3 ms·
All these JS-heavy "anti bot" measures do is further entrench the browser monopoly, making it much harder for the minority of independents, while those who pay
by userbinator 2y ago
All these JS-heavy "anti bot" measures do is further entrench the browser monopoly, making it much harder for the minority of independents, while those who pay big $$$ can still bypass them. Instead I recommend a simple HTML form that asks questions with answers that LLMs cannot yet figure out or get consistently wrong. The more related to the site's content the questions are, the better; I remember some electronics forums would have similar "skill-testing" questions on their registration forms, and while some of them may be LLM'able now, I suspect many of them are still really CAPTCHAs that only humans can solve.
IMHO the fact that this shows up at a time when the Ladybird browser is just starting to become a serious contender is suspicious.
- mvdtnz 2y agoHow does JS entrench a browser monopoly? If you're not using vendor-specific JS extensions or non-standard APIs any browser should be able to execute your JS. Like most web developers I don't have a lot of patience for the people who refuse to run JS on their clients.
- userbinator 2y agoThe effort required to implement a JS engine and keep trendchasing the latest changes with it is a huge barrier to entry, not to mention the insane amount of fingerprinting and other privacy-hostile, anti-user techniques it enables. Seeing what used to be simple HTML forms turned into bloated invasive webapps to accomplish the exact same thing seriously angers me; and everyone else who wanted an easily accessible and freedom-preserving Internet.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Terr_ 2y agoOr require every fresh "unique" visitor to run some JS that takes X seconds to compute. It's not nice for visitors using a very old smartphone, but it's arguably less-exclusionary than some of the tests and third-party gatekeepers that exist now. In many cases we don't actually care about telling if someone is truly a human alone, as much as ensuring that they aren't a throwaway sockpuppet of a larger automated system that doesn't care about good behavior because a replacement is so easy to make.
- userbinator 2y agothat takes X seconds to compute. Those who have the computing resources to do commercial scraping will easily get past that. In contrast, there are still many questions which a human can easily answer, but even the best LLMs currently can't.
- kristiandupont 2y ago>there are still many questions which a human can easily answer, but even the best LLMs currently can't. I am genuinely curious: what is an example of such a question, if it's for a person you don't know (i.e. where you cannot rely on inside knowledge)?
- userbinator 2y agoThis was a notable example in that category: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41058318 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41058318 Also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38766512 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38766512
- kristiandupont 2y agoI just tried these with ChatGPT (4o) and it got both of them right. That's not to say that you won't be able to find something that still works but I think that particular hole is closing fast.
- spartanatreyu 2y agoYeah, any text based question with a text based answer eventually ends up getting posted on a forum for an AI model to scrape.
- Terr_ 2y agoIt doesn't have to be bulletproof, it just has to create a cost that doesn't scale economically for them.
- GoblinSlayer 2y agoThe algorithm is inspired by hashcash https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TecharoHQ/anubis/refs/heads/main/web/js/proof-of-work-slow.mjs https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TecharoHQ/anubis/refs/head...