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Linked in the article that this article links to is a project I found interesting for combatting this problem, a (non-crypto) proof-of-work challenge for new visitors https://github.com/TecharoHQ/anubis

Looks like the GNOME Gitlab instance implements it: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME

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For targeted scrapes, isn't proof of work trivial to bypass?

1. headless browser 2. get cookie 3. use cookie on subsequent plain requests

It doesn't sound like the scrapers are that smart yet, but when they get there, presumably you'd just lower the cookie lifetime until the requests are down to an acceptable level. It takes a split-second in my browser so it shouldn't interfere much for human visitors.

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