Monday, October 5, 2026 at 8:25 p.m.
With the widespread problem of poorly-vibed AI bots hammering websites constantly, a lot of websites have gone the way of proof-of-work and other JavaScript-based techniques to make it uneconomical/difficult to run those bots. Well, first, AI companies have lots of money they can spend to solve your proof-of-works. This means that you're making performance worse for the users you want, and merely putting a small speed bump for AI bots. Secondly, it is not good to put your HTML behind a turing-complete wall. It prevents usage by those who would like to know they can parse it without having to worry about an infinite loop or having to simulate clicks and keys on your website. Personally, I like my websites to not rely on JavaScript at all. Unfortunately, the only case we have today for making use of freely-available HTML pages, is AI. And I don't like it. Fuck AI !