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From the Firefox add-on page: > Many websites don't allow user comments, or disable comments after a certain period of time. comntr bypasses these Orwellian re
by cyborgx7 7y ago
From the Firefox add-on page:
> Many websites don't allow user comments, or disable comments after a certain period of time. comntr bypasses these Orwellian restrictions by allowing anyone to leave a comment on any website, as well as read comments left by others. Furthermore, your comments cannot be censored by the website administrator.
I like the concept of the add-on, but calling moderation of your comment section "Orwellian" is pretty out there.
- avip 7y agoPuzzling that after 20 years of internet stupidism, people still think unrestricted user content could somehow be a good idea.
- s9w 7y agoSome people just want to be able to say what is legally allowed. That ability is attacked again and again. You don't have to want that freedom yourself, but imposing that restriction on others can be criticized.
- avip 7y agoDoes this extension give any party the power to unpublish not-legally-allowed content?
- s9w 7y agoI have no idea. But I would assume they would comply with the law in order to not get sued?
- catacombs 7y agoOne person made the extension. It wouldn't take much for a company to threaten a lawsuit to take the extension out of operation.
- comntr 7y agoYup. That's why I don't post my SSN everywhere. A single data server with all the comments without any moderation won't survive. But a group of data servers with different rules and many entry points via extensions or websites, can survive.
- darkarmani 7y ago> give any party the power to unpublish not-legally-allowed content Like the party that published it?
- comntr 7y agoYep, it's possible in theory. Comments are signed with ed25519 and the author can sign a request to delete the comment.
- marcinzm 7y ago>Some people just want to be able to say what is legally allowed. Not all speech is legally allowed, is this extensions going to deal with copyright violations, threats, libel, etc. Or even someone posting the name of a person arrested on a news story when the laws disallow that information being public.
- s9w 7y agoWell they have to, as it is law. I specifically wrote about legal speech. Extensions like this (or much more popular: dissenter) allows people to exercise that right on sites that limit their free speech.
- kristiandupont 7y agoDon't refer to freedom of speech like something everyone is obliged to provide. That's not what it means. https://xkcd.com/1357/ https://xkcd.com/1357/
- s9w 7y agoThat's orthogonal to what I said. I do have the right to say controversial things (at least I would have if I would be American, but let's assume that). Sites can limit that and delete comments they don't like - that's ok! But I am still allowed to use external software to still exercise that right.
- julienreszka 7y agoThat exactly what it means
- marcinzm 7y agoNo it's not. I am in no way required to provide you a platform to talk through or to allow you to continue using a platform you've been using. All it means is that the government, key word, is not allowed to stop you from using a platform you are allowed by it's owners to use.
- TomMckenny 7y agoSo if I do not add support for unlimited anonymous comments at my own expense to my website, I am engaging in Orwellian oppression? Then allow me to comment on this repo and display those comments prominently. Because if I’m not allowed to add whatever opinion I want to the readme, I am being horribly oppressed.
- s9w 7y agoI think your comment is misguided. I have neither used the term Orwellian or opressions, nor do I have any affiliation with this extension. I'm literally just saying that some people like to be able to say what they are allowed to, that this could be a tool to do so, and that that is OK. That was a direct response to the phrase "people still think unrestricted user content could somehow be a good idea", which implies that free speech is NEVER a good idea. I disagree with that.
- tetizera 7y agoThe problem isn't free speech, but rather the distribution of illegal pornography and other illegal things.
- brokenmachine 7y agoI don't know about this project specifically, but usually comments are simply plain text. If there's links to illegal stuff there, then something needs to be done about the actual site hosting the illegal stuff.
- TomMckenny 7y agoI read it to mean “allowing unrestricted comments on a web page is a bad idea” Perhaps you read it as “allowing unrestricted comments on a web page _or anywhere else_ is a bad idea” But that second one has never been the case. People have alway been able to post responses on their own sites with links to the original. Many places like reddit are primarily that. I think others maybe confusing the right to free speech with a right to vandalize.
- vwpolo3 7y agoAgreed, also while they can not be censored by the administrator of the website, they can still be censored (or moderated) by the Plugin Owner, right?
- quicklime 7y agoIf this got popular, and an administrator wanted to disable comments, one thing that they could do is add a unique random prefix to every request to a URL. The web server would just generate a random prefix for each link it produces, and strip the random prefix from the path in every request it receives. For example, HN's front page contains a set of URLs for each item. This item would be https://news.ycombinator.com/b149012c-56f4-4859-82b8-1f3f83e29a0d/item?id=20292638 https://news.ycombinator.com/b149012c-56f4-4859-82b8-1f3f83e... for one request, and https://news.ycombinator.com/73e78d90-cc25-4091-8ffa-94783a2bed89/item?id=20292638 https://news.ycombinator.com/73e78d90-cc25-4091-8ffa-94783a2... for the next request. Both requests would get mapped to the same page, and serve up the same content (except with another uuid inserted into links). Every comment would go into a unique SHA1 bucket and never seen again.
- martin-adams 7y agoIf the content is to be found via search engines, then this may not be advisable, and the plugin owner could try the same techniques that say Google would to use the canonical URL.
- Crinus 7y agoYeah, perhaps a better solution would be for the comments to be stored in something like ipfs? Though if i understand ipfs right, it works like torrents, meaning that unpopular comments will disappear over time.
- balzss 7y agoThis is the thing that I was thinking about. That a blockchain-like solution would better fit the goal of the extension. And I don't think this because I worry about censorship or free speech. I think the main benefit of this extension is that it creates an option to comment on sites where to creator of the site didn't make commenting possible. However I do worry about moderation and trolls. Allowing people to make as much noise as they can is almost as damaging to free speech as censorship. I'm not really familiar with IPFS, what does it mean that unpopular comments disappear? Is it like seeding the only torrent (comments) that you like?
- onlydeadheroes 7y agoNot all moderation is Orwellian but there is moderation happening right now that is Orwellian.
- cyborgx7 7y agoAccording to that paragraph, not having a comment section, falls under the definition of Orwellian.