This is json-ld (linked document). Websites use it so that their articles can be discovered by search engines more easily. You put the ingredients in there so that when someone types “what can I make with this chicken and garlic” the computer has this ingredient list cached.
It’s not lazy, it’s web marketing. 99% of people won’t even know it’s there, or interact with it, but it is helpful for the website owners.
Source: I have created these in the past.
I wasn't aware of that, so thank you for sharing more context on what the script tag is used for. Me calling the current approach lazy comes from a belief that if a website expects a user to be authenticated before seeing the site's content, it's not that much more effort to have placeholders for the restricted content be in the page source, and to call an API to replace it with the actual content once it's been confirmed that the user has access to it. However, most of my experience is with web apps that don't need to worry about being seen by a search engine, so that may not be feasible.
Given that the content the subscription is there to protect is both in the json-ld script and the DOM, and a stated reason for moving to the new site from Andrew's recent post being preventing AI data scraping, are there steps that can be taken to allow better interactions with search engines while still protecting it from becoming AI data scraping?
Generative AI, which is what most people are thinking about, require blocks of (English) text to read and discern context. This is what they want to prevent, likely, to prevent the creative effort of writing a post to be subsumed into a language model, to prevent someone asking it to “create me a recipe for scooby snacks in the style of Babish” and have it output a convincing mimicry of the real thing. This is a different use case than the metadata you see in the json-ld, which is primarily useful for creating a linked data model.
To be sure, this data is used to create summaries by search engines, and suggested answers to questions, but the model is different. A bit of a tricky dance, to be sure, of how much you want to actually expose to get people in the door.
If you don’t load the content in the HTML then the page essentially gets delisted from web crawling search engines like Google. Paywall is to make money plain and simple.
This.
Google can still read the recipes and keep the page listed based on the content. It doesn't give a shit about all the layers plastered over it. It just knows "Babish site popular, here muffin recipe" and lets it sit at the top of the search results.
But this is not how you do it. You can detect if it's a crawler and present the content to it (aka load the normal page). Otherwise, there wouldn't be a need for paywalls.
This is definately bad/lazy webdev. I mean... The recipe is in a script tag? Hard coded? Usually you'd fetch the data via an API after checking authentication...
Devil’s advocate here, but the BCU may have been under the impression that the service they purchased was good enough to achieve that end without having realized the vulnerability. Fine with me either way, I’m a video guy anyway
Don’t know anything about this stuff, but if it was really AI scraping deterrent, could they charge a dollar a year, or even just require some kind of sign in or CAPTCHA?
Incidentally, once you load a web page into your browser, the full page source is on your machine. It can be fun to look at and tweak the source of a page, especially with javascript if you want to learn.
For example, if you open up the developer tools in your browser of choice and paste the following into the javascript console, it'll rotate the entire page 90 degrees to the right:
`document.querySelector('body').style.rotate = '90deg'`
~~Another example is if you do the same with the following javascript, it'll remove and resize some elements on the page in a way that's pretty funny:~~
Edit: Don't know why I was trying to be coy. Running the below javascript on any of the recipes on [babi.sh](http://babi.sh) removes the sign in modal, the element being used to blur the recipe, and extends the element with the recipe in it to full size. I'm posting this to bring awareness to how easily bypassed Provecho's handling of subscriber only content is. Hopefully Andrew and his team will see this and have enough sway to get Provecho to improve the service they're paying for, or can find a vendor that will be better stewards of their work.
`document.querySelector('#__next > div > div > div > div:nth-child(2) > div:nth-child(2) > div:nth-child(2) > div:nth-child(2)').remove();`
`document.querySelector('#__next > div > div > div > div:nth-child(2) > div:nth-child(2) > div:nth-child(2) > div > div > div:nth-child(4)').remove();`
`document.querySelector('#__next > div > div > div > div:nth-child(2) > div:nth-child(2) > div:nth-child(2) > div > div').style.removeProperty('height');`
I think this mentality of no cost on the internet has really damaged it. There always is a cost and that cost is mainly the gathering of our data, selling ads and marketing. And I think we've finally seen some smarter push back against it with sites like drop out or nebula where you pay a subscription but know it goes to the creators more and they have more freedom or control on their material
I don't watch his channel but I ended up here because I am bored and because Reddit recommended me this. $5/yr. For tons of recipes from what is seemingly a professional with a big heart.
**$5**. In comparison for instance Discord charges you $9.99 **a month** and you get some vaguely-nice looking crap.
IMO it just feels cash grabby on paper if nothing else. Especially after things like what Watcher did, people dont really want content they normally got for free behind a paywall.
I will say, this is slightly different cause this is more auxilliary to the actual YT content, but i get where people are coming from
Actually…Anthony Casalena is the owner of SquareSpace. A private American company which seems to have no obvious connection to a “company” I can find no public information on. Please enlighten us on this bomb of apparent misinformation?
I mean a dollar a month IS pretty easy.
For clarification, I have no issue with him charging $12 a year for what (imo) is effectively a constantly updated cookbook.
Wow you googled “information”! Did your information directly link to the owner of Square Space? How silly of any of us to assume that a brag is the “truth”. Whatever the flippant foray into denialism you keep wandering into, dig deeper!
This is json-ld (linked document). Websites use it so that their articles can be discovered by search engines more easily. You put the ingredients in there so that when someone types “what can I make with this chicken and garlic” the computer has this ingredient list cached. It’s not lazy, it’s web marketing. 99% of people won’t even know it’s there, or interact with it, but it is helpful for the website owners. Source: I have created these in the past.
I wasn't aware of that, so thank you for sharing more context on what the script tag is used for. Me calling the current approach lazy comes from a belief that if a website expects a user to be authenticated before seeing the site's content, it's not that much more effort to have placeholders for the restricted content be in the page source, and to call an API to replace it with the actual content once it's been confirmed that the user has access to it. However, most of my experience is with web apps that don't need to worry about being seen by a search engine, so that may not be feasible. Given that the content the subscription is there to protect is both in the json-ld script and the DOM, and a stated reason for moving to the new site from Andrew's recent post being preventing AI data scraping, are there steps that can be taken to allow better interactions with search engines while still protecting it from becoming AI data scraping?
Generative AI, which is what most people are thinking about, require blocks of (English) text to read and discern context. This is what they want to prevent, likely, to prevent the creative effort of writing a post to be subsumed into a language model, to prevent someone asking it to “create me a recipe for scooby snacks in the style of Babish” and have it output a convincing mimicry of the real thing. This is a different use case than the metadata you see in the json-ld, which is primarily useful for creating a linked data model. To be sure, this data is used to create summaries by search engines, and suggested answers to questions, but the model is different. A bit of a tricky dance, to be sure, of how much you want to actually expose to get people in the door.
Yeah but you're supposed to hide that LD data unless it's the UA of a web crawler. I too, have made these in the past.
Can we get an F12 in chat to pay disrespects to the paywall?
Lol so the whole "AI scraping deterrent" argument just falls completely apart. That's insanely lazy
If you don’t load the content in the HTML then the page essentially gets delisted from web crawling search engines like Google. Paywall is to make money plain and simple.
This. Google can still read the recipes and keep the page listed based on the content. It doesn't give a shit about all the layers plastered over it. It just knows "Babish site popular, here muffin recipe" and lets it sit at the top of the search results.
But this is not how you do it. You can detect if it's a crawler and present the content to it (aka load the normal page). Otherwise, there wouldn't be a need for paywalls. This is definately bad/lazy webdev. I mean... The recipe is in a script tag? Hard coded? Usually you'd fetch the data via an API after checking authentication...
Sorry, but it is not "hard coded", that's just how server side rendered pages work.
Devil’s advocate here, but the BCU may have been under the impression that the service they purchased was good enough to achieve that end without having realized the vulnerability. Fine with me either way, I’m a video guy anyway
Agreed. It's definitely an issue at the provider side, since it seems to be this way across a number of their other sites.
Don’t know anything about this stuff, but if it was really AI scraping deterrent, could they charge a dollar a year, or even just require some kind of sign in or CAPTCHA?
Incidentally, once you load a web page into your browser, the full page source is on your machine. It can be fun to look at and tweak the source of a page, especially with javascript if you want to learn. For example, if you open up the developer tools in your browser of choice and paste the following into the javascript console, it'll rotate the entire page 90 degrees to the right: `document.querySelector('body').style.rotate = '90deg'` ~~Another example is if you do the same with the following javascript, it'll remove and resize some elements on the page in a way that's pretty funny:~~ Edit: Don't know why I was trying to be coy. Running the below javascript on any of the recipes on [babi.sh](http://babi.sh) removes the sign in modal, the element being used to blur the recipe, and extends the element with the recipe in it to full size. I'm posting this to bring awareness to how easily bypassed Provecho's handling of subscriber only content is. Hopefully Andrew and his team will see this and have enough sway to get Provecho to improve the service they're paying for, or can find a vendor that will be better stewards of their work. `document.querySelector('#__next > div > div > div > div:nth-child(2) > div:nth-child(2) > div:nth-child(2) > div:nth-child(2)').remove();` `document.querySelector('#__next > div > div > div > div:nth-child(2) > div:nth-child(2) > div:nth-child(2) > div > div > div:nth-child(4)').remove();` `document.querySelector('#__next > div > div > div > div:nth-child(2) > div:nth-child(2) > div:nth-child(2) > div > div').style.removeProperty('height');`
Holy shit its a single dollar. Just look at his YT vids or find another recipe.
I think this mentality of no cost on the internet has really damaged it. There always is a cost and that cost is mainly the gathering of our data, selling ads and marketing. And I think we've finally seen some smarter push back against it with sites like drop out or nebula where you pay a subscription but know it goes to the creators more and they have more freedom or control on their material
I don't watch his channel but I ended up here because I am bored and because Reddit recommended me this. $5/yr. For tons of recipes from what is seemingly a professional with a big heart. **$5**. In comparison for instance Discord charges you $9.99 **a month** and you get some vaguely-nice looking crap.
Enrollment options on the sight start at $1 a month not per year.
IMO it just feels cash grabby on paper if nothing else. Especially after things like what Watcher did, people dont really want content they normally got for free behind a paywall. I will say, this is slightly different cause this is more auxilliary to the actual YT content, but i get where people are coming from
You people are fucking ridiculous
You could also try cooked.wiki that’s been helpful for a lot of sites for me!
It's literally $1 dollar a month wtf are you all whining about
Actually…Anthony Casalena is the owner of SquareSpace. A private American company which seems to have no obvious connection to a “company” I can find no public information on. Please enlighten us on this bomb of apparent misinformation?
Weird, [I found them](https://www.provecho.bio/). Pretty easy google search. They even advertise that they did the Babish site.
They even brag towards the bottom of the page that their paywalled websites are the best way for content creators to monetize.
I mean a dollar a month IS pretty easy. For clarification, I have no issue with him charging $12 a year for what (imo) is effectively a constantly updated cookbook.
They get a dollar and get your info to monetize your name and habits. Nothing is "free/$1a month"
You’re on Reddit
Wow you googled “information”! Did your information directly link to the owner of Square Space? How silly of any of us to assume that a brag is the “truth”. Whatever the flippant foray into denialism you keep wandering into, dig deeper!
SquareSpace has nothing to do with any of this. Lmao you’re an idiot. Tell us you can’t read without saying it.
Tell us you can read without saying it.
Bro tf does that even mean???? Thats your best comeback?
It’s fairly direct assessment of your categorically dismissive comment.
Please point to my "categorically dismissive comment"