Automated bots are scalping tickets to concerts and train rides. Humans cannot compete with robots programmed to refresh a webpage eight thousand times per second. This counts as news in 2026.
The bots win because they're faster. They click "purchase" before your brain finishes processing the CAPTCHA asking you to identify which squares contain a traffic light. You're sitting there squinting at a blurry image wondering if that tiny sliver of red counts as part of the traffic light while a server farm in Delaware just bought every Taylor Swift ticket within a 500-mile radius of your zip code.
The headline admits bots are only part of the problem. The other part is that you believed you had a fair shot at buying a ticket in the first place. Ticketing companies designed this system. They partnered with resale platforms. They take a cut from the bot-purchased tickets when they're resold at triple the price. You thought this was a glitch. It's the entire business model.
Train reservations now face the same fate. You wanted to book a seat from Boston to New York. A bot bought it in 0.003 seconds and listed it on StubHub for $240. You'll pay it because you have a meeting you can't miss and driving through Connecticut makes you want to fake your own death.
Congress will hold hearings. Senators will furrow their brows and ask tech CEOs why they allow this to happen. The CEOs will promise reform. Nothing will change. You'll download an app that claims to fight bots on your behalf. The app is run by bots.
Turns out the free market works exactly as intended when one side has algorithms and the other side has hope.
Photo by Andrew Arrol on Unsplash
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