TrickJarrett.com

Some things never change

Back in 2007, when I started ManaNation's website; one of the big subjects of comment spam that the site would regularly get was for house deck/porch construction. The reason for this was simple, the homonym use of 'deck' for Magic: The Gathering (#wotcstaff) and for the home construction project of a 'deck.'

Here it is 17 years later and last night I noticed that X was serving me deck railing ads:

I wonder what we can see about AI's impact on Wikipedia already. Has there been an uptick in edits? What posts are getting the most attention? How are the bad actors cloaking themselves?

So far, I can't find anything useful in Google about it right now. The top responses are an article about internal division on how to handle AI on the site, which is important but not ultimately what I'm looking for. Then found a few older pieces which talk about AI in relation to the site, but usually either as part of their spam fighting efforts, or what people are doing with bots on the site.

I, like others, have concern about the AI impacts on content. I think of it as the rounding the corners and softening the content.

I recall coming across an article where someone talked about how they bought a physical copy of an Encyclopedia in response to their similar concerns regarding the post-truth era. Sadly I can't find it again.

I do kind of want to get an archive of Wikipedia for personal storage, though I've wanted this even before AI's surge. Mine is more of a sort of digital 'prepper' sort of motivation. That, and also I enjoy the idea of having a Kindle on my shelves which functions as an encyclopedia for us.

Fediverse Block & Spam Reporting

I am now, fairly regularly, keeping an eye on my Fediverse's local timeline. I've taken it as a mission to report spammers I see in that timeline. I am primarily doing this on the desktop while working or relaxing. However, my frustration with their system is that in the neverending spam wars, the anti-spam tools need to be as optimized as possible. And the current process requires far too many clicks.

So, yesterday, I coded a bookmarklet. I tried embedding it, but the JS code doesn't play well with Markdown, so it just rendered the ugly text.

To use this, you just need to copy the below text and then create a bookmark in your browser, give it a name (I used 'Fed Spam') and then paste this code. I haven't done extensive testing, but it works in Firefox flawlessly.

javascript:var%20%24jscomp%3D%24jscomp%7C%7C%7B%7D%3B%24jscomp.scope%3D%7B%7D%3B%24jscomp.arrayIteratorImpl%3Dfunction(a)%7Bvar%20b%3D0%3Breturn%20function()%7Breturn%20b%3Ca.length%3F%7Bdone%3A!1%2Cvalue%3Aa%5Bb%2B%2B%5D%7D%3A%7Bdone%3A!0%7D%7D%7D%3B%24jscomp.arrayIterator%3Dfunction(a)%7Breturn%7Bnext%3A%24jscomp.arrayIteratorImpl(a)%7D%7D%3B%24jscomp.makeIterator%3Dfunction(a)%7Bvar%20b%3D%22undefined%22!%3Dtypeof%20Symbol%26%26Symbol.iterator%26%26a%5BSymbol.iterator%5D%3Breturn%20b%3Fb.call(a)%3A%24jscomp.arrayIterator(a)%7D%3Bdocument.getElementsByClassName(%22setting-text%22)%5B0%5D.value%3D%22spam%22%3Bfor(var%20boxes%3Ddocument.querySelectorAll(%22.status-check-box%20div.react-toggle%22)%2C%24jscomp%24iter%240%3D%24jscomp.makeIterator(boxes)%2C%24jscomp%24key%24box%3D%24jscomp%24iter%240.next()%3B!%24jscomp%24key%24box.done%3B%24jscomp%24key%24box%3D%24jscomp%24iter%240.next())box%3D%24jscomp%24key%24box.value%2Cbox.classList.add(%22react-toggle--checked%22)%3Bvoid+0

The above bookmarklet fills out the "Block & Spam" report form on the Tweetdeck-esque interface for Mastodon. It writes 'Spam' in the message box, and then toggles next to every post. Because I'm reporting bot accounts which are just posting spam every time, I don't need to apply any mental effort of reviewing posts. I'm still clicking the submit button, I didn't add that to the automation (yet?) but it's definitely made it a farcry easier to fight spam on the server.

"Google Calendar’s ‘known senders’ filter should help stamp out spam invites"

I am eager to see this added to my calendar options. I still, from time to time, find an invite has snuck in from some spammer. It has gotten markedly better in the last few months, but I eagerly welcome this added level of control.