this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2026
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Every public website is moving to log-in only experience because of ai scrapers, which make it super trivial to scrap websites for data. These dumb ai bots are also super inefficient and just soak up all your bandwidth and cpu. IP blocks don't really work for long, so if you require logged in users only, then you can block via user at least to try to frustrate ai and make it more expensive.
Wouldn't it be trivial to generate accounts as needed?
depends. for reddit, i dunno what they do, i imagine they have some email verification or something. Maybe also sms verify. On hexbear, we require written applications to be approved.
The written application to join gave me "serious tankie group" vibes, when I signed up. Kinda neat. A little much for a social media account, but if it keeps the libs and bots out, I guess it's necessary and better than some approaches.
ⓘ This user is suspected of being a bear. Please report any suspawcious behaviour.
You have to apply to join hexbear now??
I feel wicked underground for bypassing the application process. I was here before we were super-exclusive.
Reddit has device fingerprinting. Bots that try the sign-up page get hit with an intense fingerprinting script and probably a captcha but the fingerprinting script is probably the main thing. If they can't fingerprint you well enough or it throws up flags that you look like a bot then they probably shadowban that account or demand email verification.