Refuse to be Human — Surf the Web as Googlebot — !Mediengruppe Bitnik

Refuse to be Human — Surf the Web as Googlebot is a simple web extension which changes your browser’s user agent to that of the Googlebot. Googlebot is a web crawler which surfs the web extensively to build a searchable index for the Google search engine (making it one of the most influential Internet users. Only what it sees is indexed and can later be found by other users). By changing your settings to match those of Googlebot, you become one of thousands of Google web crawlers browsing the web to index its contents.

Surfing the web as Googlebot gives you access to what is referred to as the grey web, a layer of content only visible to bots. In some cases it might give you access to websites and archives that are usually hidden behind a paywall. Because while the website owner will present the regular user with a login page, they will give web crawlers access to their full archive in order for it to be represented in Google’s search results.

Step 1:
💻 Install the web extension

Step 2:
📡 To start surfing as Googlebot, clicking on the icon in the browser toolbar

Step 3:
🏄🏾‍♀️ Surf your favourite websites

Step 4:
🌐 Check RYBN's Double Negative Capchas to see if you pass the bot test. https://www.rybn.org/projects/1000scores/captcha.php
(You might have to take the test twice until it works.)

The extension is an art piece by !Mediengruppe Bitnik commissioned by the website 1000scores.com & Literaturforum im Brecht-Haus Berlin.

The extension is free software and published under the GNU GPLv3. The piece is a response to RYBN's wonderful work Double Negative Captchas.

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[1] source code: https://wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.bitnik.org/data/code/refuse_to_be_human_google_bot_extension_webextension_v0.3.zip