it's an entirely pointless arms race, where the scraper always wins, because web browsers are just a piece of software saying the right things at the right time

it's an entirely pointless arms race, where the scraper always wins, because web browsers are just a piece of software saying the right things at the right time over TCP. The only deterrent to scraping is the cost of running a web browser to interact using a real javascript stack, so for some really lame spammy uses of scrapers (the most common) headless browsers are often not cost effective.