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Most mass scrapers, on the other hand, simply grab the raw HTML underneath. ShieldFont exploits this difference through an automated process called OpenType glyph substitution.

That said, because the whole defense rests on scrapers reading code rather than screens, taking a screenshot of a shielded page and running OCR on the image can still recover the real words.

Screen readers used by blind readers also work from the code, so they read the decoys aloud. ShieldFont ships with a beta feature that provides those readers with the real text instead.

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[-] merdaverse@lemmy.zip 61 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

If this gets any adoption, it will work for about a week, after which scrapers will just detect the font, and do a reverse lookup of its mapping table.

Ironic that the repo of the font is also AI slop. If the author had asked any competent person how viable the solution is, instead of a sycophantic AI, they would have just gotten a laugh instead.

[-] merdaverse@lemmy.zip 10 points 23 hours ago

Thinking more about it, even if the mapping would be generated dynamically (let's say you could generate them secretly on your server), the scraper could just parse the font file and reverse lookup the words.

[-] boonhet@sopuli.xyz 5 points 22 hours ago

And if you ask an AI to be critical, it'll also tell you why this is useless lol.

[-] vext01@feddit.uk 2 points 23 hours ago

My thoughts exactly. And so the arms race continues.

[-] ki4jgt@feddit.org 1 points 22 hours ago

Nah. Gregg Shorthand Anniversary Edition is practically indecipherable to AI.

It uses human intuition heavily.

this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2026
359 points (100.0% liked)

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