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Comment by theappsecguy | Hacker News Reader

Their entire business model is targeted ads and selling overpriced linkedin premium to thought-leader wannabes. If they lose the ads surface, they are dead in the water, so it makes sense to block headless experiences at all cost

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Ads are not their entire business model. LinkedIn Sales Navigator is used heavily by recruiters and sales teams. They pay more than Premium for this service.

I would have thought they would make more money from premium for recruiters. Although there's probably a similar dynamic, what does a recruiter have to do if candidates can automatically discover all job openings?

I could have built a command in my Google home speaker to order me a pizza ten years ago. I couldn't do it because.... Ads or whatever. An agent isn't going to cut it for the same reason.

What site doesn't work that way?

Hackernews, Lesswrong and 4chan

HN is an ad platform - it's just maintaining the old style of providing actual value to bribe users into accepting the occasional ad organically, instead of min-maxing for engagement and providing nothing else.

Mentioning LessWrong and 4chan in the same breath made me chuckle, but it's actually a good summary of the modern Internet: to be ad-free, you need to either care very much, or simply not care at all. The middle of the road has been bought, fenced, and you need to pay (with money or attention) to access it.

Missing the point... What use is an agent there besides shit posting?

My point is the fight against scraping will be the same fight against agents.

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