5 ms·

This makes no sense to me? I don't understand why a company, even if it is using GPT or Claude as their true backend, is going to leave API calls in Javascript

This makes no sense to me? I don't understand why a company, even if it is using GPT or Claude as their true backend, is going to leave API calls in Javascript that anyone can find. Sure maybe a couple would, but 73% of those tested? Surely your browser is going to talk to their webserver, and yup sure it'll then go off and use Claude etc then return the answer to you, but surely they're not all going to just skin an easily-discoverable website over the big models? I don't believe any of this. Why aren't we questioning the source of how the author is apparently able to figure out some sites are using REDIS etc etc?

Zanfa 11mo ago
It makes perfect sense when you consider that the average Javascript developer does not know that business logic can exist outside of React components.
- muppetman 11mo ago
  Yea I understand maybe 10-20% of these AI clowns don't know what they're doing, but to suggest they're all making a mistake this silly doesn't stack up IMHO.
jcrawfordor 11mo ago
It's very confusing in the text of the article, at times it sounds like the author is using heuristic methods (like timings) but at times it sounds like they somehow have access to network traffic from the provider's backend. I could 100% believe that a ton of these companies are making API calls to providers directly from an SPA, but the flow diagrams in the article seem to specifically rule that out as an explanation. I might allow them more credit if the article wasn't in such an obviously LLM-written style. I've seen a few cases like this, now, where it seems like someone did some very modest technical investigation or even none at all and then prompted an LLM to write a whole article based on it. It comes out like this... a whole lot of bullet points and numbered lists, breathless language about the implications, but on repeated close readings you can't tell what they actually did. It's unfortunate that, if this author really did collect this data, their choice to have an LLM write the article and in the process obscure the details has completely undermined their credibility.

Zanfa 11mo ago

It makes perfect sense when you consider that the average Javascript developer does not know that business logic can exist outside of React components.

muppetman 11mo ago
Yea I understand maybe 10-20% of these AI clowns don't know what they're doing, but to suggest they're all making a mistake this silly doesn't stack up IMHO.

jcrawfordor 11mo ago

It's very confusing in the text of the article, at times it sounds like the author is using heuristic methods (like timings) but at times it sounds like they somehow have access to network traffic from the provider's backend. I could 100% believe that a ton of these companies are making API calls to providers directly from an SPA, but the flow diagrams in the article seem to specifically rule that out as an explanation. I might allow them more credit if the article wasn't in such an obviously LLM-written style. I've seen a few cases like this, now, where it seems like someone did some very modest technical investigation or even none at all and then prompted an LLM to write a whole article based on it. It comes out like this... a whole lot of bullet points and numbered lists, breathless language about the implications, but on repeated close readings you can't tell what they actually did. It's unfortunate that, if this author really did collect this data, their choice to have an LLM write the article and in the process obscure the details has completely undermined their credibility.