6 ms·

How would you have them deal with harassment and spam, or do you not believe it is as much of a problem for them as they claim it is?

spamthrowaway 8y ago
I wrote a short reply to this, and then HN for whatever reason flagged it as spam and wouldn’t allow me to post. I think that provides a great meta-comment supporting my stance on not allowing too much central control and censorship.
mrweasel 8y ago
I seriously doubt that both harassment and spam is a much of a problem as Mozilla, or others make it out to be. That's not to say that it's not a huge issue for a subset of people and it should be dealt with, to some extend. If someone want to harass you online, they will find a way, regardless of what governance or censorship you put in place.
- laughinghan 8y ago
  Interesting. Do you have experience moderating a comparable community, or what leads you to believe that it's not as much of a problem as they make it out to be? I'm sure it will always be possible to find a way to harass someone. But do you believe putting barriers in place has no effect on the amount of harassment that targets have to endure? What do you think of the computer security concept of "defense in depth"?
ohithereyou 8y ago
Usenet kill file style support for chat clients, optionally with a subscription option to shared blocklists like uBlock Plus supports.
- laughinghan 8y ago
  Couldn't you trivially defeat that by randomizing your IRC username? Blocking email addresses does literally nothing against email spam, why would chat be different?
  - ohithereyou 7y ago
    More of what I was thinking was a killfile controlled by the user, uploaded to the server when updated, that would allow the server to filter messages. You could allow shared blocked lists and support wildcards with whitelist exceptions. In this way, you can block everyone and whitelist who you want, so changing your IRC user name does not help. In most cases, unless the person connects from somewhere else, specifying a sufficiently wildcarded netmask for the host part also prevents the IRC nick change.
    - laughinghan 7y ago
      Doesn't blocking everyone except a whitelist defeat the purpose of having your IRC chatroom open to the public?

spamthrowaway 8y ago

I wrote a short reply to this, and then HN for whatever reason flagged it as spam and wouldn’t allow me to post. I think that provides a great meta-comment supporting my stance on not allowing too much central control and censorship.

mrweasel 8y ago

I seriously doubt that both harassment and spam is a much of a problem as Mozilla, or others make it out to be. That's not to say that it's not a huge issue for a subset of people and it should be dealt with, to some extend. If someone want to harass you online, they will find a way, regardless of what governance or censorship you put in place.

laughinghan 8y ago
Interesting. Do you have experience moderating a comparable community, or what leads you to believe that it's not as much of a problem as they make it out to be? I'm sure it will always be possible to find a way to harass someone. But do you believe putting barriers in place has no effect on the amount of harassment that targets have to endure? What do you think of the computer security concept of "defense in depth"?

ohithereyou 8y ago

Usenet kill file style support for chat clients, optionally with a subscription option to shared blocklists like uBlock Plus supports.

laughinghan 8y ago
Couldn't you trivially defeat that by randomizing your IRC username? Blocking email addresses does literally nothing against email spam, why would chat be different?
- ohithereyou 7y ago
  More of what I was thinking was a killfile controlled by the user, uploaded to the server when updated, that would allow the server to filter messages. You could allow shared blocked lists and support wildcards with whitelist exceptions. In this way, you can block everyone and whitelist who you want, so changing your IRC user name does not help. In most cases, unless the person connects from somewhere else, specifying a sufficiently wildcarded netmask for the host part also prevents the IRC nick change.
  - laughinghan 7y ago
    Doesn't blocking everyone except a whitelist defeat the purpose of having your IRC chatroom open to the public?