Hey all, it’s been awhile hasn’t it?
When I built Cuckdown back in 2018, I was able to run an entire distributed system and provide a service for free. Things are different now.
Today, storage and bandwidth are expensive. Bot challenges and captchas are everywhere. VPN subnet blocking is common. SMS verification is a thing. It’s gotten harder and harder to scrape a lot of sites.
But here’s the thing - my tech is still solid. At least from what I can see that’s public, other people are still years behind. I’ve got code that’s been running for a decade now without any bans, doing things that other people still haven’t figured out.
The problem is, it’s not cheap. Running it on my own system is one thing, but sharing it with others is another.
Why don’t I just put it all on github? Quite simply, I don’t want to play tech support. I know it works on my system. I don’t have the patience to teach someone to make it work on theirs, but I can create a self-serve service that just works.
So here’s the TLDR: I’m building Thotbot, a spiritual successor to Cuckdown. I’ve been out of the game for a bit so I’ll need your help knowing what sites people care about these days. It’s eventually going to be a paid service, but it’ll work better than anything else out there.
Keep an eye on this space. I don’t know when it’ll be ready, but I’ll try to put some posts up here when I have time.