You can consider adding in a small amount of js that tracks if a person actually engages with the content before "counting" their view. Eg, did they stay on the page for more than 15 seconds.

Youtube wont count a view until you watch for some percentage of the video. Maybe consider something similar.

Aside from the things I suggested asking LLM's (they will take one down some fun rabbit holes) there are more crude methods such as forcing brotli or zstd on specific URLs accepting that older versions of Safari pre-2026 will get gibberish if forcing zstd. It's rude and paternal but botters can be rude and childish so these are the games we play.

I love sharing methods with the botters so they step up their game, thus forcing me to step up my game. Everything I use does not require javascript, cookies or authentication. I save authentication as a last resort which means I lost that round.

Botters are welcome and encouraged to test their setup on my silly hobby sites. Here's one of them: [1]

[1] - https://altchan.org/sh/33

P.S. These are the simplest crude methods for the obvious bots, let your LLM to help spot the fakers. pre-2026 Safari will not work. Do not visit image boards with unpatched browsers.