Guys, this thought just hit me yesterday as I was thinking about the debate on whether we should be linking directly to Twitter or post images of tweets or archived links instead.
Every external link on this site lets the site owner know where you came from.
I repeat.
EVERY EXTERNAL LINK ON THIS SITE LETS THE SITE OWNER KNOW WHERE YOU CAME FROM.
For those of you who are not aware of how the Internet works: when you click a link on a webpage, any webpage, your browser will include the URL of the page that you came from in the request to fetch the page that you're going to. This is called a Referer header (yes, it's mis-spelled, someone fucked up back in the day and now it has become law).
Twitter, Time Magazine, Washington Compost, the New York Slimes... whatever site someone on patriots.win links out to will not only know that you came from patriots.win... they'll have a link to the exact discussion that's happening about their article or tweet.
I DON'T KNOW IF THAT'S A GOOD IDEA.
Sure, it might help with the site's traffic rankings (I'm not entirely sure how they are computed, but using the Referer might be one way that this is accomplished.
However, it also let's everyone on the Internet know that we're talking about them, and what we're saying.
THERE IS A SOLUTION
The HTML link tag has a special attribute, rel=noreferrer (note that "referrer" is spelled correctly here), which, if present, will instruct the browser NOT to send a Referer header along with the request. It should not be a very difficult change in the site's code to make all external links have this option turned on. Note that this also applies to links posted in the comments, so there will be at least two places the developers will have to change this.
I'm not saying that this HAS to happen, or that I won't be using the site anymore if it doesn't. I just wanted to start a discussion about this topics so we can debate the pros and cons of letting the whole wide world know that you're on patriots.win.
It would also be possible (although more work-intensive) to implement a whitelist of sites which are allowed to see the Referer (for instance, patriot-owned sites like Gab), or a blacklist of establishment sites who are not allowed to see it.
Please discuss.
This should accomplish what you've mentioned on the client side for anyone using a chromium based browser https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/referer-control/hnkcfpcejkafcihlgbojoidoihckciin
Yes, I just found out about this extension myself.
For those of you just reading this, here's how to set it up.
Yes, I like your ideas. I don't feel any generosity about giving away my info or data unless I write directly to them. I don't like back door collections, or anybody's data mining enterprise. After everything we've seen out of big tech and the government there is no reason to believe any such data mining would be benign. Is it open source so that individual users could set up their own computer to have the rel=noreferrer? ---08 Feb 2021 Monday
I don’t know if the patriots.win code is open source, and even then, it would not help because the admins would have to accept your changes AND redeploy the site.
What IS possible is building your own browser extension (difficult), or creating user script for the site using GreaseMonkey in the meantime.
EDIT: just found another possibility: you can use this extension to change your Referer manually on a site-by-site basis. No coding required. Here's how to set it up.
what about cobol code?
This should be posted in the meta sub.
Thanks for the advice. I'll repost it there.
They can add link hiding software if they really wanted to on here.
I am more surprised these places don't block us as a referrer. It's very easy to do.
It has weight in improving their own search engine rankings, so there's an incentive not to block it.
Streamable uses this to ban our videos.
They already do! Notice how embedded YT bids and links to twatter give an error until you refresh the page??
Link to the extension? That sounds like something I need.
I have been aware of this, and clicked anyway.
What this does is generate a large bar at their company meetings when their entire staff sees "Patriots" as their top referrer. Then they stumble in.
I agree, it could go both ways. That's why I put this up for discussion.
Kicking for mods to see support. I defer to whichever way they decide, but want it to be a DECISION, and not a DEFAULT.
I suppose it could be made an option in the settings panel.
That would be more work - I meant a “decision” by the folks in charge. I think this is a really necessary discussion on “how do we want to do things” so THANK YOU for bringing it up!
There's some web services for this kind of thing as well, for example:
http://dereferer.org/interact.asp
Better yet, check out this Chrome extension. How to set it up.
How about sending this to u/doggos
Let them fucking know the traffic comes from here!
This is also why the site is a target for spam. Search engine ranking doesnt count noreferrer links but the user-posted links on here allow refer links... Two birds with one stone, mods just change your link rendering code.
Or is this nofollow? Either way...
you cal turn off referer in firefox settings, but some sites stop working if you do.
That would be pretty retarded, seeing as people tend to copy and paste links, and that would break, too.
Some sites actually work better with a referer. For instance, "premium" stories on Medium are free to read if you come there with a Twitter referer.
this website didn't work, at least, the new login didn't, if you turned off the referer header, but it got fixed