major LLM companies bots as well. If I disagree that OpenAI should be able to take train off of everyone’s work especially if they’re going to hammer the whole internet irresponsibly and ignore all the rules, then I’m going to prevent that type of company from being profitable off my properties. You don’t get to play unfair for the unfilled promise “the good of future humanity”.