Websites are getting hammered by AI bots stealing content and jacking up their bandwidth usage. So they use a piece of software called Anubis which, for some reason, has a cartoon nurse that will grant or deny you access based on if she thinks you are human or AI. For some reason, she thinks I am AI so I can’t access the article.
Anubis also relies on modern web browser features:
ES6 modules to load the client-side code and the proof-of-work challenge code.
Web Workers to run the proof-of-work challenge in a separate thread to avoid blocking the UI thread.
Fetch API to communicate with the Anubis server.
Web Cryptography API to generate the proof-of-work challenge.
This ensures that browsers are decently modern in order to combat most known scrapers. It’s not perfect, but it’s a good start.
This will also lock out users who have JavaScript disabled, prevent your server from being indexed in search engines, require users to have HTTP cookies enabled, and require users to spend time solving the proof-of-work challenge.
This does mean that users using text-only browsers or older machines where they are unable to update their browser will be locked out of services protected by Anubis. This is a tradeoff that I am not happy about, but it is the world we live in now.
It also means you are presented with a Faustian chouce: walk away, or give up any hope of privacy. “You wanna see this? Give me full access to your metadata, and a way to hack your system”.
Qubes is starting to look like an everyday use requirement rather than a security nerd tool.
I’m having the same issue on Android. For me, switching to desktop mode to load the Anubis check then back to mobile mode so the website is usable again worked.
Weird, the cartoon doesn’t want to let me through. Something about an iPhone running lemmy pisses off anubus.
That’s weird. Works for me both through the embedded browser in Voyager and Safari directly (with adblocker enabled)
To be fair, the link’s just to git comments, so the headline captures the main point.
cartoon? Anubis? What?
(I’ve never used an iPhone in my life)
Websites are getting hammered by AI bots stealing content and jacking up their bandwidth usage. So they use a piece of software called Anubis which, for some reason, has a cartoon nurse that will grant or deny you access based on if she thinks you are human or AI. For some reason, she thinks I am AI so I can’t access the article.
Wonder if any of this is the reason why.
It also means you are presented with a Faustian chouce: walk away, or give up any hope of privacy. “You wanna see this? Give me full access to your metadata, and a way to hack your system”.
Qubes is starting to look like an everyday use requirement rather than a security nerd tool.
Any website that blocks users with JS disabled doesn’t deserve to be used. Terrible software.
Or for some reason you are an AI that thinks it’s a person.
Butter robot: “oh my god”
That cartoon is so misleading, I thought I was deceived and sent to a bogus site.
Lots of sites use her now
I’ll take Anubis over Google’s capchas
I’m having the same issue on Android. For me, switching to desktop mode to load the Anubis check then back to mobile mode so the website is usable again worked.
works fine on android wih firefox webview