4 ms·

I banned people from public IRC channels on EFNet all the time. Google deplatforms SEO spam sites all the time. The internet is unusable without some kind of f

I banned people from public IRC channels on EFNet all the time. Google deplatforms SEO spam sites all the time. The internet is unusable without some kind of filter on participation.

Karunamon 6y ago
Maybe that filter should be moved to the client side, where it can be bypassed or disabled if broken or abused.
- ev1 6y ago
  This becomes somewhat rapidly infeasible as your client is sorting through a 1:100000 signal to noise ratio. In a past web forum I did infrastructure for, without sufficient moderation and constant updates to captchas/challenge questions, we would get over 25k signups a day (100 legitimate signups a day), and over 500k spam posts a day (<5k legit). You'd be sending every single client multiple-digit terabytes of literal spam, much of it illegal spam (CC theft dump sales, illegal online pharmacy, are common spam) and making them dig through it. Imagine viewing a single thread, and downloading about 5GB a page of gzipped viagra ads covered in the entire text content of a Harry Potter book in a desperate attempt to get past some filter, and then having to filter through to get the one or two posts.
  - Karunamon 6y ago
    It's a hard problem, but I'd argue its one that's been effectively moribund for effort and research around the time of everyone dropping POP3 for their email. My entire problem with censorship, philosophically, is some unwanted third party making demands on my information input. The goals of moderation need not be at odds with my goal to determine for myself what I wish to read. Categorization and shared filter lists could go a long way here.
    - rabidrat 6y ago
      > unwanted third party making demands on my information input It seems like we want the same thing. If we don't have any kind of moderation, then that filtering is pushed out to each and every leaf node, instead of being handled centrally, and this is a huge demand on my attention for information input. Do you remember how bad email spam had gotten before we developed effective server-side spam filtering? Email had become basically unusable.
      - Karunamon 6y ago
        Email providers still deliver spam, they just deliver it to a spam bucket I can view for myself and decide if the classification is accurate. The categorization is handled upstream. The decision of what to do with that information is left to me. I think that's the ideal model.
        ev1 6y ago
        They really don't deliver a huge amount of it; quite a bit (significant amount) is straight up rejected. What you get is the trickle that vaguely passed at least a few tests in the spam box.

I banned people from public IRC channels on EFNet all the time. Google deplatforms SEO spam sites all the time. The internet is unusable without some kind of filter on participation.

Karunamon 6y ago

Maybe that filter should be moved to the client side, where it can be bypassed or disabled if broken or abused.

ev1 6y ago
This becomes somewhat rapidly infeasible as your client is sorting through a 1:100000 signal to noise ratio. In a past web forum I did infrastructure for, without sufficient moderation and constant updates to captchas/challenge questions, we would get over 25k signups a day (100 legitimate signups a day), and over 500k spam posts a day (<5k legit). You'd be sending every single client multiple-digit terabytes of literal spam, much of it illegal spam (CC theft dump sales, illegal online pharmacy, are common spam) and making them dig through it. Imagine viewing a single thread, and downloading about 5GB a page of gzipped viagra ads covered in the entire text content of a Harry Potter book in a desperate attempt to get past some filter, and then having to filter through to get the one or two posts.
- Karunamon 6y ago
  It's a hard problem, but I'd argue its one that's been effectively moribund for effort and research around the time of everyone dropping POP3 for their email. My entire problem with censorship, philosophically, is some unwanted third party making demands on my information input. The goals of moderation need not be at odds with my goal to determine for myself what I wish to read. Categorization and shared filter lists could go a long way here.
  - rabidrat 6y ago
    > unwanted third party making demands on my information input It seems like we want the same thing. If we don't have any kind of moderation, then that filtering is pushed out to each and every leaf node, instead of being handled centrally, and this is a huge demand on my attention for information input. Do you remember how bad email spam had gotten before we developed effective server-side spam filtering? Email had become basically unusable.
    - Karunamon 6y ago
      Email providers still deliver spam, they just deliver it to a spam bucket I can view for myself and decide if the classification is accurate. The categorization is handled upstream. The decision of what to do with that information is left to me. I think that's the ideal model.
      - ev1 6y ago
        They really don't deliver a huge amount of it; quite a bit (significant amount) is straight up rejected. What you get is the trickle that vaguely passed at least a few tests in the spam box.