yeah, mpv/yt-dlp work for me

presumably tagging the javascript as free software, as recognized by LibreJS, would make it work for those who only use LibreJS for javascript blocking.

but really, this entire approach is backwards. I mean, I know scraping bots are making server operators miserable, but the solution to that can't be to make everyone else miserable, slowing things down, wasting computing resources and rendering old computers unusable.

the premise that blocking bots is questionable. sure, it makes things more costly for the evil scrapers, but also to everyone else, and guess who has more computing resources to waste? surely not the people who are on old computers who are now being rendered artificially obsolete because of a misguided reaction to scrapers. surely not to people who are trying to automate things on the client side to make up for the asymmetry between servers, that are automated, and clients, that are denied the convenience of automation by stupid captchas that increase the asymmetry and thus the injustice.