Merge Branch: Protecting Against AI Scrapers

As we strive to maintain a safe and secure online environment, our website administrators have implemented an innovative solution to safeguard against the scourge of AI companies aggressively scraping websites. This measure ensures that legitimate users can continue to access our resources without interruption.

The solution is Anubis, a clever hack that uses a Proof-of-Work scheme reminiscent of Hashcash, a proposed proof-of-work scheme for reducing email spam. In theory, this compromise seems innocuous, but its impact at mass scraper levels becomes apparent. By introducing a small additional load, Anubis makes scraping much more expensive and less viable, thereby protecting our website from unwanted traffic.

At an individual scale, the extra burden is negligible, but it's essential to recognize that this system is designed with a more sinister purpose in mind. Its true intention is to create a temporary placeholder solution, buying time for our developers to refine their fingerprinting and identification techniques aimed at headless browsers – a crucial step towards ensuring a seamless user experience.

However, there are some caveats to consider. Anubis requires the use of modern JavaScript features, which plugins like JShelter may disable. To overcome this challenge, users must enable JavaScript for our website. Unfortunately, this is an unavoidable requirement, given that AI companies have redefined the social contract around web hosting, making it increasingly difficult to maintain a no-JS solution.

Our website is currently running Anubis version 1.20.0, and we appreciate your cooperation in disabling JShelter or other similar plugins for this domain. By doing so, you'll help us protect our resources from unwanted traffic while we work on refining our security measures. Please note that enabling JavaScript is mandatory to pass the challenge proof of work page, as our administrators strive to maintain a delicate balance between accessibility and security.