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Hacker News evading criticism by selectively adding noreferrer to certain links

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Re: Hacker News evading criticism by selectively adding noreferrer to certain links

#131

Post by zamadatix »

josephcsible wrote: post #123
zamadatix wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably good to not allow redirects or targeted content to users, and those are valid complaints. I totally shouldn't get link redirected, sent to a shady site, or displayed offensive content, different than what the submitter might have seen since they didn't have a referrer, because the other side of the link is hostile to users here. That said, I think a "banned link" list for submissions might serve this pu…

You're missing the point. Site owners shouldn't be allowed to say "people aren't allowed to talk about my site on Hacker News".

People shouldn't post bad comments on HN either, but HN still needs to ban users and handle spam anyways. The point is about what can realistically be done, not each of us lamenting a different "how the world should be".

Re: Hacker News evading criticism by selectively adding noreferrer to certain links

#132

Post by xena »

1attice wrote: post #62
uberman wrote: post #7

I'm sure there must be some back story here. What are these people's concerns? They seem to believe that HN is a bastion for harassment. Of all the forums I read, this seems the most benign by a large margin.

[flagged]

As someone who is regularly falling victim to the rightward lurch (for having committed the dastardly crime of the wrong hormone activating in-utero), the only reason I don't actively block Hacker News readers is that I make ad money off of them. That is the only reason it's worth the abuse vector to me.

dang, if you are reading this, please take a moment to seriously consider the actions you have taken today. I understand your desire for the community that Hacker News could be, but that is so far away from what it is today that it's almost laughable. Yes, this is a no-win situation but that's bascially how it is globally when trying to be centerist about any issue. I use Hacker News referers to change the page slightly (mostly to add a deserved "hey, can you please not be an asshole, thanks" via this code: https://github.com/Xe/site/blob/686cc58fb6fc8f2e3bf0197e9b38...) and I would be very frustrated if that went away. Maybe even to the point of having a worker process figure out if my articles are posted to hacker news and making them go dark if they are on the front page. I know you value the articles I post (as our email threads have contained), but really it's an abuse vector that I need to keep metrics of.

Website administrators should be allowed to block Hacker News referers. Yes this is a thing that is not desirable for you as an administrator, but at some level something's got to give. The enshittening of Hacker News is something that is very undesirable for me too. I've gone over this in our emails. This was going to be another one of those emails, but I really would prefer this one to be out in the open.

Re: Hacker News evading criticism by selectively adding noreferrer to certain links

#133

Post by _cenw »

josephcsible wrote: post #114
dang wrote: post #78

We got complaints from users about sites punishing HN referrers so I tried to oblige them, the same way we do other user requests. At the moment I feel caught in a double bind because there are complaints no matter what we do. I'm in a workshop today and can only check HN on breaks, so I can't properly read this thread yet. I'll return to it later, probably this evening. Edit: I think I agree with the users arguing t…

You did the right thing by adding noreferrer to their links. Knowing where people got to your site from without them explicitly telling you is a privilege, and it's one that they chose to abuse.

There's a reason websites that host several communities ban such interactions upon the request of the recipient of the traffic; brigading is bannable on reddit.

Re: Hacker News evading criticism by selectively adding noreferrer to certain links

#134

Post by Run_DOS_Run »

personjerry wrote: post #24

As far as the thread goes, the author sounds as though they are a child throwing a tantrum. In the original OpenGL thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36212674 there seems to be some discussion as to why the author hates HN, i.e. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36229753 quoted here: > It's not really all that much of a moral conundrum. Marcan's belief - expressed a number of times on his Mastodon - appea…

>anime alter ego

I find that quite funny that he has an anime character as a second identity. If he wants, let him have it, but that he wants to ban any discussion and suppress any dissenting opinion as his own (for example, by declaring it as hate) shows a completely totalitarian worldview.

Re: Hacker News evading criticism by selectively adding noreferrer to certain links

#135

Post by CuriousCosmic »

pseudosavant wrote: post #113
foogazi wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about robots.txt ? lots of sites have preferences on how you access them Paywalled articles are posted here everyday Why not respect the site owners wishes ?

Respect that Asahi thinks people like you and me, because we dare to get tech news from Hacker News, deserve to be excluded? What if the site wasn't accessible to people who had been to the Washington Post or Fox News because Asahi didn't like those people as a blanket rule too? It is the exact same principle. I don't think you ever need to respect people that are actively trying to exclude you.

> Respect that Asahi thinks people like you and me, because we dare to get tech news from Hacker News, deserve to be excluded?

That's not how it works. If you want to copy the URL into a new tab, you can still access the site. They just don't want to make it easy for people to click on the link from HN to their site.

It's a super trivial thing to avoid and this whole thing could be avoided entirely by allowing sites to submit their domains to HN if they don't want to show up on the front page.

Re: Hacker News evading criticism by selectively adding noreferrer to certain links

#136

Post by [deleted] »

josephcsible wrote: post #129
minimaxir wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at the HTML for the blog post section of the site, it's not what's advertised, or they haven't implemented it yet as it's just the Google redirect. document.referrer.startsWith("https://news.ycombinator.com")&&(console.log("Hacker News is becoming worse than 4chan. Do better."),document.location="https://google.com") EDIT: Yes, it's the old redirect added in March: https://github.com/AsahiLinux/AsahiLinux.git…

Asahi Linux is exploiting a browser vulnerability with that CSS trick, specifically the one that https://varun.ch/history shows off. Firefox has a mitigation for that vulnerability by turning off layout.css.visited_links_enabled.

[deleted]

Re: Hacker News evading criticism by selectively adding noreferrer to certain links

#137

Post by nickdothutton »

dang wrote: post #82
nickdothutton wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found this [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35251905

That comment is quoting its parent comment in order to object to it. The parent comment was flagged and we banned the account that posted it. I'm not sure what else we should have done there.

[flagged]

Re: Hacker News evading criticism by selectively adding noreferrer to certain links

#138

Post by josephcsible »

zamadatix wrote: post #131
josephcsible wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the point. Site owners shouldn't be allowed to say "people aren't allowed to talk about my site on Hacker News".

People shouldn't post bad comments on HN either, but HN still needs to ban users and handle spam anyways. The point is about what can realistically be done, not each of us lamenting a different "how the world should be".

The analogy isn't being able to ban users and handle spam. It'd be more like adding a feature with the sole purpose of making it easier to post bad comments.

Re: Hacker News evading criticism by selectively adding noreferrer to certain links

#139

Post by evasb »

dang wrote: post #78

We got complaints from users about sites punishing HN referrers so I tried to oblige them, the same way we do other user requests. At the moment I feel caught in a double bind because there are complaints no matter what we do. I'm in a workshop today and can only check HN on breaks, so I can't properly read this thread yet. I'll return to it later, probably this evening. Edit: I think I agree with the users arguing t…

You guys could just add noreferrer to all links.

Re: Hacker News evading criticism by selectively adding noreferrer to certain links

#140

Post by detaro »

dang wrote: post #82
nickdothutton wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found this [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35251905

That comment is quoting its parent comment in order to object to it. The parent comment was flagged and we banned the account that posted it. I'm not sure what else we should have done there.

> and we banned the account that posted it I'm not sure what else we should have done there.

Take a moderator action at the time and not a month later?

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