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Comment by trod1234 | Hacker News Reader

> Unfortunately nobody has a good answer for how to deal with abusive users without catching well behaved but deliberately anonymous users in the crossfire...

Uhh, that's not right. There is a good answer, but no turnkey solution yet.

The answer is making each request cost a certain amount of something from the person, and increased load by that person comes with increased cost on that person.

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Note that this is actually one of the things Anubis does. That's what the proof-of-work system is, it just operates across the full load rather than targeted to a specific user's load. But, to the GP's point, that's the best option while allowing anonymous users.

All the best,

-HG

I know that you mean a system that transfers money but you are also describing Anubis because PoW is literally to make accessing the site cost more and scale that cost proportional to the load.

> I know that you mean a system that transfer money ....

No, cost is used in the fullest abstract meaning of the word here.

Time cost, effort cost, monetary cost, work cost, so long as there is a functional limitation that prevents resource exhaustion that is the point.

If cost can be anything, does Anubis implement such a system then, by using proof-of-work as the cost function?

That's exactly what Anubis does: https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/design/why-proof-of-work

Can't see, that page is protected by anubis.

Sort of. Anubis is frontloading the cost all at once and then amortizing it over a large number of subsequent requests. That detail is what's causing the issue when browsing with additional privacy measures.

This makes discussions such as this have a negative ROI for an average commenter. Spamming scam and grift links still has a positive ROI, albeit a slightly smaller one.

I use a certain online forum which sometimes makes users wait 60 or 900 seconds before they can post. It has prevented me from making contributions multiple times.

I'm using one with a 5 in 14400 seconds timer right now. Ditto.

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