Okay it's fixed now so I guess I can tell you what this was
For about a week there, after introducing the new link preview layout last Sunday, Mastodon.social had no limit on the length of an OpenGraph article title. To test this, I crafted an otherwise blank HTML page whose OpenGraph title was the complete text of the Communist Manifesto. Anytime this page was linked in a mastodon.social timeline, it resulted in a preview with a 6,000 line title. This is how long it took to scroll through:
I made a github bug for this https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/26176 but I was trying not to call too much attention to it because the exploit was really easy and when I was testing with it the presence of 6,000 line long, un-collapseable posts in the feed went from funny to irritating really quickly
@mcc not sure I do either, I've literally no idea if it's any good, just that according to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a bee should be able to fly
@andrewt My understanding is this is a misconception, and a more accurate statement would be that science was relatively slow to understand the dynamics of bee flight, as it required both accurately modeling bee wings as non-rigid membranes and understanding the behavior of air vortices.
I am, vaguely, reminded of the occasional helpful soul in the early 00s popping in to the #mediawiki IRC to report a serious security issue: anyone can edit it.
@amgine it's funny but when you frame it as "spammers can mass bomb hundreds of edits an hour into your wiki and there are no adequate tools for dealing with it" it is less funny and also the reason I shut down my mediawiki instance
<nod> Unless you have zillions of volunteers, there’s pretty much no way to have an open wiki. But there are many degrees between wide open and shut down.
E.g.: Mastodon instances. At least as vulnerable to spammers; really moreso as the api are far better.
Or that we all curate our personal timelines aggressively, creating tiny little echo chambers where we are never challenged by alternative points of view or see drive-by posts?
I ain't got a hitch, it ain't got a mouth on him that would make a mullet look like a wildfire; it spreads courage, determination, and love for all things DIY.
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