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Show HN: A Firefox extension to leave comments on any URL

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Re: Show HN: A Firefox extension to leave comments on any URL

#3
Apart from encrypting the comments so the server wouldn't be able to read them, I've been thinking that it's actually possible to leave private messages: it would be a comment on SHA1(user.publicKey), and the message would be encrypted with that public key. The extension uses the ed25519 crypto system (WebCrypto notoriously avoids implementing it, so I had to use a WASM module). That seems like a very cool idea, albeit it's attracting exactly 0 attention from the public so far :)

Re: Show HN: A Firefox extension to leave comments on any URL

#8
post #5

This sounds similar to the (in)famous Dissenter comment functionality. What are the differences?

In the 90's there was a Windows program that offered the same functionality, called uTOK: http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~orit/utok.html . IIRC it acted as a HTTP proxy to see which URLs you were fetching.

Ah, the good old days where neo-nazis weren't everywhere online...

Re: Show HN: A Firefox extension to leave comments on any URL

#9
post #4

Appreciate the thought behind using the hashed URL to avoid leaking PII. That does make comments difficult too though because of refs being inserted by various social platforms. Not sure how one would handle that though

Some sites use a link with real=canonical to indicate the canonical url. Maybe this could use that (when present), instead of the tab url?
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