Alternative Link (AltLink/MitiGator)

🖼	🖼

This is opt-in service.

Contents

A little history

Once upon a time there was a bot named "CloudflareLink" which was created by Anonymous. It replied to many users who shared CF links publicly.

Not many people reacted it positively. Here is some of them.

kemonine@social.holdmybeer.solutions

To the owner of this bot
You should be ashamed.
Quit drive by bro'ing our statuses.
Please fornicate with a pointy stick.

Sylvhem@eldritch.cafe

Pointing to a copy rather than the original document if it's still online is bad practice too. Also, you are a very annoying bot.

They got annoyed and Mastodon server owner was pressured by their "spam" reports.

One of Mastodon server owner once said, "your little protest bot is making people upset, and i'm worried it might cause people to defederate from the instance, please tone it down."

For the record "CloudflareLink" was moved to other Mastodon servers 3 times and banned 2 times by 2 Mastodon services until the Anonymous decided to given up for good.

The main difference of AltLink is opt-in. Those people who share Cloudflare links casually never receive notification until they have a good heart and follow AL.

Follow MitiGator.

Don't have Mastodon account?
Some instances such as mastodon.social are blocking Altlink.

AL will follow back you within an hour.

If you're locking your account, please accept AL's follow request otherwise AL can't read your toots.
If there is a network instability and AL failed to follow back you after 1 hour:
- Please unfollow, wait 1 hour, and follow again.

When you share Cloudflared link, AL will send direct message to you with information.

Direct messages older than 24 hours will be deleted.
- There is no good reason to keep old toots online.
  - Should I Delete My Tweets?

How to Unsubscribe

Just unfollow AL's account on your side.

AL will unfollow you within an hour.
AL do not attempt to re-follow you.
If you've changed your mind and want to subscribe(opt-in) again, unblock, unfollow AL and follow again.

"Is it really CloudFlare!?" check

Just send domain name or URL as direct message and AL will answer within 1 minute.

Here's an example.

@mitigator blog.emsisoft.com

You can also query multiple at once / mix domain and URLs

@mitigator
en.wikipedia.org
https://blog.emsisoft.com/wow/
www.wikimedia.org

CloudFlareTest it!

You can call AltLink into your public discussion to test above user's URL. All you have to do is hit Reply button and

Mention user @mitigator
Add the word cloudflaretest (case does not matter)
Send it as non-direct toot

AL will answer within 1 minute.

This is a simple Yes/No test.
- If you need detailed check use above one instead.

Here's an example.

mad_dog wrote:

Check my new blog! https://oh.my.god/

you reply:

Hey @mad_dog, your blog need to do cloudflareTest. @mitigator

Report a problem / Create an Issue

(To use this you need to enable Circle option) You can create an Issue without git account. Just send a direct message. And don't worry,

Multiple mentions (e.g. @randomUser @mitigator @otherUser blah blah blah)
Public message (e.g. there's a bot called @mitigator)

...will be ignored to prevent spam. Your username part (before @) will be masked to protect your privacy.

Settings

You can configure mitigator from this website. There are 2 ways:

Open above website and follow the steps.
Or Send one of below keyword as direct message to mitigator: e.g. @mitigator settings
- ??? config set settings