Moderators (requests and notices)

By making sure links go via microcosm.app, VB retains a killswitch to stop users clicking links to malicious or hacked sites.

Asked and answered many times.

But I'll summarise again:

• Privacy
  
• Security
  
• Affiliates
  
  

Privacy

If someone links to something odd|weird|illegal|trollish|etc... then the act of redirecting a link via microcosm.app means that the referrer header received by the destination doesn't include the details of which comment, conversation or even website from which it originated.

Why does this matter? Some people are arseholes, i.e. the BNP, and if linked to they like to go through their referrers and visit the sources and then troll and hunt people down (online, no idea if they ever have the balls to do so offline).

Using a short-link thing gives us privacy.

Security

If someone links to a phishing page or malware page, because it goes via microcosm.app I have the opportunity to detect and stop this. I have done this in the past on a few URLs, and have also been considering baking in Google Safebrowsing to make this less manual.

Example: fake advert appears here, looks attractive and links somewhere. Visit the somewhere and it pretends to be a Dropbox photo asking for login to view images of a bike being sold, but actually it's a phishing page. That happened, I blocked it.

Affiliates

This is no longer as important because affiliate revenue has basically dropped off a cliff, but... if someone links to a shop like Wiggle, we can add tags to the URL that says "came from LFGSS" and when an item sells they give us a kick back (typically a couple of % of their slice... pennies). This was the original monetisation strategy, and it didn't work out because cashback sites flooded affiliate schemes, and so affiliate schemes reduced rates or cancelled their schemes.

We still do that one, but only because I've not got around to ripping out the code and it's still equivalent to 10 more people making a regular donation.

So that's why we use a URL shortener, but why do we then hint at the destination in the URL hover text? Because a URL shortener does hide the destination and for you to trust clicking it you need some indication of where you'll end up. So we put a summarised version of the URL in the hover text.