Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The naughty username checking system used by Twitch

ghostbin.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 348 posts

Re: The naughty username checking system used by Twitch

#161

Post by makomk »

rhema wrote: post #5

I have a hard time believing this was / is the real version used. It doesn't seem broad enough. More likely it was a kind of smoketest that made sure that a more automated keyword checker was working. It does remind me of the XKEYSCORE (Snowden leaks) that used keywords to bubble up potential threats from emails etc https://www.businessinsider.com/nsa-prism-keywords-for-domes... .

Seems plausible to me. One of the streamers on Twitch had an actual wooden board on the wall he lasered subscriber names onto, and some of the regulars had fun finding lewd usernames to gift subs to. There were quite a lot of them out there. It was kind of a running joke how much Twitch let through the cracks.

Re: The naughty username checking system used by Twitch

#162

Post by OskarS »

ridaj wrote: post #79
rhema wrote: post #5

I have a hard time believing this was / is the real version used. It doesn't seem broad enough. More likely it was a kind of smoketest that made sure that a more automated keyword checker was working. It does remind me of the XKEYSCORE (Snowden leaks) that used keywords to bubble up potential threats from emails etc https://www.businessinsider.com/nsa-prism-keywords-for-domes... .

This looks like legit, no-nonsense gets-the-job-done code that gets updated every time some jerk find a new way to be a jerk to others. It isn't great, but at least not over-engineered, and I'm not sure if Twitch account sign-up volumes and abuse are at the point where they should staff a project to do this more robustly / scalably

Exactly what I think. This is the kind of code that doesn't have a platonic ideal, it has to get updated with time and experience and reports. There is no "non-hacky" way to do this, you just have to look at the reports that are coming in and keep adding rules that are relevant.

Re: The naughty username checking system used by Twitch

#163

Post by dasv »

executesorder66 wrote: post #136
cratermoon wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah there was an article I read a while back about a company looking to prevent the use of 'naughty' words in randomly-generated strings used as event IDs. Apparently someone with some pull had seen a message with an offensive word. Some management committee spent a long time trying to figure out how to solve the problem including proposing keeping a list of bad words, and then worrying about what should be in it an…

> didn't mention the use of v or l33t-speak What is 'v' in this context? Edit: thanks for the answers. It makes sense now.

It's visually equivalent to a u, so without vowels it's still possible to get "fvck", for example.

Re: The naughty username checking system used by Twitch

#164

Post by DocTomoe »

ademarre wrote: post #109
xdfgh1112 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gov.uk did this. The code WNKR still ended up on Reddit yesterday.

That's amusing, but I think it also highlights the effectiveness of the strategy. WNKR is excusable and defensible. WANK would not be. Edit: But I'll concede that when your outputs are only four characters long and end users will actively interact with them (write them down, type them again later, etc.), additional safeguards might be appropriate. Or simply omit all alphas and use only numerics.

> Or simply omit all alphas and use only numerics.

That works pretty well until you realize that some numerical combinations are common neo-nazi codes and may lead to ... unfortunate associations. The ADL lists a few of those^1, but the list is by far not comprehensive, codes actually differ based on locality, and accidental combinatory collision in a 10-character space than it is in an alphanumerical 36-character space.

[1] https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/88

Re: The naughty username checking system used by Twitch

#165

Post by DocTomoe »

lelandfe wrote: post #142
tsimionescu wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or simply omit all alphas and use only numerics. You're still not out of the park with numerics - people with 1313 or 6660 or 4444 or something will complain a lot. The possibility of a 666 in some new biometric government IDs in my country rose a massive stink from church...

I was in the UK recently and - if you can believe it - there was a car on the block I stayed whose plates contained 666. Also, have a feelin you meant to do 1312. What’s the issue with 4444, though?

In Germany, where you can request number plate combinations (as long as they are free and follow a few roles), 666 is a pretty common combination amongst young drivers.

> What’s the issue with 4444

4 is pronounced similar to "death" in sino-japanese languages and dialects.

Re: The naughty username checking system used by Twitch

#166

Post by nicoburns »

lelandfe wrote: post #142
tsimionescu wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or simply omit all alphas and use only numerics. You're still not out of the park with numerics - people with 1313 or 6660 or 4444 or something will complain a lot. The possibility of a 666 in some new biometric government IDs in my country rose a massive stink from church...

I was in the UK recently and - if you can believe it - there was a car on the block I stayed whose plates contained 666. Also, have a feelin you meant to do 1312. What’s the issue with 4444, though?

What’s the issue with 1312?

Re: The naughty username checking system used by Twitch

#167

Post by marcus_holmes »

We used to call this the "Scunthorpe problem" - how do you filter for obviously rude names while still allowing people to have their actual names? Bearing in mind that some people's names are actually rude.

I worked on the application form processing for the Nectar card launch in the UK back in the early 2000's, and we had several cases. Luckily we had human data-entry clerks in the loop, so all we had to do was flag when a name contained anything on the "Scunthorpe list" and get a human to look at it. Even then it wasn't perfect and a few slipped through. One of the early PR messes of the launch was someone getting a Nectar card issued with a rude name, and of course they immediately went to the press with it [0]

I'm interested to see they still haven't solved this [1]

[0] I never saw the journalistic interest in this: this guy said his name was , and then signed the form to say everything on the form was true. Why is anyone surprised or interested that we accepted his name was what he said it was and gave him a card in that name?

[1] https://metro.co.uk/2015/02/20/woman-refused-sainsburys-nect...

Re: The naughty username checking system used by Twitch

#168

Post by baud147258 »

nicoburns wrote: post #166
lelandfe wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was in the UK recently and - if you can believe it - there was a car on the block I stayed whose plates contained 666. Also, have a feelin you meant to do 1312. What’s the issue with 4444, though?

What’s the issue with 1312?

it spells ACAB if you match each number with the letter in the alphabet at this index (I realized that after seeing a bunch of 1312 tags around where I live)

Re: The naughty username checking system used by Twitch

#169

Post by chanandler_bong »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #167

We used to call this the "Scunthorpe problem" - how do you filter for obviously rude names while still allowing people to have their actual names? Bearing in mind that some people's names are actually rude. I worked on the application form processing for the Nectar card launch in the UK back in the early 2000's, and we had several cases. Luckily we had human data-entry clerks in the loop, so all we had to do was flag…

The city of Toppenish in the US had the same problem when the council turned on a generic filtering system for the city networks. Everything stopped working.

Re: The naughty username checking system used by Twitch

#170

Post by talkin »

formerly_proven wrote: post #155
mc32 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also mostly checks for English naughty words and not much else. People can have fun in lots of other languages, so it would seem this is a small sample.

Bunch of ineffective entries too, all patterns containing underscores won't ever match.

Underscore matches any single char, so those patterns work fine. It’s an efficient way to match any small separator, like space, dashes, etc.
Post reply on HN