The discussion revolves around combating spam involving double links on Discourse, particularly by new users. nephele, a moderator, reports spammers creating fake links by combining two URLs into one, often using misleading titles. They suggest a warning or flag for new users posting such links. Canapin proposes restricting link posting for trust level 0 users, noting that legitimate users quickly gain trust level 1. Moin suggests lowering the Newuser max links setting to 1 to prevent multiple links, though Canapin points out this doesn’t stop deceptive link formatting like [text](actual_url). Heliosurge proposes using AI to detect deceptive links and double-linking patterns, potentially integrating this into a spam plugin with trust-level-based filtering.
I moderate the Haiku forums aswell, and recently there have been spammers signing up an then posting double links, and hiding those as if it were one link with a hyphen. Seeing as discourse already has the “first post very fast” warning, I thought perhaps there could be a warning/flag for new users that include two links, or include links that do not match their actual URI, while having something that looks like an URI in the link title.
This is a screenshot of me removing the spam link, this has happened three or four times now. (each time with the spammer creating a new account)
I kind of like this idea, though if people want to abuse the system with misleading links or similar stuff, they’ll always achieve this somehow.
I get you’re specifically asking for a feature, but preventing trust level 0 users from posting links could suffice for most cases. Reaching TL1 is fast if you’re a legit user, but spammers never will. So I’m just mentioning the Post links allowed groups setting in case it would help people who come by on this topic.
This is frustrating, but as a TL0 I bellieve you can just post another message with the 2nd picture.
Instead of prohibiting TL0 from posting links, you could also reduce the Newuser max links site setting to 1. This could prevent the 2-link problem while allowing the sharing of one link.
New user limitations can be a little annoying for new members, as you noticed when you wanted to post more images.
This is true, but even those who manage a Discourse forum usually complain instead of spending a few minutes reading.
