this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2024
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285
13 Feet Ladder (github.com)
submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
24 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

A site similar to 12ft.io but is self hosted and works with websites that 12ft.io doesn't work with.

How does it work?

It pretends to be GoogleBot (Google's web crawler) and gets the same content that google will get. Google gets the whole page so that the content of the article can be indexed properly and this takes advantage of that.

link: https://github.com/wasi-master/13ft

top 24 comments
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[–] [email protected] 85 points 10 months ago (3 children)

If you're on Firefox on desktop/laptop, check out Bypass Paywall [0]. It was removed from the firefox add-on store due to a DMCA claim [1], but can be manually installed (and auto updates) from gitlab. The dev even provides instructions on how to add custom filters to uBlock Origin [2], so you don't have to add another extension but still get some benefit.

[0] https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clean

[1] https://winaero.com/mozilla-has-silently-removed-the-bypass-paywalls-clean-add-on-from-amo/

[2] https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-clean-filters

[–] [email protected] 22 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Your correct indexing is highly appreciated!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

took the words right out my mouth

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

It must have been while he was kissing you.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

That's the dude who was butt hurt about something this dude did: https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome

and so forked it and arguably does a better job, lol.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

also, bypass paywalls clean on notfirefox, like Chrome, or Kiwi (android).

[–] [email protected] 39 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Where are the metric versions? I want my 3 meter ladder.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

Clone the repo and make it yourself.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Most often I use it, it's too avoid metrics.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

It amazes me that all it takes is just changing user agent to Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 6.0.1; Nexus 5X Build/MMB29P) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/W.X.Y.Z Mobile Safari/537.36 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html) and it can bypass paywalls on many sites? I thought those sites would try harder (e.g. checking if the ip address is truly belong to google), but apparently not.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Checking ip ownership is a moving target more likely to result in outcomes these sites don’t want (accidentally blocking google bots and preventing results from appearing on google).

Checking useragent is cheap, easier, unlikely to break (for this purpose, anyway) and the percentage of folks who know how to bypass this check is relatively slim, with a pretty small financial impact.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It's not necessarily a moving target when entire blocks can be associated with Google.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Unless they are permanently only using specific addresses or blocks and will never change that up, I’d consider it a moving target.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Google literally has an official list of IP ranges for their crawlers, complete with an API that returns the current IP ranges that you can use to automate a check. Hardly a moving target, and even if it is, it doesn't matter if you know exactly where the target is at all times.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Same. I thought there would be more stuff happening in the background but when I saw it's just hijacking the google bot headers to display the html i was a bit disappointed it's so stupidly easy.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Https://1ft.io also seems to work and by the branding seems unrelated to 12ft

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

There's 4ft.io too. Oh nvm looks like it's gone.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 10 months ago

If you're on Android and use Firefox, you can use the Disable JavaScript extension to disable JS on sites with paywalls, like NYtimes. While not perfect, it works remarkably well.

Also works great on Desktop.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

I've been happy with https://github.com/everywall/ladder

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

I use this, too! It's great but doesn't always work.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Loaded the docker for fun on my NAS. I don't need it, but other users in my home may appreciate this.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Seems like this can be done in the browser using a user agent switcher.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Love it! Deployed it this morning.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

So ist this an http proxy? I don't quite get it.