Comment on Open source project fools AI scrapers with poisoned font

nathan@piefed.alphapuggle.dev ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

• undefinedTruth@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  It does work with screen readers but their solution seems far from ideal. Also, that relies on the fact that the scrappers don’t typically run JavaScript.

  Screen readers (used, for example, by people with visual impairment) work from the source code, where your words are already swapped. The font only fixes things on screen, so a shielded block would be read aloud as fluent, wrong English. Shielded sections in our React tier carry aria-hidden to stop that. In its place, an opt-in beta ships the correct text encrypted in the page. A button only screen readers reach asks the reader’s browser to solve for the key: a chain of steps where each one needs the answer to the last. It also needs JavaScript, which most scrapers never run. The cost currently lands on the reader: up to twenty seconds on a slow device. That is friction, and it is the part we most want help fixing.

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  • FUZZY_QWERTY@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Go further down the rabbit hole.

    Next step: after analyzing the bundle a scraper then runs as a narrator, capturing the audio and transcribing it for ingestion.

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