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0 pointsepistasis25d ago0 comments

> So why not just shut down the website? Or remove the form entirely? That will ensure that you get no spam, right?

Turns out that people have a tolerance for a non-zero amount of work, but still have a limit.

Suggesting "turn off your website" is does not account for the desire to also provide some access.

Treat people who host content as humans, just as we must treat users as humans. There are tradeoffs, suggesting "shut down your website unless you provide access everywhere" is worse on all fronts for everyone.

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Dylan1680725d ago· 2 in thread

> There are tradeoffs, suggesting "shut down your website unless you provide access everywhere" is worse on all fronts for everyone.

Maybe, maybe not.

If block-heavy websites shut down entirely, we lose some content, but other content moves to block-minimal sites and the average user might be able to access more.

Also if there's no blocking crutch, and people get pushed into shutdown and are mad about it, they might fight harder for anti-spam technology and legal enforcement, which could improve the situation.

BenjiWiebe25d ago

Well I administer an ecommerce site, and for the checkout page I block everything besides Canada and USA.

Because those are the only two countries that we've ever in the life of our business, had a legitimate order from.

It prevents the majority of credit card testing, but it is tempting to apply it to the whole site to reduce traffic and server load.

dotancohen23d ago

Is be seriously pissed off if I invested the time to build a shopping cart and got to the order screen just to be turned away. I hope that you have a clear message somewhere that you do not ship outside the US and Canada.

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