> it's sending us traffic with fbclids in the mix. No idea why.
The click IDs are likely to make the traffic look more like a human who has clicked a link rather than a bot? That way it gets past simple filters that explicitly let such requests in before bothering to check that the source address of the request seems to be a DC rather than a residential IP.
> citing the competitive environment
All the companies are competing to be the biggest inconvenience to everyone else while scraping as much stuff as they can.
> The click IDs are likely to make the traffic look more like a human who has clicked a link rather than a bot?
It's certainly possible. However, the traffic is still coming from Facebook's network with a FB proxy PTR record in DNS. Seems much more likely to fool your typical site owner than a bad actor.
> Seems much more likely to fool your typical site owner than a bad actor.
Sorry, I wasn't clear. That is exactly what I think they would be doing. While it won't fool blocks that check source first it will fool those who allow requests with those IDs through because they can't afford to block their content appearing on the distraction media sites.
Ahh gotcha