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One way I fixed this in a small gamedev forum I help maintain was by letting users view shadowbanned comments created by the same IP. There's still the chance o
by ratww 6y ago
One way I fixed this in a small gamedev forum I help maintain was by letting users view shadowbanned comments created by the same IP. There's still the chance of the user using Tor/VPNs, but it's rarer.
Shadowban is not perfect by all means, but it's still a good deterrent in my experience.
- littlestymaar 6y agoIP-based recognition is annoying for people leaving in third world countries[1] though, because there little IPV4, they are many behind the same NAT. Also, with tethering it's really easy to circumvent, without needing a VPN. [1]: IIRC, the whole Laos only has a /32 subnet… yes you read it right: a single IPV4 address for end entire country. And many country only have a few /16.
- ratww 6y agoPlease read my message again. I'm not restricting anything and there's nothing to be circumvented, it's about letting unlogged/anonymous users view more stuff to deter detection of shadowbanning.
- littlestymaar 6y agoMaybe “circumvent” isn't adequate here (not a native English speaker), what I meant is that's easy to bypass your countermeasures: post from my computer, and check from my phone if my comment is visible, if not I shadowbanned. And regarding third world country, your idea doesn't prevent them to access the website, but they will access a site where the shadowbanning feature is pretty much disabled, which could lead to the proliferation of trolls or spam targeted at this specific country.
- ratww 6y agoIf this ever happens I can just change my approach. It helped me a lot so far. I'd rather have an approach that is currently working on >99% of the cases I need than chase some hypothetical 100% solution that is virtually impossible to achieve.
- jfengel 6y agoI was intrigued enough to look it up. According to[1], Laos has 54,784 addresses. The smallest is Santa Lucia, with a /24. North Korea and Dominica have a /22. (Apologies if I'm getting that number wrong. I don't do much with subnetting.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_IPv4_address_allocation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_IPv4_addr...
- littlestymaar 6y agoThanks for the fact-checking! I looks like I didn't recall correctly (or maybe it used to be true but changed at some point, who knows?).
- fogetti 6y agoThis doesn't make any sense. Most IPv4 addresses change every day if not multiple times during the day. I guess you can only filter the dumbest of the dumbest this way. And if someone has the wit to open an incognito window it doesn't take a genius to notice that he can only see the same day's comments.
- ratww 6y agoThere's a lot more involved in my case than that, but suffice to say it worked well in the forum I maintain, so your intuition disagrees with my practical experience. And yes, my trolls/spammers are dumb.