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0 pointsnecrotic_comp5y ago0 comments

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".

0 comments

avian5y ago

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

simonw5y ago

"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.

epeus5y ago

I've had them on my sites for a few years now, and even with bridgy passing tweet replies through the spam hasn't been too bad, but certainly adding an allow-list makes sense too. Having built Technorati that effectively did this at scale, I do appreciate the spam problem, but decentralising implementations has so far worked out OK.

epeus5y ago

Marty writes up some of the variety of implementations here https://martymcgui.re/2020/07/15/what-we-talk-about-when-wer... (which I saw because he webmentioned my in it).

necrotic_compOP5y ago

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

simonw5y ago

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.

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superkuh5y ago

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.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

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avian5y ago

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

simonw5y ago

"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.

epeus5y ago

Marty writes up some of the variety of implementations here https://martymcgui.re/2020/07/15/what-we-talk-about-when-wer... (which I saw because he webmentioned my in it).

necrotic_compOP5y ago

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

simonw5y ago

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.

2 more replies

superkuh5y ago

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse