KES 4.1.0: Improving the signal to noise ratio by blocking unsolicited ads

Initially slated for later release, this is an early release geared at improving miscellaneous developer-side processes, but it also comes with one key new feature.

Add-ons

Filter advertisements (@shazbot)

Location: General > Filter advertisements

Many of you are aware of the "canned meat" problem on kbin.social, with some magazines being inundanted with garbage posts.

The latest version of KES ships with an experimental new feature you can enable that attemps to filter these posts and block the users who posted them based on certain heuristics.

This feature is experimental, but I see a lot of users voicing frustration at the problem, so now seems like a good time to start collecting feedback. You can start using this feature immediately and it should not have any adverse effects, but its coverage is still being expanded.

You can find it under General > Filter advertisements. For best results, it should be used in conjunction with infinite scrolling enabled in the kbin sidebar, so that new content is loaded in as posts are removed.

As you navigate through a magazine, KES will remove offending posts from the index and then block the user of the post. This feature is also preventive, as variations of posts made under different usernames will continue to be flagged. The goal is to avoid the tedious process of "whack-a-mole" and cull these posts without manual intervention.

Initially, KES will be removing posts from the index, but as you build your blocklist up, such posts will stop appearing in the thread index altogether, and you should see the overall signal to noise ratio improving. Outside of your blocklist, subsequent posts that meet certain criteria will continue to be culled regardless or when or where they appear.

I am currently using /m/science and /m/opensource as a control. If you navigate to those magazines and compare the results before and after enabling this feature, the difference should be clear. After enabling the feature and scrolling all the way back to 2023, there should be few if any unsolicited ads on the page.

Hopefully this improves readability and encourages participation in communities that otherwise seemed impenetrable at first glance. In fact, once you scrub the garbage posts, you'll be surprised to find that there are legitimate posts being made fairly frequently in these seemingly "dead" communities--the posts were just buried in the heap.

However, canned meat comes in a lot of different flavors, and each magazine has slightly different permutations. The coverage in this initial version is not exhaustive, but it attempts to be thorough. This should greatly cut down on the most annoying ads. If there are specific (most likely unmoderated) magazines you are still having a problem with, please leave a comment listing the magazine. You don't need to point to specific posts or users; the magazine name is enough here for me to analyze what kinds of posts are appearing.

Some additional notes:

• For the time being, this feature does not report the post to the magazine's moderator (usually nonexistent). By kbin's design, a post can only be reported at most by a single user, so this seemed like a reduplication of efforts to me. But auto-report can be added if necessary.
• This feature works on any instance, but is chiefly designed for kbin.social and is probably unnecessary elsewhere.
• I have not taken a look at microblogs yet, so I don't know if this problem is happening there, too (please let me know). For now, this works on the thread index of magazines.
• For best results (if you want to quickly bootstrap your blocklist), I suggest enabling the feature and scrolling through an affected magazine for awhile with infinite scroll on to build up the blocklist as new posts load in, then refreshing the page if necessary.

Fixes

• Move federation warning: ensure that the add-on also applies to pages on the All Content area (kbin only)
• Remove extraneous bottom border on KES icon in navbar when hovering
• Ensure that kbin navbar accommodates extra width when KES icons are added to it
• Resize text: prevent this feature from causing the KES modal to become opaque when the "Collapsible Comments" feature is also enabled

API

• Made getInstanceType() logic more granular

getInstanceType() is a utility function that returns whether an instance is of type kbin or mbin (string). The logic has been slightly improved for accuracy.

• Updated ESLint rules

Small fix made to support auto-indendation of switch statements when linting code.

• Updated build scripts

Revamped the concat_funcs tool for better cross-platform compatibility and added a usage prompt.