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Automatically sending Webmentions from a static website

jamesmead.org

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Re: Automatically sending Webmentions from a static website

#11

Post by simonw »

necrotic_comp wrote: post #8
simonw wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I helped create pingback [ https://simonwillison.net/tags/pingback/ ], which eventually made it into WordPress and hence achieved pretty widespread distribution. My concern here is spam. With hindsight both Pingback and Trackbacks (which Pingback was a response to) essentially became APIs fit spammers to add junk to your site. Can webmention avoid the sane fate?

I would think that because most of the sites are static, they are going to be doing some moderation before re-rendering and posting the linkbacks. The README says that one of the steps is verification [ https://github.com/converspace/webmention/blob/master/README... ], but it's a little disappointing that it's essentially an "exercise left for the reader".

"The receiver SHOULD perform a HTTP GET request on source to confirm that it actually links to target"

We did that in pingback too. It turned out to be trivial for spammers to circumvent.

Re: Automatically sending Webmentions from a static website

#12

Post by avian »

necrotic_comp wrote: post #8
simonw wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I helped create pingback [ https://simonwillison.net/tags/pingback/ ], which eventually made it into WordPress and hence achieved pretty widespread distribution. My concern here is spam. With hindsight both Pingback and Trackbacks (which Pingback was a response to) essentially became APIs fit spammers to add junk to your site. Can webmention avoid the sane fate?

I would think that because most of the sites are static, they are going to be doing some moderation before re-rendering and posting the linkbacks. The README says that one of the steps is verification [ https://github.com/converspace/webmention/blob/master/README... ], but it's a little disappointing that it's essentially an "exercise left for the reader".

I think Webmention is viable at the moment just because of the low adoption across the web. Just like with pingbacks and trackbacks, any kind of manual moderation becomes infeasible when valid posts get swarmed under thousands of automated spam posts.

The typical verification step (check if the originating site contains a valid link) is trivial to work around. One attempt to address that is Vouch [1], but I believe it's largely untested in the wild.

[1] https://indieweb.org/Vouch

Re: Automatically sending Webmentions from a static website

#13

Post by necrotic_comp »

simonw wrote: post #11
necrotic_comp wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would think that because most of the sites are static, they are going to be doing some moderation before re-rendering and posting the linkbacks. The README says that one of the steps is verification [ https://github.com/converspace/webmention/blob/master/README... ], but it's a little disappointing that it's essentially an "exercise left for the reader".

"The receiver SHOULD perform a HTTP GET request on source to confirm that it actually links to target" We did that in pingback too. It turned out to be trivial for spammers to circumvent.

That's a bummer. Did you find out any other more robust ways to filter out spam ?

Re: Automatically sending Webmentions from a static website

#14

Post by simonw »

necrotic_comp wrote: post #13
simonw wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The receiver SHOULD perform a HTTP GET request on source to confirm that it actually links to target" We did that in pingback too. It turned out to be trivial for spammers to circumvent.

That's a bummer. Did you find out any other more robust ways to filter out spam ?

I gave up and stopped using it (well, I didn't bother reimplementing it on one of my various blog engine rewrites).

If I were to implement pingback or webmention today I'd use a moderation queue with the ability to allow-list trusted domains so they get to skip moderation in the future.

Re: Automatically sending Webmentions from a static website

#15

Post by abdullahkhalids »

Why do you need an always on service for this? Just send the webmentions whenever you compile your static website - that's the only time content actually changes.

On Pelican, you can do it using this plugin https://chezsoi.org/lucas/blog/pelican-pingback-and-webmenti...

Re: Automatically sending Webmentions from a static website

#16

Post by alexmingoia »

xwdv wrote: post #3

I’ve never even heard of Webmentions. Should I have?

Webmentions are the modern standard that evolved out of trackbacks and pingbacks.

If you’ve written a blog post that references or links to another blog post, Webmention is the standard way to notify them.

An example use case for Webmentions is blog comments. A blog may publish a post which is a reply to another blog, then send a Webmention to notify them. The author of the blog post being replied to could choose to display the comment below their post.

Re: Automatically sending Webmentions from a static website

#17

Post by superkuh »

necrotic_comp wrote: post #13
simonw wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The receiver SHOULD perform a HTTP GET request on source to confirm that it actually links to target" We did that in pingback too. It turned out to be trivial for spammers to circumvent.

That's a bummer. Did you find out any other more robust ways to filter out spam ?

Most POST spam is repetitive. It's very rare human POSTs are. If you filter out any POSTs that happen identically more than 3 times you remove most spam. It's not perfect but it makes it manageable. Of course this is a lot easier to implement if you batch process.

Re: Automatically sending Webmentions from a static website

#18

Post by Vinnl »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #15

Why do you need an always on service for this? Just send the webmentions whenever you compile your static website - that's the only time content actually changes. On Pelican, you can do it using this plugin https://chezsoi.org/lucas/blog/pelican-pingback-and-webmenti...

Make sure to only do it after you've deployed it - part of the WebMention process is that the mentioned page actually checks the page that sends the mention for the given link.

(Also annoying if the link is added client-side.)

Re: Automatically sending Webmentions from a static website

#19

Post by Vinnl »

simonw wrote: post #14
necrotic_comp wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bummer. Did you find out any other more robust ways to filter out spam ?

I gave up and stopped using it (well, I didn't bother reimplementing it on one of my various blog engine rewrites). If I were to implement pingback or webmention today I'd use a moderation queue with the ability to allow-list trusted domains so they get to skip moderation in the future.

I've implemented WebMentions in a project that uses it as a push notification system for websites that integrate our widget (which is just a tag they include on their page). That kinda works: if you integrate the widget, you know you can expect WebMentions from https://plaudit.pub, and thus add it to an explicit allowlist.
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