Over the past few weeks, you may have noticed that the Julian Jaynes Society website and Discussion Forum were either running unusually slowly or, at times, completely inaccessible. Several of you reached out to alert us to the issue, and we appreciate your vigilance.
At first, we could see that our server resources were being overwhelmed, but the root cause wasn’t immediately clear. Performance issues like these can stem from either internal software conflicts or external threats, so we began investigating.
What we discovered was staggering: both the Julian Jaynes Society website and, in particular, the Discussion Forum were being flooded with an extraordinary amount of bot traffic. Many people immediately associate this kind of disruption with a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack, which can be launched for reasons ranging from personal vendettas to random acts of online sabotage. However, when the surge of bot traffic persisted beyond the initial wave, we realized something else was at play.
After further research, we found that other websites — especially those running PHPBB forum software — were also experiencing similar overwhelming levels of bot activity. Unlike primary websites, which can more easily be safeguarded with firewalls and other security measures, forums remain more vulnerable to such threats.
Interestingly, speculation is growing that these bots are not traditional malicious attackers but rather part of an AI-driven effort to scrape the internet for data — potentially to train large language models. The bot network appears highly sophisticated, using numerous IP addresses across multiple countries, making it difficult to block outright.
In response, we implemented a robust set of defenses, including enhanced firewalls, rate limiting, and other security measures. While the bot traffic continues at an astonishing rate — nearly one million attempted visits every 24 hours — our mitigation strategies have successfully prevented them from disrupting the site.
As more websites report similar issues, we expect more details about these AI-driven bots to emerge in the coming weeks and months. It is unfortunate that the people and organizations behind these bots seem to have a total disregard for the websites they are impacting, the content they are scraping (stealing?), and the hassles they are creating. We should all be concerned about the current relentless pursuit of new technology, with little or no regard for the potential risks and downsides.
Maintaining a website as large and active as the Julian Jaynes Society’s requires continuous effort — updating the content management system, plugins, themes, forum software, and more. It also involves ongoing costs for hosting, video storage, and various tools essential to keeping everything running smoothly.
We want to take this opportunity to express our gratitude to our members and donors. Your support makes it possible for us to maintain and grow the Julian Jaynes Society website and pursue our many projects. Thank you for being a part of this journey with us!
If you are not already a member, please consider joining the Julian Jaynes Society: https://www.julianjaynes.org/join/
or making a donation: https://www.julianjaynes.org/donate/
