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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

#211

Post by comntr »

celdon25 wrote: post #142
davidcollantes wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gab's Apple Developer account has been unfairly terminated by Apple. Without any explanation. First time I heard of Gab, and/or Dissenter. Unsigned app? No, thank you.

I can provide a possible explanation. As a former developer of a social mobile app, I'm aware that Apple's app policies require that any social communication features also come with human moderators (the definition of human moderator is up for interpretation). In any case, that is counter to Gab's core philosophy.

Looking at comments for example.com, I understand why they want human moderators.

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

#212

Post by b3n »

comntr wrote: post #189
cafxx wrote: post #158

"it attaches comments to SHA1 of the URL, to avoid leaking PII" Seriously, SHA1?

Why is this a problem? I even considered MD5, to be honest. Afaik, the only reason MD5 or SHA1 are considered "insecure" now is that it's possible to use sophisticated techniques called differential analysis to carefully craft two binary files that would have the same hash. But if the space of possible inputs is limited (we can't put arbitrary stuff in the URLs), then good luck finding a collision. Discovering a coll…

The problem with using SHA1 to protect PII is it would be trivial to brute force, especially with the restrictive character set of URLs, and a big part of them being able to be guessed. One could very quickly cycle through all Hacker News URLs, for example. This is why a key derivation function would be preferable.

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

#213

Post by sascha_sl »

6cd6beb wrote: post #138
pmarreck wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm already nauseous just browsing this, WTF? Is this where people are headed? Extreme tribalism in the unmoderated portions of the Internet where you're either "a known SJW" or "a Nazi" with no room in between? If so we're fucked.

It's definitely like that on the internet; a lot of people on both sides of the US political spectrum seem to think there are two problems: 1 - Their chosen political party is not pushing far left/right enough 2 - The opposing party is obviously criminally bent on destroying the country. Actually maybe three problems; the third being that "centrists" (anyone who isn't radicalized one way or the other) haven't come ou…

Your viewpoint might shift if you're more affected.

I'm German and the only party really seriously pushing for improvement of my identity rights is also neoliberal.

So I'm just out of options as a trans socialist. Of course I'll call the greens out on flying the LGBT flag while not pushing for TSG reform (the law that allows you to change your name for ~5000 EUR, two unqualified "expert opinions" and a civil court case).

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

#214

Post by sascha_sl »

gfosco wrote: post #153
sascha_sl wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I requested the Gab Mastodon fork code a week or so ago. Normally worded email. Nothing antagonistic there. I know how to be professional. 4 days ago, CTO of Gab calling me an "SJW" on his Gab feed. Thanks, I'll consider it a certification. From the grand wizard of Gab Tech himself. /s There's plenty of other insanely toxic content on Gab. But if you're signed up to it and don't see the issue... there's really no poi…

Not surprising that he jumped to that conclusion, considering the response they've gotten from the Mastodon community. Not only are people lobbying apps to hardcode bans to entire domains that aren't even live, they're planning to lobby app stores to pressure apps that refuse to implement those bans.

You got it the wrong way around.

Two apps have voluntarily decided that's the right thing to do. Lots of others have not.

Gab deciding to advertise as "we have apps they are [generic mastodon app]" is an existential threat. Because appstores don't care about details like that.

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

#215

Post by sascha_sl »

writepub wrote: post #141
sascha_sl wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I requested the Gab Mastodon fork code a week or so ago. Normally worded email. Nothing antagonistic there. I know how to be professional. 4 days ago, CTO of Gab calling me an "SJW" on his Gab feed. Thanks, I'll consider it a certification. From the grand wizard of Gab Tech himself. /s There's plenty of other insanely toxic content on Gab. But if you're signed up to it and don't see the issue... there's really no poi…

There's no evidence he was referring to you, as no handle is cited in his response. Not that I'm taking sides, but evidence actually matters

I'll write up a post about this entire thing (and the irony of rob going BUT THESE SJW MAKE SO MANY ASSUMPTIONS) eventually, but the tl;dr is I followed up by email, he confirmed he meant me and apologized while still assuming I was someone else, so I jokingly asked for a certificate of being an SJW I got one for being "an independent thinker" with someone elses name on it.

And because that sounds like an insanely farfetched story... here's the certificate with the person's name he assumed I was on it.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/583567030901538859/59...

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

#216

Post by Fnoord »

pmarreck wrote: post #126
mehdix wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The technical problem here is way easier to solve than the social one. You'd want to avoid having hatespeech or some attack being planned on URLs of your blog. This is by definition a tricky problem. Should moderation follow us to the remotest and most deserted corners of the web? Should prying eyes follow humans all the time, even on this abstract ocean of digital content? On technical side I think we'd need some so…

> You'd want to avoid having hatespeech I have zero confidence in automated hatespeech blocking ever since I had comments blocked multiple times for fighting racists with reason (which is, honestly, the only way it will be eliminated, just like it worked against homophobia and interracial marriage... I wonder how long it will take before we realize that if you ban it, you martyr it, and you merely send it off to fest…

> the only way it will be eliminated, just like it worked against homophobia and interracial marriage

Homophobia has been eliminated? Since when?

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

#217

Post by comntr »

b3n wrote: post #212
comntr wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this a problem? I even considered MD5, to be honest. Afaik, the only reason MD5 or SHA1 are considered "insecure" now is that it's possible to use sophisticated techniques called differential analysis to carefully craft two binary files that would have the same hash. But if the space of possible inputs is limited (we can't put arbitrary stuff in the URLs), then good luck finding a collision. Discovering a coll…

The problem with using SHA1 to protect PII is it would be trivial to brute force, especially with the restrictive character set of URLs, and a big part of them being able to be guessed. One could very quickly cycle through all Hacker News URLs, for example. This is why a key derivation function would be preferable.

The space of possible reasonable URLs is way too big to brute force. If your point is that someone can just grab the set of existing HN URLs and get their heashes, then I don't see what this achieves. Someone who knows the URLs can just download all the comments for them anyway. In other words, is there an example where a sophisticated state of the art hash has advantage over MD5 in our case?

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

#218

Post by comntr »

nstart wrote: 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

Comments can be seen like this: https://comntr.github.io#http://contoso.com/ The trick is that the #... part of the URL isn't sent to the server. This request downloads JS which computes SHA1 and gets comments by that hash from the data server.

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

#219

Post by afandian »

comntr wrote: post #188
afandian wrote: post #10

This is very similar to hypothes.is, apart from the hashing: https://web.hypothes.is/

The idea is very similar, but I can't agree with a few implementation details: - The extension shouldn't need to have access to the page. Inserting an iframe into the page seems wrong. - The extension shouldn't own the comments. It should be a window to the comments, not a gatekeeper. It should be possible to implement alternative UIs and alternative extensions and connect them to the same comments. - The extension s…

I'm not intimately acquainted with the internal of hypothes.is but there is an open API, based on open standards. So you can build whatever you want with it.

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

#220

Post by mehdix »

brokenmachine wrote: post #176
mehdix wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A true decentralized solution would have no moderation, no edit, no deletion. It would be basically a 4chan on every single page.

You could have decentralized with the original poster able to edit. Every post/thread could be like it's own git repo.

You're right. However, it only enables the original authors to edit their comments. A moderation is about a third party being able to "moderate" the posts.
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