Merging the Branch: A Protection Against AI Scraping

You are seeing this page because the administrator of this website has taken proactive measures to safeguard its server against the threat of AI-powered scraping. This may cause temporary downtime for the site, making it inaccessible to users.

The solution employed by the administrators is a system called Anubis, designed to protect websites from aggressive scraping by AI companies. Anubis's primary function is to make web scraping more expensive and less appealing to malicious actors, thereby reducing the burden on legitimate users.

Anubis operates on a Proof-of-Work scheme, similar to Hashcash, which has been proposed as a method for reducing email spam. At an individual level, the added load from Anubis is negligible; however, when mass scrapers attempt to exploit this system, it becomes increasingly difficult and costly.

While Anubis aims to protect websites from AI-powered scraping, its true purpose is somewhat complex. By introducing a "good enough" placeholder solution, the administrators can devote more resources to fingerprinting and identifying headless browsers – a crucial step in distinguishing between legitimate users and malicious bots. This process would be significantly simplified if users were presented with the challenge proof of work page, which AI-powered browsers are less likely to encounter.

However, Anubis requires the use of modern JavaScript features, which may interfere with certain plugins like JShelter. As a result, users visiting this website must disable JShelter or other similar plugins in order to proceed. The current version of Anubis is 1.21.3.

"Please note that this website cannot function without the use of JavaScript," warns the administrators. This requirement stems from the changing social contract around how website hosting works, which has been influenced by AI companies' evolving methods. While a no-JS solution is still under development, Anubis remains the current safeguard for protecting this website against scraping threats.