7.0 KiB
Alternative Link
This is opt-in
service.
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.
To the owner of this bot
You should be ashamed.
Quit drive by bro'ing our statuses.
Please fornicate with a pointy stick.
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.
How to Subscribe
- Follow Alternative Link (AL).
- 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
, andfollow
again.
- Please
- When you share Cloudflared link, AL will send
direct
message to you with information.
- Direct messages older than 12 hours will be deleted.
- There is no good reason to keep old toots online.
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 andfollow
again.
How to hide boosted toots
If you just want to use direct message function
and don't want to know other user's voices, just use Mastodon's "Hide boost" function like below picture.
"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.
@altlink blog.emsisoft.com
You can also query multiple at once / mix domain and URLs
@altlink
en.wikipedia.org
https://blog.emsisoft.com/wow/
www.wikimedia.org
Report a problem / Create an Issue
You can create an Issue without git account. Just send a direct
message.
And don't worry,
- Multiple mentions (e.g.
@randomUser @altlink @otherUser blah blah blah
) - Public message (e.g.
there's a bot called @altlink
)
...will be ignored to prevent spam.
Your username part (before @
) will be masked to protect your privacy.
Settings
You can configure AL via direct message
.
- 1: Do not message me same domain again for a day.
- Default is
off
. - By default AL will notify you each time when you share inaccessible link. Turning this settings on will silence second post for 24 hours.
- Default is
- 2: Suggest other non-Cloudflare alternative sites when available.
- Default is
off
.- Test Stage: Currently this is
on
until October.
- Test Stage: Currently this is
- Let's say you boost or post Cloudflared news site. AL will suggest some similar websites related to your URL within 1 minute. Note that AL might suggest inaccurate result.
- AL will not suggest anything if your account is
Bot
. - Rate-Limit: AL will suggest
only once per 2 minutes
. For example you post:- 10:00
http://example.com/article-a.html
(AL will suggest) - 10:01
http://example.net/article-b.html
(will be ignored) - 10:02
http://example.org/article-c.html
(AL will suggest) - 10:03
http://example.uk/article-d.html
(will be ignored)
- 10:00
- AL will not suggest anything if your account is
- Default is
- 3: Count my links and send me report monthly.
- Default is
off
. - If you turn on this settings AL will simply count how many links you shared publicly and how many were Cloudflared. Note that this count will have duplicates because we never save (& don't care) what you shared.
- If you change this settings or each month has passed counter will reset to 0.
- Default is
- 4: Set my preferred language to ??.
- Default is unset.
- AL will use language based on your toot.
- If you tell AL your language, AL will speak your language.
- Need other language? Create an issue.
- Default is unset.
- 5: Show my current preferences.
- No settings option.
- 6: Ignore boosted toots.
- Default is
off
. - By default AL will notify you when you boost(retweet) other user's post which has Cloudflare link.
- Default is
- 7: Use alternative provider.
- Default is
off
. - If you turn on this settings AL will use IAList service.
- Default is
- 8: Notify me if the link is known Anti-Tor link.
- Default is
off
. - If you turn on this settings AL will notify you when you share links that block Tor users.
- "Hey website.com why are you blocking Tor!?"
- Default is
set N V
- N is above numbers.
- V is value.
- for number 1 to 3, 6 to 8:
- one of: y n yes no true false 1 0 on off
- for number 4:
- one of: cc (see /README.md)
- e.g.
es Español
->es
- Improve translation
- for number 5:
- none (see below example)
- for number 1 to 3, 6 to 8:
- You can mix uppercase if you want.
sEt 1 TRuE
is same asset 1 true
Here's an example.
- Speak Русский. Monthly Report please.
@altlink
set 4 ru
set 3 on
- What is my current settings?
@altlink set 5
- Turn 1 on and show settings.
@altlink set 1 yes
set 5
- Mastodon servers are controlled by third party.
- Let us know if above account is censored by aggressive Cloudflare supporters.
- ↳ Altlink IRC Service
- ↳ "Cloudflare, we have a problem" Mastodon
- ↳ How many % of public Fediverse services are using Cloudflare?
- ↳ How many % of links people publicly shared on Mastodon are using Cloudflare?