A new fleet of [bots] is making its presence felt on the internet. On Sunday, a group of independent researchers posted preliminary findings about the [bots], observing that they seem to be running on Tencent’s infrastructure and targeting Alibaba’s map service, Amap.

Researchers, however, resisted the term “swarm,” noting that there seems to be little coordination between their different queries. “‘[Bot] fleet,’ not ‘swarm:’” one researcher wrote in the preliminary report, “many parallel [bots] on the same kind of task, with no sign of communication between them.”

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In this case, the [bots] don’t seem to have been doing anything more nefarious than side-stepping Alibaba’s API rules — but we may not always be so lucky. [jfc]