[META] EVERYONE READ! | Megalinks MegaDB

[-] GldRush98 | 74 points | Dec 18 2016 17:33:33

Thank you. Those url shorteners are absolutely horrible.

[-] caamt13 | 58 points | Dec 18 2016 17:37:37

JANUVIA

[-] boomer98 | 17 points | Dec 18 2016 19:16:14

STING LIKE A BEE

[-] rogue780 | 9 points | Dec 18 2016 19:49:58

$2.99 Happy Meal

[-] stfucupcake | 7 points | Dec 18 2016 21:47:12

Keeping it real

[-] Blue_Train | 4 points | Dec 19 2016 02:22:20

Bake&Break

[-] NoMoreNicksLeft | 4 points | Dec 19 2016 04:36:20

Most effective ad campaign ever. I'm 100% advertisement-averse... and I know this one. I can type in the captcha answer without even watching the stupid little thing now.

Sometimes I'm doing that at 2am though and misspell it JUNAVIA and Rapidgator makes me wait 2 hours to download it.

[-] caamt13 | 3 points | Dec 19 2016 04:39:12

If I ever develop diabetes, I know where to go thanks to /r/megalinks.

[-] NoMoreNicksLeft | 2 points | Dec 19 2016 04:55:17

I'm new here... I mostly see it from the magazine collecting I do, they all tend to use direct-download stuff (just not Mega).

I don't think I've seen it from anything here, actually.

[-] metaz69u | 1 points | Dec 19 2016 08:29:53

Bangers and Mash

[-] IgnoreMyName | 2 points | Dec 18 2016 23:30:45

Why were the terrible? I didn't mind them at all and thought it was a good way to counter any attempts from bots to take content down.

[-] Blue_Train | 16 points | Dec 19 2016 02:21:53

Adware, re-directs, stupid count down delays, some don't work at all, excessive captchas and forced video ads, and making commissions off of piracy is a scumbag move

[-] readyrocky | 6 points | Dec 19 2016 09:09:52

also in most of the cases these url shorteners are not encripted with https

[-] IgnoreMyName | 1 points | Dec 19 2016 03:55:07

The only one I've ever had to use was the one where you enter a code, press enter, and you're in. The one where you had to enter "Januvia". With Ublock Origin, all I did was click on the box, Ublock blocks the add, and then get the code right away.

[-] Blue_Train | -1 points | Dec 19 2016 04:13:19

uBlock, which I also use, doesn't let me skip the vidads and still allow the links to be accessed. They're either blocked, rendering the sites completely nonfunctional or they have to be interacted with to get to the links. They're loathsome and most of all it's ethically gross to make $ off piracy.

[-] IgnoreMyName | 5 points | Dec 19 2016 04:36:15

ethically gross to make $ off piracy

Lol wut? They're making money off of hosting a hidden link, the content you pirate is on MEGA. "Ethically gross" to show ad to help run a website that hosts links but straight up pirating, what you, me, and the rest of this sub is not ethically gross?

Secondly, it could just be me but I haven't dealt with any of that. Go to site, click where it says "play to get code", wait a second for Ublock to block the ad, get code, enter code, and be on my way. Could be because we have different filters enabled. These are the filters I use personally and never see ads and rarely have to disable it to access a website.

[-] Blue_Train | 1 points | Dec 19 2016 23:19:41

There's a difference between sharing content between people who were never ever going to pay for it in any situation and capitalizing on that sharing. You legitimize the RIAA and MPAA's arguments for them and their arguments are garbage as they pertain to the vast majority of people engaged in file sharing. But when you're not sharing anymore, you're selling, even at 3¢ a click, and you're then profiting from stolen goods. It's the difference between friends making mixed tapes for each other and the guy on the sidewalk stand selling burned DVDs of The Conjuring for five bucks a pop. Thanks for the filters, though.

[-] achimba | 49 points | Dec 18 2016 18:27:50

I am all for this. This is megalinks and people should be aware that links are referring to mega. I support going a step further by starting after the first forward slash. Example:

full link:

https://mega.nz/#!jd8gDR6e!Y_0bNK8Xy4xfr81VNr36cmURV_JPR-n0gqSDBVc7q0J

split link:

https://mega.nz/#!jd8gDR6e

!Y_0bNK8Xy4xfr81VNr36cmURV_JPR-n0gqSDBVc7q0J

split link with domain masking:

https://xxxx.nz/#!jd8gDR6e

!Y_0bNK8Xy4xfr81VNr36cmURV_JPR-n0gqSDBVc7q0J

without domain whatsoever:

#!jd8gDR6e

!Y_0bNK8Xy4xfr81VNr36cmURV_JPR-n0gqSDBVc7q0J

[-] [deleted] | 18 points | Dec 19 2016 00:14:19

[deleted]

[-] [deleted] | 5 points | Dec 19 2016 07:33:46

[deleted]

[-] [deleted] | 1 points | Dec 19 2016 14:15:44

[deleted]

[-] [deleted] | 1 points | Dec 19 2016 17:48:55

[deleted]

[-] [deleted] | 2 points | Dec 19 2016 17:55:06

[deleted]

[-] [deleted] | 1 points | Dec 19 2016 18:00:48

[deleted]

[-] achimba | 8 points | Dec 19 2016 20:11:59

I think that it is fair to say that we all understand that humans have the capacity to view all of the content on this very public forum. Our goals should include making it difficult for bots and not becoming unwieldy for human usability.

Quick lesson on bots: Bots are programs that can request web pages and process the response. A bot can be programmed to follow every anchor link it sees, making a request for that page and processing what it retrieves. Infringing content? Log it and act on it in some way. The processing script has to be programmed to concatenate different strings to assemble the mega url like we are discussing. It can be done. So if we separate url from key it is possible that this can be programmed. Easy. But some human has to program the bot to do this. Eventually it will happen, regardless of method we use.

Something that really throws a wrench in programming is having to understand the text content of the page and making a logical operation based off of information therein. Example: https://mega.nz/#!jd8gDR6e!Y_0bNK8Xy4xfr81VNr36cmURV_JPR-n0gqSDBVc7q0J (swap the last two characters)

This is an order of magnitude more difficult to program a script to handle. If you knew that the logical operation was always going to swap the last two characters then you could program the bot to try that, but this is not the same as the script parsing the string 'swap the last two characters' and understanding what it needs to do. Humans can do this easily. Swap first two characters, swap last two characters, swap first and last characters, replace each lowercase s with an UPPERCASE S. Easy.

Creating and using tokens is a good idea too. Incorporating the example from above: REPLACEWITHHASHBANGjd8gDR6e !Y_0bNK8Xy4xfr81VNr36cmURV_JPR-n0gqSDBVc7q0J In this scenario we could easily continue to use the full url mega link: https://mega.nz/REPLACEWITHHASHBANGjd8gDR6e!Y_0bNK8Xy4xfr81VNr36cmURV_JPR-n0gqSDBVc7q0J We should strive to create a mega link that isn't valid without human intervention. So if a bot does manage to put together a link it doesn't go anywhere on mega (404 situation).

The other thing we should strive for is an unknown payload at mega. By naming the uploaded files differently on mega it can help with content retention. So, the bot has managed to get the right link and it goes to the mega page. What does it see there? trpohgiurepomnre.2016.hdtv.cam.blah.whatever.mkv What the hell is that? The bot doesn't know so it moves on without further handling. I am sure that the name of the file will be logged but it is not raising any red flags immediately. That was rogue 1 by the way. :)

So by making it more difficult for bots to have easy links to mega and keeping it relatively easy for human users to follow the links, in addition to some creative file naming for uploaded files can help keep the dream alive.

[-] JXEYES | 2 points | Dec 18 2016 19:22:18

Definitely.

[-] IgnoreMyName | 2 points | Dec 18 2016 23:29:27

Agreed. A little more work for hopefully a shit ton more security, all for it.

[-] kolt54321 | 15 points | Dec 18 2016 17:21:34

Well, to be fair, it could very well be that they haven't done another sweep since the big one - NOBODY lost their links after that, including the ones that straight up posted mega links without the "xxxx" precaution.

So technically, you're breaking the rules by putting "xxxx" in your posts instead of direct mega links too - since those haven't had a single takedown since the big sweep.

I'd personally like to ask for you to reconsider, as we have no clue what does or doesn't work until a big sweep. Arbitrarily deciding one is necessary and one is not without any information isn't a great way to go about things.

I personally don't upload here yet, but it would be f'ing awful if people started putting "xxxx" like you, only to have their links taken down by the next sweep. /u/PraiseDannyWoodhead had his 831gb anime HEVC collection taken down even with a link protector for each one, so I don't think we could rule out anything as unnecessary at this point.

[-] [deleted] | 3 points | Dec 18 2016 18:30:06

[deleted]

[-] PraiseDannyWoodhead | 3 points | Dec 18 2016 20:46:03

Yes, it was during the sweep. Also none of what was taken down from me was imported and a lot of it was my own encodes/files so they wouldn't have the same hashes as anyone else's versions.

[-] is_it_fun | 11 points | Dec 18 2016 19:11:51

I and my cat agree: URL shorteners are terrible.

[-] BloodHawkDarkWolf | 3 points | Dec 18 2016 21:27:55

Also keep in mind that it is almost certain that at some point they will adapt to this as well. When this happens, everyone should try to keep their cool and not run around screaming like last time. Adapt. Be prepared in case you lose anything stored in the cloud, because at any time you can lose everything stored in the cloud.

You have to mix it up. Bots can be adapted to any predictable behaviour, and there's no method you can use that legitimate users of the sub can understand that other people won't figure out too.

Take a look at /u/achimba s post for good idea. You can also split things up within a sentence, a paragraph, or reply to a post using an alt with other information. Varying tactics is the only thing bots can't adapt to.

[-] [deleted] | 3 points | Dec 18 2016 22:55:40

[deleted]

[-] BloodHawkDarkWolf | -3 points | Dec 18 2016 23:17:56

Or you could follow the rules of the subreddit.

[-] NoBleepingWay | 2 points | Dec 19 2016 04:22:24

I like the XXXX method. With a quick entry in the hosts file, it goes right to mega.

[-] n1ckus | 2 points | Dec 19 2016 19:53:14

Good choices u guys are making here, keep up the good work!

[-] greatflicks | 1 points | Dec 18 2016 22:06:02

the replace with xxxx seems to be working great. thanks for all your work.

[-] [deleted] | 1 points | Dec 19 2016 23:59:30

I just lost two posts even though I was careful and did xxxx. They are still watching this subreddit and are doing anything in their power to take stuff down.

[-] 12mo | 1 points | Dec 21 2016 00:28:26

Jesus instead of titling the post "EVERYONE READ" you could have put "DO NOT USE URL SHORTENERS" and saved everyone a click.

[-] vcdupper | 3 points | Dec 21 2016 03:10:09

LOL

[-] iam_py | 1 points | Dec 23 2016 19:58:33

Almost everything is failing. Almost all the good downloads are taken down from mega. Few things I observed: For uploaders:

1) Do not use the word 'Download' or 'Download Link'. 2) If you use these words don't put a link on the thread but on the comments and in the format mentioned by /u/vcdupper 3)Use of keep links should be promoted. Those links are pain. But they get the job done. 4) Put Some noisy text in The Thread Heading. Like

Instead of : [MOVIE] Rogue.One.A Star.Wars.Story.2016.x264.HDTS.AAC.Deflickered-DDR [1.36GB]

Use:

[MOVIE] RXoXgXuXe.OXnXe.AX StXXXaXXr.WXXarXXs.StXXoXXrXXy.20XX1XX6.x264XXX.HXXDTXXS.AAC.DXXXXflickXXered-DXXXDR [1XX.XX36GB]

[-] bert0ld0 | 0 points | Dec 19 2016 16:50:34

Can you ELI5 this please from the beginning? I'm stupid and new to this sub. What are link shortener and why are bad? How can you change a link?

[-] poorbruce | -3 points | Dec 18 2016 17:33:25

If they don't see link they can't delete the link?

Can put MEGA' social contact ability to test