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I Add 3-25 Seconds of Latency to Every Site I Visit

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Re: I Add 3-25 Seconds of Latency to Every Site I Visit

#261

Post by heartbeats »

r00fus wrote: post #213
epanchin wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know that as shadowbanning. This is one of my favourite reddit posts on the subject: https://www.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/351buo/tifu_by_postin...

IIRC hellbanning is a variant of shadowbanning that prevents easy discovery of the banned status by putting all suspect accounts into the same "hell" invisible to normal users. This works well if you have a network of fake accounts from a single "persona" or ring of personas - by all their indications they can't see their own posts are being ignored. Notice: it's almost the exact response to the persona management so…

It doesn't work for logged-out users. If I can just look at e.g. the Internet Archive's copy of reddit and see if my accounts are in there, it defeats the purpose.

Neither reddit nor HN make any attempts to make it hard for sophisticated users to figure out they're shadowbanned.

Re: I Add 3-25 Seconds of Latency to Every Site I Visit

#262

Post by kempbellt »

Tenoke wrote: post #253
hanoz wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's going on then what on earth have I done to offend Google?

Not using Chrome?

> Not using Chrome?

A truly deplorable act...

I also added about 30 seconds of latency to every page I visit, but for completely different reasons as op. Switching to Brave and blocking all cookies and JS by default made me have to manually enable it for nearly every site that I actually wanted to use.

About a week later, Chrome was reinstalled. Maybe I'll try it again once I level up my willpower.

Re: I Add 3-25 Seconds of Latency to Every Site I Visit

#263

Post by danielheath »

youerbt wrote: post #231
kick wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'jedberg hasn't worked at reddit for years, it's pretty ridiculous to use "you" and "your" there. Further, he was never in marketing, he was basically just a sysadmin. There's really no charitable interpretation of your comment that isn't just "Hey, let's yell at a guy who isn't currently and has literally never been in a position to where he might have been responsible for Annoyance !"

I just wanted a jab at reddit, cuz this week I can't even browse it because "this community is available in the app" (after years of marke... mental abuse of asking me to use an app). Nothing against the guy, he used "we", I used "you", I'm sure he is a cool guy, and I hope its the charitable interpretation.

I wouldn't even mind using the app if it didn't chew data like it does.

When I had it installed (up to last week) it was using more than 10x anything else on my iphone. I was definitely not using reddit enough to justify that.

Re: I Add 3-25 Seconds of Latency to Every Site I Visit

#264

Post by sharken »

Klathmon wrote: post #223
r00fus wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC hellbanning is a variant of shadowbanning that prevents easy discovery of the banned status by putting all suspect accounts into the same "hell" invisible to normal users. This works well if you have a network of fake accounts from a single "persona" or ring of personas - by all their indications they can't see their own posts are being ignored. Notice: it's almost the exact response to the persona management so…

This also works incredibly well for cheaters in videogames. Give them their own queue with their own games with other cheaters to play against, and as long as nobody is cheating in a way that breaks the servers, they can play their own version of the game if they want without ruining the game for those who don't cheat.

Also used in the excellent TV series Mythic Quest :)

Re: I Add 3-25 Seconds of Latency to Every Site I Visit

#265

Post by 1_player »

jjoonathan wrote: post #257
Tenoke wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not using Chrome?

Is it just me or has the web's compatibility with Firefox taken a nosedive recently? It used to just be my employer's HR software that was chrome-only, but in the last year my power utility website, apartment complex website, and even major websites like https://www.deviantart.com/ (which I was trying to visit just 10 minutes ago) have broken in Firefox but not chrome. Badly, too. These aren't "the layout is differen…

Some tech demo sites are Chrome only but I’ve yet to encounter a broken site on Firefox. The only issues I have are mostly due to adblock or my Pi Hole. I haven’t used Chrome in years.

Re: I Add 3-25 Seconds of Latency to Every Site I Visit

#266

Post by anw »

Antwan wrote: post #140

I ran a website for youngsters several years ago. One of the duties to maintain it was to moderate discussion boards. Some kids were difficult to manage and would not accept to be banned (via email/IP/or whatever solution) and would keep recreating profiles. Ultimately I dealt with those ppl by “greylisting” them. Added a sleep() prior each page rendering of 5 to 25 secs (actually it was more sophisticated and would…

This reminds me of the old VBulletin plugin "Miserable Users"[0].

We also had a community suffering from this problem (during the early 2000's). Bans would take care of a lot of problem users, but would just give energy to those truly out for blood, troll, bored, or very immature.

We had one user get banned over a dozen times while we tried banning IPs, name regex or anything else we could think of. Finally, like you, we found that if we annoy them first, they get bored and shuffle off to some other, lower barrier place.

Some of the nice features from that plugin (via the site) were:

1. Slow response (time delay) on every page (20 to 60 seconds default).

2. A chance they will get the "server busy" message (50% by default).

3. A chance that no search facilities will be available (75% by default).

4. A chance they will get redirected to another preset page (25% & homepage by default).

5. A chance they will simply get a blank page (25% by default).

6. Post flood limit increased by a defined factor (10 times by default).

7. If they get past all this okay, then they will be served up their proper page.

* [0] https://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=93258

Re: I Add 3-25 Seconds of Latency to Every Site I Visit

#267

Post by MaulingMonkey »

heartbeats wrote: post #261
r00fus wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC hellbanning is a variant of shadowbanning that prevents easy discovery of the banned status by putting all suspect accounts into the same "hell" invisible to normal users. This works well if you have a network of fake accounts from a single "persona" or ring of personas - by all their indications they can't see their own posts are being ignored. Notice: it's almost the exact response to the persona management so…

It doesn't work for logged-out users. If I can just look at e.g. the Internet Archive's copy of reddit and see if my accounts are in there, it defeats the purpose. Neither reddit nor HN make any attempts to make it hard for sophisticated users to figure out they're shadowbanned.

Forcing you to query IA at least reduces the frequency of feedback, as they're taking snapshots instead of giving a live feed. You could also shadowban IA. You can also do things like guess based on IP address or browser fingerprinting, or require a login from various IP ranges.

Of course your main point - that this is all terribly imperfect and won't stop a determined, sophisticated user, who has realized what's happening - is spot on. That, however, is perhaps a rare combination, rare enough to simply continue dealing with manually.

Re: I Add 3-25 Seconds of Latency to Every Site I Visit

#268

Post by JoshuaDavid »

jjoonathan wrote: post #257
Tenoke wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not using Chrome?

Is it just me or has the web's compatibility with Firefox taken a nosedive recently? It used to just be my employer's HR software that was chrome-only, but in the last year my power utility website, apartment complex website, and even major websites like https://www.deviantart.com/ (which I was trying to visit just 10 minutes ago) have broken in Firefox but not chrome. Badly, too. These aren't "the layout is differen…

I've noticed some of this lately - in a significant fraction of cases, it comes from Firefox honoring X-FRAME- OPTIONS while chrome ignores them, so e.g. payments work on chrome on sites that don't work on FF.

Re: I Add 3-25 Seconds of Latency to Every Site I Visit

#269

Post by jedberg »

sharken wrote: post #260
jedberg wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, I feel your pain as a daily user of the site myself. I hold no ill will against you for taking it out on me. When I left I specifically said that users can continue to blame me for all problems. :) I wasn't aware that some communities are now limited to the app only. I haven't run into any yet. But that sucks.

Try with every community, Reddit must really dislike mobile users. I do wonder if this scheme was introduced to monetize users, either way it sucks.

> I do wonder if this scheme was introduced to monetize users

Probably. As a shareholder I get it. The site needs to make money so it can keep providing the service it provides. And ads are the best way to do that.

I also get it from a development standpoint. It takes effort to maintain a frontend, and maintaining two of them takes twice as much effort. With limited resources, I can see why it makes sense to focus on the mobile interface and let the web interface fall by the wayside.

I'm not entirely sure I'd have made a different decision if I still worked there. I don't know enough about the internal structure or costs or revenue to say for sure.

I can say that I know the people in charge, and they are good people, and if this is the choice they made, it was probably for good reason.

Re: I Add 3-25 Seconds of Latency to Every Site I Visit

#270

Post by kortex »

K0SM0S wrote: post #120
leesec wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm with ya. I'm pretty solidly middle - maybe upper middle class, but even the fact that I have opinions about Malbec over Pinot Noir makes me feel gross with opulence, not sure why.

I've a different take, more symmetric in time. How prodigious is it that so many of us know so many intricacies and details about so much stuff, from the aesthetic to the mechanic. We don't know if our point in the universe is to spread life or morality or simply to make it pretty, it's probably pointless to wonder beyond our very own life, but there's no denying that we are growing. We are becoming. Only by getting…

> We are becoming. Only by getting there can we know what it is. But it sure is one-of-a-kind.

I have been having a bit of a rough month, one of those obdectively good on the outside view but subjectively on the inside full of self-doubt and existential angst.

This just yanked me out of that headspace, for a few moments at least.

Thank you :)

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