listic parent
So... Is Anubis actually blocking bots because they didn't bother to circumvent it?
Basically. Anubis is meant to block mindless, careless, rude bots with seemingly no technically proficient human behind the process; these bots tend to be very aggressive and make tons of requests bringing sites down.
The assumption is that if you’re the operator of these bots and care enough to implement the proof of work challenge for Anubis you could also realize your bot is dumb and make it more polite and considerate.
Of course nothing precludes someone implementing the proof of work on the bot but otherwise leaving it the same (rude and abusive). In this case Anubis still works as a somewhat fancy rate limiter which is still good.
Essentially the Pow aspect is pointless then? They could require almost any arbitrary thing.
What else do you envision being used instead of proof of work?
Rot13 a challenge string. It could be any arbitrary function.
That wouldn’t have the fallback rate-limiting functionality. It’s too cheap.
s/circumvent/implement/