4 ms·

MySpace coding legacy

25 points by D_Guidi 8y ago

devel0per_1 8y ago
OMG. It was really fun to read — thanks for sharing. Remember MySpace as something wild while growing up. Imagine modern networks to add this custom pages. lol
terrafoam 8y ago
So, so, so many things went completely sideways to erode and disolve MySpace. There were reasons to hate MySpace, as a lower quality, superficial version of Friendster. With Friendster, there were no style hacks, but you actually could browse a graph of your friends, which no other network has exposed in the UI, before or since. With MySpace's short-lived domination, Friendster was edged out and disappeared. MySpace, though, once the style hacks appeared became way more fun. Tom was clearly a photo of some model or actor, and a manufactured pseudo-celebrity and not even a real person. But so many completely awesome nobodies were scattered throughout the rest of the site that it quickly didn't matter. But then came the Iraq invasion and Rupert Murdoch, and you knew it was over. How that took shape, though, was another matter. With Windows XP and Internet Explorer 6, injection attacks made MySpace's security profile swiss cheese. How appropriate that MySpace was written in Cold Fusion, possibly the only server technology worse than PHP. 2004 began an era of cross site scripting and remote exploitation, before people really knew what that was. MySpace locked down the <script/> tag, but HTML injection meant phishing was rampant. People were getting hack left and right, simply for clicking links, to external sites, or via tracking pixels, and on and on. At some point though, as the pitch of Fox News became unbearable, people abandoned MySpace, with the clear understanding that truly evil people were vacuuming up every click, hover and scroll on that site for subsequent analysis. Cross Site Request Forgery was rampant and they allowed Flash Object injection, which opened up the entire client side to malicious Flash-based action scripts. This effectively bypassed the <script/> tag restriction via action script, and by embedding a flash object people code decloak lurkers and stalkers, and that was the real nail in the coffin. Obsessing over crushes sometimes exploded into public view, or emerged as insidious rumor and gossip. We should be happy about the Flash embeds though. MySpace was most people's first exposure to YouTube. Anyway, looking at the old MySpace page layout, I see something so much more inviting in that basic, spacious box model than any other site. Maybe it's just nostalgia, but it feels right, just by the way it looks. Why aren't mastodon layouts more like that?
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

25 points by D_Guidi 8y ago

OMG. It was really fun to read — thanks for sharing. Remember MySpace as something wild while growing up. Imagine modern networks to add this custom pages. lol

terrafoam 8y ago

So, so, so many things went completely sideways to erode and disolve MySpace. There were reasons to hate MySpace, as a lower quality, superficial version of Friendster. With Friendster, there were no style hacks, but you actually could browse a graph of your friends, which no other network has exposed in the UI, before or since. With MySpace's short-lived domination, Friendster was edged out and disappeared. MySpace, though, once the style hacks appeared became way more fun. Tom was clearly a photo of some model or actor, and a manufactured pseudo-celebrity and not even a real person. But so many completely awesome nobodies were scattered throughout the rest of the site that it quickly didn't matter. But then came the Iraq invasion and Rupert Murdoch, and you knew it was over. How that took shape, though, was another matter. With Windows XP and Internet Explorer 6, injection attacks made MySpace's security profile swiss cheese. How appropriate that MySpace was written in Cold Fusion, possibly the only server technology worse than PHP. 2004 began an era of cross site scripting and remote exploitation, before people really knew what that was. MySpace locked down the <script/> tag, but HTML injection meant phishing was rampant. People were getting hack left and right, simply for clicking links, to external sites, or via tracking pixels, and on and on. At some point though, as the pitch of Fox News became unbearable, people abandoned MySpace, with the clear understanding that truly evil people were vacuuming up every click, hover and scroll on that site for subsequent analysis. Cross Site Request Forgery was rampant and they allowed Flash Object injection, which opened up the entire client side to malicious Flash-based action scripts. This effectively bypassed the <script/> tag restriction via action script, and by embedding a flash object people code decloak lurkers and stalkers, and that was the real nail in the coffin. Obsessing over crushes sometimes exploded into public view, or emerged as insidious rumor and gossip. We should be happy about the Flash embeds though. MySpace was most people's first exposure to YouTube. Anyway, looking at the old MySpace page layout, I see something so much more inviting in that basic, spacious box model than any other site. Maybe it's just nostalgia, but it feels right, just by the way it looks. Why aren't mastodon layouts more like that?

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]