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There definitely is an alternative solution here that preserves people's freedom to use whatever browser they want, but I'm not sure if anyone would like it. W

There definitely is an alternative solution here that preserves people's freedom to use whatever browser they want, but I'm not sure if anyone would like it. Web services are intended for humans to use them, and all abuse also ultimately comes from humans directing computers to be abusive. Thus, rather than attaching a computer's temporary identity (an IP address) to the request, we should be attaching a human identity to it. Note here, that I don't care whether the request comes from John Smith in New York. I care about being able to ban you from the service if you are abusive, no matter how many computers you have at your disposal now or in the future. There's lots of downsides I haven't got solutions for, such as, how do we stop sites cross referencing to reliably discover all users real identities (Google analytics would love this!), and so much more. But we'll have to give up something - if we do nothing we give up everything, maybe giving up only absolute anonymity could be preferred.

CameronNemo 3y ago
IP reputation doesn't seem to be much of a thing right now, but it might be the only way forward for a spyware-free web. You can have a group of people sharing a block and collectively responding to abuse reports to slightly improve privacy. That at least shields you somewhat from the big tech firms. Essentially a large number of virtual private micro-ISPs.
- kmlx 3y ago
  > IP reputation doesn't seem to be much of a thing right now disclaimer: acquaintance works in the spam business. someone i tried to steer clear of, but was fascinated of what they told me. IP reputation is a huge thing in the spam world. they pay top dollar for residential US/UK/etc IPs which they can then use for spamming others. and we're not talking one or two IPs. we're talking 100s of thousands of IPs being transacted daily globally. all for spam. for anyone interested in seeing how low we've come, they have a huge convention in Las Vegas. one should visit it to better understand a field that has been growing like crazy but so few know it. apparently everyone is preparing for a big boom next year, with 10s of $B ready to be deployed.
- andersa 3y ago
  IP reputation is absolutely a thing, as I understand it it's a large factor in Cloudflare deciding to put you in an infinite loop (or trigger the protection at all).
  - didntcheck 3y ago
    Yep. Even within a single VPN service it's often noticeable how many more CAPTCHAs (or outright blocks) you get via different servers

CameronNemo 3y ago

IP reputation doesn't seem to be much of a thing right now, but it might be the only way forward for a spyware-free web. You can have a group of people sharing a block and collectively responding to abuse reports to slightly improve privacy. That at least shields you somewhat from the big tech firms. Essentially a large number of virtual private micro-ISPs.

kmlx 3y ago
> IP reputation doesn't seem to be much of a thing right now disclaimer: acquaintance works in the spam business. someone i tried to steer clear of, but was fascinated of what they told me. IP reputation is a huge thing in the spam world. they pay top dollar for residential US/UK/etc IPs which they can then use for spamming others. and we're not talking one or two IPs. we're talking 100s of thousands of IPs being transacted daily globally. all for spam. for anyone interested in seeing how low we've come, they have a huge convention in Las Vegas. one should visit it to better understand a field that has been growing like crazy but so few know it. apparently everyone is preparing for a big boom next year, with 10s of $B ready to be deployed.
andersa 3y ago
IP reputation is absolutely a thing, as I understand it it's a large factor in Cloudflare deciding to put you in an infinite loop (or trigger the protection at all).
- didntcheck 3y ago
  Yep. Even within a single VPN service it's often noticeable how many more CAPTCHAs (or outright blocks) you get via different servers