29

Show DN: Prevent urls that hide behind a short url

7 years ago from , kreativgebiet.com

Sorry for creating another post about this spam thing for webdesignshare.com. But I wanted to just tell the admins some options, that would be nice to implement.

  1. Prevent permanently moved urls (don't allow something like cl.ly or bit.ly – *only if permanently moved/redirect).
  2. Prevent webdesignshare.com posts (Do a blacklist of urls that you don't want to have an countercheck the url on posting.
  3. Have some more moderators and make the whole place confirmation based (Let the moderators decide whether the post is on the front page or not/There should still be a "all" category on the headbar) (Not the best solution as far as I think)

Regarding 1. and 2.: https://gist.github.com/iDuuck/48887a69e31fa41d58ffcfc9be1a2f47

9 comments

  • Ed AdamsEd Adams, 7 years ago (edited 7 years ago )

    I posted a comment on one of their submissions suggesting that URL shorteners be blocked entirely. For what it's worth, the suggestion had 12 upvotes. The submission should be removed when the mods get it together, so here it is again:

    Important to note: webdesignshare.com links are now using a URL shortener service to mask their URLs so it isn't so immediately obvious.

    I called for this the last time we had a problem with webdesignshare's content getting spammed, it was ignored. I'll bring it up again: I really think that posts using URL shorteners should get removed on sight. That's how reddit does it site-wide. A legitimate article has no need for a URL shortener.

    8 points
  • Peter AntoniusPeter Antonius, 7 years ago

    Great. 5 new links on the frontpage now.

    1 point
  • M. AppelmanM. Appelman, 7 years ago

    How is it that there is 0 WDS spam on reddit? Does WDS spammers not care about reddit or does reddit have an amazing filter system?

    1 point
    • Ed AdamsEd Adams, 7 years ago (edited 7 years ago )

      Reddit has some pretty good spam prevention stuff. As well as detecting vote manipulation (presumably done by measuring how fast upvotes come in or the IP addresses they're coming from), this comment claims they intentionally hide a submission's actual number of upvotes so bots can't tell that they're banned. They do some good stuff, but when you're the #10 most visited site in the world you'd be expected to. :P

      1 point
  • Joshua TurnerJoshua Turner, 7 years ago

    A great start, but this doesn't account for javascript based redirects.

    1 point
    • Dominik SchmidtDominik Schmidt, 7 years ago

      For this, you should just add an background queue to the system that is checking the page using a ruby web driver like selenium and then just approving it asynchronously.

      0 points
      • Joshua TurnerJoshua Turner, 7 years ago

        Then the next step would be for them to have full viewport Iframes loading the offending website.

        I'm not trying to be facetious, both things you've suggested are obviously fantastic ideas to implement. I'm just saying that fighting spam is a cat-and-mouse game, and until there's appropriate vote manipulation detection in place, the best way to curb spam is more active moderators or returning to an invite-only site.

        0 points
        • Dominik SchmidtDominik Schmidt, 7 years ago
          • I would first check if the IP is always the same
          • If not, implement some of those solutions (iframe is also possible with the selenium driver)
          • Don't know if feasible, but perhaps reject submission from specific server.
          0 points
  • Dominik SchmidtDominik Schmidt, 7 years ago

    I did this in ruby because I think DesignerNews is developed in Ruby on Rails.

    Btw: Why do you include scripts above the fold?

    0 points