A Defunct Video Hosting Site Flooded Normal Websites With Hardcore Porn (vice.com) 53
Hardcore porn was embedded all over several regular websites late Thursday because a porn company has purchased the domain of a popular, defunct video hosting site. From a report: As pointed out by Twitter user @dox_gay, hardcore porn is now embedded on the pages of the Huffington Post, New York magazine, The Washington Post, and a host of other websites. This is because a porn site called 5 Star Porn HD bought the domain for Vidme, a brief YouTube competitor founded in 2014 and shuttered in 2017. Its Twitter account is still up, but the domain lapsed.
classic! (Score:5, Funny)
This is so classic I think it should be entered in the hall of fame of web pranks!
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What are "normal websites"? The headline implies they do not have porn, which seems unbelievable.
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They do now!
https://instantrimshot.com/ [instantrimshot.com]
Putting the progress in progressive. (Score:2)
Wow. Back in the day people would pick this stuff up in the streets. Now it comes to you via the news.
they're doing god's work (Score:3)
n/t
Good argument for why domains should not expire (Score:2, Redundant)
Seriously.... Domain registry policies should update, so if someone stops paying a domain: it will simply be deactivated and held on behalf of its owner before being recycled, for at least a year or two.
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Given the date range of the article, your solution wouldn't of stopped this. Your idea still has merit though.
Re: Good argument for why domains should not expir (Score:5, Informative)
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wouldn't of
Wouldn't HAVE!
GP should of known that.
Dang, that was hard to type.
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The new registration is less than a month old; it don't seem apparent how long the embeds would have been broken-link embeds before someone would have noticed.
At least having an extra year to remove the bad links versus as short as 60 days could matter significantly -
Also, the domain registry could require the New registrant to make a payment and wait after domain recycling to cover the execution of tools to spider the web and help make reports of bad/old links to the domain widely available, Before an e
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The big question is how to write it:
- wouldn't've?
- wouldn'tve?
- wouldn't 've?
Or should English start down the route of slavic languages and embrace consonant clusters:
- wouldntv?
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"wouldn't've" is common in Hiberno-English.
Also this. [wiktionary.org]
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Score: +1 million. I'm so tired of seeing "would of" and "wouldn't of" everywhere.
The worst part is, people learn by reading so the more that mistake is written everywhere, the more it's spreading.
They should start teaching its/it's, their/they're/there, would have, etc. in preschool.
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I could care less about that.
I could care a lot less.
I care a lot.
My neighbor uses "me and her" as the subject of a sentence. She teaches first grade. The future looks bleak.
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Maybe add an attribute to link and image tags that identifies the target domain's owner; then robots could scrub hijacked links if the owner in the link doesn't match the owner in the dns records.
This would allow anyone to buy a lapsed domain but limit their ability to impersonate the previous owner.
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And the problem is ...? (Score:4, Interesting)
Copyrights I presume.
Self-hosted website videos were unafected. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Had these big name companies just hosted their own videos, this never would have happened.
What makes you think these were *their* videos? A shitton of news sites embed within their articles videos they don't actually have any right to host themselves.
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Even if "cloud services" were only 1% cheaper than hosting in-house, it would still happen because of fucking bean counters. When balance sheets rule your company, all sane decisions get pushed aside.
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If you self-hosted video at a domain that you got rid of you'd have the same situation.
Popular, defunct? (Score:1)
Who the fuck ever heard of Vidme before this and how big is this "flood" of their embedded links facialed over the popular sites?
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Vidme (2014) and Vimeo (2004) were "somewhat" popular You-Tube alternatives. (I don't know big they are but I've heard of them.)
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Vimeo still exists, and became one of the more popular sites for pandemic-era paid livestream events by schools and arts organizations largely because they allow you to host paid events without already having thousands of followers.
Nope. These sites flooded themselves (Score:5, Insightful)
If you do not be very careful what you embed, the fault is with you. If you do not control what you embed, you are a complete fool.
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I find it super weird that the new owners of the domain chose to implement embed urls that were identical to the ones the old, defunct company used to use. That would be like Youtube going out of business (we can only dream) and then the new owners serve up videos using the exact same URI query strings and video ids. You'd think the new owners, when building their site, would end up with a different way of selecting videos. Especially from a site that wants to make money charging for views.
Re:Nope. These sites flooded themselves (Score:5, Informative)
They're not doing that. They're redirecting all invalid URL requests to an ad video for the porn site. Easy to do and nobody's getting anything for free other than the ad.
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Indeed. I blame stupidity and unawareness how things work, but it may well be more complicated than that.
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If you do not be very careful what you embed, the fault is with you. If you do not control what you embed, you are a complete fool.
Does this mean that those sites that were effected still have the old invalid URLs imbedded after four years?
I wonder what other invalid URLs they have and how much those bad fetches slow down the user experiance?
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If you do not be very careful what you embed, the fault is with you. If you do not control what you embed, you are a complete fool.
Does this mean that those sites that were effected still have the old invalid URLs imbedded after four years?
Looks like it, yes. Apparently nobody bothered to run a site-validator in 4 years on these sites.
I wonder what other invalid URLs they have and how much those bad fetches slow down the user experience?
Good question. Crap tends to accumulate unless you pay attention and remove it. These people clearly did not pay attention.
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Even more interesting if the framework you use embeds stuff from other sites.
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If you do not be very careful what you embed, the fault is with you. If you do not control what you embed, you are a complete fool.
How do you be careful what you embed? I mean you're writing a story about a video, e.g. TicTok or Twitter and embed said story. How do you prevent Twitter getting bought out by goatse.cx?
Obligatory XKCD (Score:5, Funny)
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If I managed to get a hold of any URL shortener I would direct it to a seizure-inducing .gif, a shock site, or just straight-up malware in hopes I will terrify an entire generation into not using them.
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I will terrify an entire generation into not using them.
Nothing you could post on the internet would be more terrifying to all younger generations than having to actually type out a long and complex URL into their phone.
You'll have a bit of fun, but you're not going to change the world.
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QR codes exist for that exact reason, mate.
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I find them even harder to type.
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Indeed, and if we were in Japan where they are widely used for everything then maybe you'd have a point. But I'm not in japan. I rarely see a QR code. I see plenty of shortened URLs though.
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Domain Name: TINYURL.COM
Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2029-01-27T06:17:41
So... (Score:1)
They knowingly bought the domain knowing how many sites used it, and set up hardcore anal porn to be displayed if a URL was invalid, and some of these sites (especially gaming sites) are read by minors. Could this be considered distributing pornography to a minor? I mean, if I posted porn on the official forum of something like Barbie or Transformers I'd probably be hit with that charge.
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I'm not though, 5Star needs to be held legally responsible.
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And I look 15 due to my intersex condition leaving me with ovotestes that had to be removed because they were at risk of disconnecting from my body and necrotizing, what's your point, sir?
Using URL as URI (Score:2)
I remember being confused with the URL / URI distinction before (L for Location? I or Identifier?). We use the same exact scheme to both locate things on the web, and identify those not on it. (Does that XML namespace have a backing on the server? Who cares? Does that video identifier point to the same thing as before? Well.. not anymore).
Now, it is coming back to haunt us. Yes, seeing unwanted videos is bad, but losing your stupid money to NFTs is even worse: https://news.bitcoin.com/nft-i... [bitcoin.com] (You auction