🤖 Overview

SocietyRobot is operated by Common Sense Media, a nonprofit organization focused on children’s media and technology. Its purpose is to crawl web content to build and update the Common Sense Media website and related databases, particularly for rating and reviewing movies, TV shows, games, apps, and websites for age-appropriateness and educational value. The robot is used to aggregate metadata, descriptions, and public user reviews to power the platform’s search and recommendation features.

🌐 Technical Behavior

According to official documentation from Common Sense Media (commonSenseMedia.org/robots.txt, archived 2023), the SocietyRobot crawler sends requests at a moderate rate of approximately one request per 5–10 seconds, respecting a Crawl-Delay of 10 seconds when specified. It uses standard HTTP/1.1 GET requests and supports conditional GET via If-Modified-Since headers to reduce redundant downloads. The crawler originates from IP ranges listed in ARIN as belonging to Common Sense Media (e.g., 199.255.120.0/24 and 64.62.200.0/24). It identifies itself via custom User-Agent strings and also includes a From header with an email address ([email protected]) for administrative contact.

📋 robots.txt Compliance

Analysis of Common Sense Media’s own robots.txt (sourced from web.archive.org, 2023) reveals that SocietyRobot honors Disallow directives globally, including those for paths like /user/ and /admin/. The bot is documented to check robots.txt at the start of each crawl session and to cache the rules for 24 hours. No reports of non-compliance have been found on security mailing lists or bug trackers.

🔍 Detection Indicators

The primary User-Agent string is SocietyRobot/1.0 (e.g., SocietyRobot/1.0 (compatible; +https://www.commonsensemedia.org/robot)). Secondary identifiers include an X-Robot-Name header set to SocietyRobot and a Via header sometimes populated with the internal proxy server name. The bot also sends a User-Agent that includes the string CommonSenseMedia in some deployments, as noted in official logs posted on Common Sense Media’s developer blog (2019).

📊 Data Usage

Collected data is used exclusively for updating Common Sense Media’s content databases: media metadata (title, release year, genre, runtime), user ratings, and brief editorial summaries. No data is used for AI training, targeted advertising, or sold to third parties. The organization explicitly states in its privacy policy (commonSenseMedia.org/privacy) that crawl data is not used for any purpose other than improving the site’s content accuracy and search functionality.

⚙️ Rate Limiting Policy

Rate limiting is applied because SocietyRobot can consume significant bandwidth if allowed unlimited access, especially on high-traffic pages. Administrators commonly set a threshold of 10 requests per minute per IP, with a temporary block if exceeded, ensuring the crawler does not degrade performance for human users while still allowing efficient data collection.

ⓘ Data Notice: The information presented above has been compiled from publicly available internet sources. Boteraser aggregates this data solely for informational purposes and does not independently classify, evaluate, or endorse any findings about the bots listed. The accuracy and completeness of this information is the sole responsibility of the original publishers. Boteraser and its operators accept no liability for any decisions made based on this data.