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Show HN: Comntr – a widget that adds comments to your page

comntr.github.io

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Re: Show HN: Comntr – a widget that adds comments to your page

#21

Post by comntr »

personjerry wrote: post #19
nexuist wrote: post #5

This is really cool! One step closer to a decentralized Web.

All the comments would be hosted on this site; It's actually centralized.

That's right. My first attempt was to use IPFS or DAT. Figured out it's not quite possible, but we can get very close to that, in theory. Imagine the extension or the iframe could run a ipfs.js or dat.js that would discover all the http servers with comments via DHT: servers that want to participate, publish a unique key to the DHT and the web clients discover this key and then the IP addresses of the servers. In practice, this doesn't quite work because DHTs are based on the assumption that any node can quickly ping (with a UDP packet) any other node and thus perform the DHT discovery using the Kademlia algorithm in log(N) steps. But in the web, the only way to "ping" someone is to set up a p2p connection with WebRTC: this not only needs a signaling relay, but also implies a multi step exchange with SDPs and has other costly overhead. And I haven't even approached the Symmetric NAT problem. This is why ipfs.js hogs CPU, allocates a 1 GB and keeps 4-8 sockets always open (they aren't even p2p now, but rather web sockets to some relay, for perf reasons).

Re: Show HN: Comntr – a widget that adds comments to your page

#22

Post by comntr »

jeremyjh wrote: post #4

The hard problem in this space is spam prevention. Its not immediately clear me to if this even addresses it? Other than giving ban/filter controls to a human.

I think most of the spammers can be deterred by a simple puzzle, like 23+47. If we want to raise the bar, we make the puzzle more and more complex. Obviously, the puzzle is returned as an svg picture where the letters are "rendered" with little squares. My point is that 99% of the spammers out there are lazy and won't be able to pass this little test vs someone who's written a thoughtful comment and can definitely add 23 to 47.

Re: Show HN: Comntr – a widget that adds comments to your page

#23

Post by comntr »

deepsun wrote: post #7
jeremyjh wrote: post #4

The hard problem in this space is spam prevention. Its not immediately clear me to if this even addresses it? Other than giving ban/filter controls to a human.

Pre-moderation?

Or rather time-delay moderation, as it's easier to implement. Comments are added to the server as usual, but the web client shows them only after 1 hour.

Re: Show HN: Comntr – a widget that adds comments to your page

#24

Post by comntr »

o-__-o wrote: post #15
buzzerbetrayed wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or one you're hosting. You can self host the server, as explained in OP's comment on this thread.

Except it redirects from OPs server. Meaning they capture your data. Themoreyouknow.jpg

You can git clone and launch your web client too.

Re: Show HN: Comntr – a widget that adds comments to your page

#25

Post by smt88 »

comntr wrote: post #22
jeremyjh wrote: post #4

The hard problem in this space is spam prevention. Its not immediately clear me to if this even addresses it? Other than giving ban/filter controls to a human.

I think most of the spammers can be deterred by a simple puzzle, like 23+47. If we want to raise the bar, we make the puzzle more and more complex. Obviously, the puzzle is returned as an svg picture where the letters are "rendered" with little squares. My point is that 99% of the spammers out there are lazy and won't be able to pass this little test vs someone who's written a thoughtful comment and can definitely ad…

It sounds like you may not have spent any time researching anti-spam techniques.

Your initial "puzzle" can be solved with 8 characters of JS: eval("23+47").

Your SVG picture can be solved using off-the-shelf OCR like Tesseract.js.

Even very challenging reCAPTCHA reading tests are mostly solvable by spammers.

You'd be better of using something with thousands of expert person-hours behind it, like reCAPTCHA v2.

Re: Show HN: Comntr – a widget that adds comments to your page

#27

Post by llao »

unmole wrote: post #10
eeeeeeeeeeeee wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious about this too. I don’t like using Disqus (it’s so bloated) but the spam issue is pretty much non-existent even on several high-traffic sites.

Have you checked out Commento? It's open source and pretty lightweight: https://commento.io/

Or https://github.com/schn4ck/schnack

Re: Show HN: Comntr – a widget that adds comments to your page

#28

Post by ubercow13 »

smt88 wrote: post #25
comntr wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most of the spammers can be deterred by a simple puzzle, like 23+47. If we want to raise the bar, we make the puzzle more and more complex. Obviously, the puzzle is returned as an svg picture where the letters are "rendered" with little squares. My point is that 99% of the spammers out there are lazy and won't be able to pass this little test vs someone who's written a thoughtful comment and can definitely ad…

It sounds like you may not have spent any time researching anti-spam techniques. Your initial "puzzle" can be solved with 8 characters of JS: eval("23+47"). Your SVG picture can be solved using off-the-shelf OCR like Tesseract.js. Even very challenging reCAPTCHA reading tests are mostly solvable by spammers. You'd be better of using something with thousands of expert person-hours behind it, like reCAPTCHA v2.

Please no

Re: Show HN: Comntr – a widget that adds comments to your page

#29

Post by strokirk »

cmroanirgo wrote: post #13
unmole wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you checked out Commento? It's open source and pretty lightweight: https://commento.io/

Interesting. Thanks for sharing. > Commento is a proud recipient of the Mozilla Open Source Support award. The $19,200 grant was given in recognition of Commento's contributions to make the internet more privacy-friendly. That said, it uses akismet for spam control, which I'm not sure how trustworthy it is... But definitely better than nothing!

FWIW, we've been using Akismet for the last 10 years on at my company, and are very happy with it.

Re: Show HN: Comntr – a widget that adds comments to your page

#30

Post by nexuist »

personjerry wrote: post #19
nexuist wrote: post #5

This is really cool! One step closer to a decentralized Web.

All the comments would be hosted on this site; It's actually centralized.

It is technically centralized but with the option to self host the comments server. Given that the source code is out there for a minimalist comments server, that saves a ton of work for anyone who just wants to make a blog/social site and doesn't necessarily want to build a full fledged REST service for it.
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