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ChatGPT won't let you type until Cloudflare reads your React state

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Re: ChatGPT won't let you type until Cloudflare reads your React state

#591

Post by mcmcmc »

deadbabe wrote: post #485
vlovich123 wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That still doesn’t explain why you can’t even start typing until that check proceeds. You could condition the outbound request from being processed until that’s the case. But preventing from typing seems like it’s just worse UX and the problem will fail to appear in any metrics you can track because you have no way of measuring “how quickly would the user have submitted their request without all this other stuff in t…

Remember you’re talking to a vibe coder who just stares at code being printed out by AI.

That’s a big assumption. It’s a brand new account, might be a bot. PR/astroturfing is a great use case for agentic AI

Re: ChatGPT won't let you type until Cloudflare reads your React state

#592

Post by kristjansson »

londons_explore wrote: post #12

I just don't understand why bot owners can't just run a complete windows 11 VM running Google Chrome complete with graphics acceleration. You can probably run 50 of those simultaneously if you use memory page deduplication, and with a decent CPU+GPU you ought to be able to render 50 pages a second. That's 1 cent per thousand page loads on AWS. Damn cheap.

… yup?

I mean you missed the minigame of preventing Chrome from signaling that it’s being programmatically (webdriver etc) driven and tipping your hand, but … yup?

Re: ChatGPT won't let you type until Cloudflare reads your React state

#593

Post by mcmcmc »

raincole wrote: post #319
Imnimo wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting to me that OpenAI considers scraping to be a form of abuse.

Quite sure even literal thieves would consider thievery a form of abuse.

What’s being stolen? AI output isn’t copyrightable, and it’s not like they’re ripping pages out of a book

Re: ChatGPT won't let you type until Cloudflare reads your React state

#594

Post by arccy »

root_axis wrote: post #574
mike_hearn wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The typing actions have to be observed by JavaScript. It's not different to any other JS blocking page load because it's needed for the site to work, that's just how the web works.

Why can't you allow typing and just consume the state of the text input as the initial state of the js logic?

how you type is also part of the signal

Re: ChatGPT won't let you type until Cloudflare reads your React state

#595

Post by kristjansson »

technion wrote: post #324
XYen0n wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cloudflare should be able to determine whether a website uses React by analyzing data flowing through its CDN.

Whilst true, "validate the right state is loaded" would surely be something not done without developer input.

If your CF bill reached into 8 figures, you might ask them to accept some developer input?

Re: ChatGPT won't let you type until Cloudflare reads your React state

#596

Post by electroly »

mike_hearn wrote: post #573
fc417fc802 wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't make sense. The server would wait to process anything until after you received the signal. If it doesn't arrive within a reasonable period of time that tells you something, the same as right now. If you mean that you can infer client side tampering with the page contents you could still do that - permit typing but don't permit the submit action on the client. The user presses enter but nothing happens un…

The typing actions have to be observed by JavaScript. It's not different to any other JS blocking page load because it's needed for the site to work, that's just how the web works.

This doesn't seem to be the same thing. The article isn't about being unable to type before JavaScript starts executing. If I understand correctly, you're unable to type until a network request to Cloudflare returns. The question is: why not allow typing during that network request? JavaScript is running and it's observing the keystrokes. Everyone understands that you can't use a React application until JavaScript is running. They're asking why the network request doesn't happen in the background with the user optimistically allowed to type while waiting for it to return.

(Separately, I don't think the article has adequately demonstrated this claim. They just make the claim in the title. The actual article only shows that some network request is made, and that the request happens after the React app is loaded, but not that they prevent input until it returns. Maybe it's obvious from using it, but they didn't demonstrate it.)

Re: ChatGPT won't let you type until Cloudflare reads your React state

#597

Post by thisislife2 »

gzread wrote: post #570
thisislife2 wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if they had a robots.txt for their site.

No, it's still illegal to DDoS sites that don't have robots.txt.

You are right, I hadn't considered that aspect.

Re: ChatGPT won't let you type until Cloudflare reads your React state

#598

Post by LtWorf »

gavinray wrote: post #580
toinewx wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can you reformulate your message?

Mike is saying that if you allow users to type before the scripts are fully loaded, there is no way to tell the difference between a human and bot. Blocking until load means that human interaction is physically impossible, so you are certain that any input before that is automated. If you allow typing, this distinction vanishes

Load fewer scripts so it doesn't take that long?

Re: ChatGPT won't let you type until Cloudflare reads your React state

#599

Post by stefanka »

wilg wrote: post #274
tomalbrc wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"bro": https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-anthropic-ai-ignore-r...

should be pretty easy to test and not rely on an anonymous source from a weird analytics company via business insider. are these bots actually from openai or are they just using their user agent? are they coming from openai ip ranges? etc. https://openai.com/gptbot.json

Are all of OpenAI’s ip ranges known?

Re: ChatGPT won't let you type until Cloudflare reads your React state

#600

Post by radicality »

egorfine wrote: post #378
MyNameIsNickT wrote: post #49

Hey! I'm Nick, and I work on Integrity at OpenAI. These checks are part of how we protect our first-party products from abuse like bots, scraping, fraud, and other attempts to misuse the platform. A big reason we invest in this is because we want to keep free and logged-out access available for more users. My team’s goal is to help make sure the limited GPU resources are going to real users. We also keep a very close…

Paying customer since inception here. I presume the local ChatGPT.app has even more measures to prevent automation, right? Presumably privacy-invasive ones as it is customary these days? Is there a way I can opt out? I really, really, really don't like it.

The way I use the products something like this. My main account on my MacBook - ChatGPT website, codex cli. Then, a Mac VM running via UTM with shared writable dir - anything more ‘shady’ in terms of permissions and for playing with new ai apps - eg ChatGPT/Codex standalone apps, Atlas, Claude desktop app etc. Seems to work decently enough. And I do totally agree that there should be a way to opt out of all these privacy invasive measures, especially after paying $200/mo
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