Link in archived thread links directly to goatse

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1

I was looking at a thread from July 2012 about that whole grease monkey script for avatars thing. It was in ATMB. Here is the thread. Post #11. In it the poster says

“It is not a violation, because it is not a clickable link. I can post links to NSFW images all day long if they are not clickable. Here is a link to goatse:
[…]
Because you have to cut and paste it into your browser, it takes more than two clicks, and cannot be accidentally displayed. No violation.”

However, you can now click on the link and it takes you directly to goatse. If you hover on the link a little box says “Link added by Viglink”. Interestingly, when I tried doing a link to the single post itself, the goatse link was in fact broken.

I am unsure what to make of this. I was a little startled that an archived thread had a one-click link directly to that picture. Regardless, clearly Viglink has made a direct link to EXNSFW images happen. I wonder what else resides out in the archives that this is happening to/with. Reporting what I found. Also, I have seen that image enough for a few days.

2

Oh well. Goatse happens.

Actually, there was a thread just about 2 weeks ago about Viglink adding links unexpectedly to peoples’ posts. Some of the same sorts of concerns were mentioned there.

(ETA: See Post #8 there, for example.)

3

It doesn’t show up as a link on my system, so it’s probably viglink that’s turning it into a link as Senegoid said.

I added a space in the link in post 11 (even though it’s not a link). Let me know if that fixes it, or rather, breaks it for viglink (fixes it by breaking it… you know what I mean).

4

Also this post by Giraffe:

I can verify that it works and disables the Vigilink links.

And it also looks like engineer_comp_geek has just now broken the link mentioned in the OP.

ETA - ninja’d

5

Does this depend on Viglink setting a cookie in my browser?

Regardless of the answer to that, is there any good reason why I should want Viglink to work? Does it add any real functionality, or is it m ore like the sort of malware that cause some of the text on the web to turn into links to commercial sites?

6

Yeah, I think it sets a cookie on your browser. No, it doesn’t add any functionality, but I’m willing to accept their cookie in return for not having links be active that aren’t intended to be. It’s your choice, I suppose.

7

The link still works for me. Maybe stick a space in the middle of the URL?

8

Wow. An oldie but a goodie still works. (The trick, not the asinine point.)

9

engineer_comp_geek edited it again after your post, so it shouldn’t link to anywhere now.

10

I think it was mentioned in the earlier thread that SDMB gets a few pennies every time someone clicks on one of those.

Hey, if we want to help support SDMB, maybe we should all start clicking madly on those. The original problem with that, as already discussed, is that Viglink isn’t very discriminating, and its links sometimes lead to malware or NSFW stuff.

11

Um, don’t you have that backwards? Vigilink is turning links that aren’t supposed to be active into active links.

12

No, I think we both said the same thing. I said, “…having links be active that aren’t intended to be…” is what Vigilink does, and I prefer not having it be that way.

13

… and can any mods or admins explain why that thread is suddenly missing? I posted to it in the last couple of days, and there was nothing wrong with the thread itself, save for the offending link, which was fixed by a mod. I’m confused. I thought only spam/troll threads got deleted around here.

14

Yeah! I’m the poster who found and reported it and now it’s gone. This is nutty, don’cha think spinky?

15

This is definitely nutty.

16

Two year old thread, questions already settled in it, bumped by a spammer.

When the spam was removed, the old thread remained. People didn’t catch that it was an old thread, including a moderator who thought there was a genuine issue going on when there really wasn’t.

Complaints about “goatse” being active in the thread regardless of how we tried to break it, so I just moved the entire thread to the cornfield. Now goatse is not an issue.

17

You couldn’t figure out how to edit a post and make it stop linking to goatse? That seems really strange.

18

Dex had the same problem in another thread. It seems the only sure way, other than the nuclear option, is to surround it with spoiler tags.

19

I’m the one who reported the link kept getting created by viglink. I didn’t intend for the thread to go away, but I’m not crying over it.

My point is that viglink is evil. It started this offensive practice of creating links out of anything that looks like a link, even if the intent was to break the link. This is counter to the policy of this board, and this is just one example where the new behavior is causing issues.

I personally disabled viglink from loading in my browser after this. I hadn’t cared before as much, but this was a good enough reason.

I think the only way to break a link where viglink won’t fix it is to add spaces to break it into pieces. Sticking it in a spoiler box will at least put it behind a second click.

Or I suppose you could use old antispammer techniques, wwwdotthisismylinkdotcom. Spaces would be cleaner. www. thisismylink. com.

20

I too am very annoyed at this new behavior of viglink and the board’s tacit approval of it by continuing to use viglink. I have disabled it for myself but I am not excited about the prospect of links having to be broken with spaces rather than the far cleaner and easier to reconstitute method of using the noparse tags.