Simple unexpensive solution to prevent video/graphic SPAM

[ono_it]

Title

Simple and effective solution to stop video or graphic spam

Short, concise description of the idea

Disable posting video embedded objects ( i.e Youtube ) or

Comments

[azurelunatic]

It's probably worse in different lj "neighborhoods", particularly if it's places where people don't report bots and delete stuff as spam particularly often, and also where people leave anonymous commenting turned on.

I don't handle LJ's spam, but I do work with Dreamwidth anti-spam, and there are patterns in who gets hit by the spammers. I see certain entries get picked up a lot until the journal owner gives up and disables anonymous commenting.

LJ also has problems with spam accounts in addition to anonymous spam, and those are a lot harder to get shut of, from what I can tell.

Sample and video objects code

[ono_it]

Userpics are small, and associated with user. Only a few people put rude images on userpics. But there is no reason to have such pictures in friendly talk : (NSFW)

And all embedded objects from YouTube already processed via lj-toys.com link - just check the source of your post

Re: Sample and video objects code

[azurelunatic]

That does not look like a spammer to me. That looks like a troll. A spammer is in it for the money. A troll just wants to be obnoxious. If a troll is denied the use of images, they will do something else just to annoy, such as this: (NSFW).

[aveleh]

I like the idea of expanding the whitelisting options that have been implemented for moderating communities to be the same whitelist for comments. (That is, a comment that contains a link that would automatically be moderated should also be automatically initially screened.) Users could then also have the option to control comments in their own journal in the same way.

[lady_angelina]

While I agree with others that disabling the

[azurelunatic]

That was
madness, with padding and absolute positioning. I believe there has been some development to prevent that particular exploit from happening again.

If there were people who had to reinstall Firefox because of the exploit that I heard of, it would have been because a) they did not know how to use keyboard commands to go back a page or close the tab, and b) did not know how to start a fresh session without restoring their tabs.

The knowledge of the madness that I have is mixed: I saw this being exploited once firsthand, but did not suffer any difficulties; there was also discussion of a fix for this exploit at the Epic Booze-Up, so that's secondhand.

[mlady_rebecca]

When author creates a new post, she can check box "Allow video objects in comments" or/and "Allow pictures in comments". By default, these check boxes are unchecked. If they are unchecked, video objects/image tags are not allowed in comments, but simple links to video or image is OK.

I don't see where this is necessary, but if it was implemented, I'd want the default to allow images and video, for two reasons. One, you're going to have a lot of new Support requests and frustrated users. Two, this is another case of making the regular user do more work just so you can eliminate pockets of SPAM.

Personally, I've never seen this sort of SPAM, but I've seen many communities where posting pictures and videos in comments is not only common, it's encouraged.

I agree

[ono_it]

It would be great to set defaults for this boxes in journal settings.

[ruisseau]

This sounds sort of like the option to replace images and videos on your friends page with a placeholder. Could this simply be extended to comments?