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As someone working with people on the other end of this table, I can tell you there’s a limit of risk, clarity and tech complexity that they are ready to bear. And it’s pretty low. It all works for them only because threads like this usually end up with “it wouldn’t work anyway if I, a six figure guy, had all the time and budget in the world to defeat it, so let’s do nothing” type of non-solution. Which creates a defeatist spirit culture. Paying third-world workers is often economically and structurally unviable for the most low-hanging bot-like activities and it doesn’t even stay that cheap either once the demand grows due to technical barriers. I, being a lot less paranoid and defeatist, also tell these guys that it won’t work because this and that, but then it works, because the solutions the defending side comes up with are either laughable or from “so dumb, I feel I’m gonna faint” category. You won’t believe the elephants that can fly under their radar.

people do it all the time to Spotify, YouTube, Google, Amazon, Reddit, and Twitter, why do you think GitHub would somehow crack that nut?

Because the listed projects do basically nothing, a bare minimum. They don’t even care as long as bots don’t play against their direct interest. Who cares at a media company, or a sales company, who exactly is at their top, as long as they are both not bad enough? Profits come either way. They all are shittiest examples of it who created, incorporated and are themselves part of this problem.

It’s akin to immune system. Its goal is not to protect you from every hiv and cancer, but to avoid constant infections from stupid low-effort attacks. You don’t have to make it prefect, but it must be there. The more cryptic it is, the less welcoming it is to game it through basic means, the better.






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