The problem is that the scrapers are not sophisticated enough to use things like cgit and Git Forges efficiently (e.g. by git clone), while still being sophisti

The problem is that the scrapers are not sophisticated enough to use things like cgit and Git Forges efficiently (e.g. by git clone), while still being sophisticated enough to bypass widespread controls they are implemented to bypass. An author of a scraper would need to trade off how much arbitrary compute they'll run against how much risk they take that someone will use them for free compute (inverting their role from exploiter to victim). They can work around that somewhat by analysing common enough code (to justify the LLM or human expense) and deciding to run it. PoW challenges work when they have low enough adoption that it isn't worth scrapers' while to have a custom countermeasure for. To scale them once adoption is big enough, it probably takes some bespoke engineering per group of sites (coupled perhaps with some scraper traps that take advantage of scraper CPU for something useful, and aren't easily distinguished from the normal challenge).