Making the Web Smarter: Understanding Anubis and its Struggle Against Scrapers

You're seeing this message because we've taken steps to protect our server from the threat of aggressive AI companies scraping our website without permission. The administrator has set up Anubis, a security system that employs a Proof-of-Work scheme to ensure our resources remain accessible only to legitimate users.

Anubis is inspired by Hashcash, a proposed proof-of-work scheme designed to curb email spam. At an individual scale, the additional load caused by this system is negligible; however, when large numbers of scrapers converge, it becomes prohibitively expensive for them to access our site without permission. In essence, Anubis acts as a deterrent against mass scraping, allowing us to maintain control over our own resources while preventing AI companies from exploiting our server's capacity.

The real purpose behind Anubis is not solely to thwart scrapers, but also to pave the way for more sophisticated solutions that can identify and fingerprint headless browsers. By challenging legitimate users to complete a proof-of-work task – in this case, solving a challenge on our website – we're pushing them to engage with our site in a meaningful way. This enables us to develop more targeted countermeasures against AI-powered scrapers in the future.

However, Anubis comes with some caveats. It requires modern JavaScript features that plugins like JShelter can disable. To access this content, you'll need to disable JShelter or other similar plugins for our domain. We're currently running Anubis version 1.20.0, which necessitates the use of JavaScript to overcome the challenge page.

It's worth noting that AI companies have disrupted the social contract around website hosting, making it increasingly difficult for sites like ours to maintain security without sacrificing user experience. As such, our 'no-JS' solution is a work-in-progress, and we'll continue to adapt and improve our defenses in response to emerging threats.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, but we believe that these measures will ultimately help us protect our resources and ensure the integrity of our online presence. Thank you for your patience and cooperation.