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    15 sounds
    20 posts
    Bots Downloading Hundreds of Thousands of Sounds?


    Hello, everyone!

    Often when people download, comment, or follow my Sounds page, I send comments thanking them. But sometimes when I do, I notice profiles that are downloading what seems to be the entire FreeSound library. If you fresh the page while on the profile, you will often see their number of downloads jump.

    They are often new profiles that have only just been made, so they are likely bots.

    I have no problem with people using my sounds for personal things, but I wonder what these seemingly bot profiles are doing.

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    5004 sounds
    1799 posts


    Give the list of profiles please

    To hear, you first have to listen
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    15 sounds
    20 posts


    https://freesound.org/people/fortake2/
    https://freesound.org/people/Alex_James/
    https://freesound.org/people/frank0628342/
    https://freesound.org/people/teyiyi9803/

    Here are some I made a note of, but they are quite old profiles now. At the time they downloaded my sounds though, the number of downloads was increasing each time I refreshed the page.

  • avatar
    5004 sounds
    1799 posts


    it seems that the structure of downloading is automated as the bots start with the oldest track/sound and progress almost all the way through track order. If it deviates, it has to do with the file size. large files arrive later.
    Soo it looks like a programmed bot indeed.

    Very remarkable. and these types of users deserve technical attention from freesound.

    Good to write a piece of software te mark and stop these kind of users. It gives me a pain in the stomach .

    https://freesound.org/people/fortake1/
    https://freesound.org/people/fortake3/
    Soo more foretake in the list

    To hear, you first have to listen
  • avatar
    15 sounds
    20 posts


    Yeah, it is a little troubling. Glad I could help.
    I don't mind people using my sounds which is why I put them up on here, but it makes me frustrated to think that someone else could be taking them not for their intended purpose.

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    10 sounds
    12 posts


    I saw on the Stable Audio channel on The Stability AI discord that they are using freesound to train their open source model

    Likely at least some of these bots are mining data to train AI models which is neat

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