How to deal with bots that put dislikes?

[BlackJack]

Hello! Tell me, what can be done so that unregistered users cannot put dislikes on the video? The last few days have encountered a problem, most likely, bots deliberately put dislikes on videos added by users.

[Tech Support]

There is currently no any solution for this. What solution do you expect?

[hbarnetworks]

Fight fire with fire. Get your own bots to put upvotes!

[Yikmings]

Use Cloudflare or Google reCAPTCHA (KVS plugin or install in code) to filter out bots. This may reduce bot action significantly.

[BlackJack]

Well, for example, allow likes and dislikes only for users who have been registered for several days. For example, as implemented on reddit.

[Tech Support]

1 hour ago, BlackJack said:

Well, for example, allow likes and dislikes only for users who have been registered for several days. For example, as implemented on reddit.

Sounds like a plan. You can get this by adding the following block of code into /admin/include/pre_async_action_code.php customization file:

if ($_REQUEST['action'] == 'rate' && intval($_REQUEST['video_id']) > 0)
{
    if ($_SESSION['user_id'] == 0 || time() - strtotime($_SESSION['added_date']) < 2 * 86400)
    {
        async_return_request_status();
    }
}

So it will allow rating for only registered users that spent at least 2 days on the site. For other cases it will emulate "thank you" message, but will not do any actual rating.

[BlackJack]

And can I ask one more question?) Is it possible to clean up likes or dislikes on already spammed videos? Thanks!

[Mich]

Intriguing. Could we possibly implement a feature that informs users of the requirement to be registered for a minimum of two days on the site? This could be a useful precaution. Thank you.

[Tech Support]

11 hours ago, BlackJack said:

And can I ask one more question?) Is it possible to clean up likes or dislikes on already spammed videos? Thanks!

Unfortunately not.

[Tech Support]

5 hours ago, Mich said:

Intriguing. Could we possibly implement a feature that informs users of the requirement to be registered for a minimum of two days on the site? This could be a useful precaution. Thank you.

This can be done by replacing

async_return_request_status();

with

async_return_request_status(array(array('error_code'=>'not_logged_in','message'=>'You must be registered...')));

But the problem is, the GUI JS code that handles rating doesn't support showing custom error messages. It has binary logic: success -> Thank you!, error -> Your IP already voted!

[BlackJack]

Please tell me where to get the file /admin/include/pre_async_action_code.php

[Tech Support]

On 7/1/2023 at 11:32 AM, BlackJack said:

Please tell me where to get the file /admin/include/pre_async_action_code.php

Not sure what you mean, this file should exist on your server filesystem. It is empty by default, e.g. has a valid PHP header but no logic there. This file is designed for custom extensions of needed.

[BlackJack]

By default, we do not have this file. Should it be created?

[Tech Support]

1 hour ago, BlackJack said:

By default, we do not have this file. Should it be created?

Yes, if you don't have this file, then your initial KVS version could be very old when we didn't have it. The default version of this file is attached.

pre_async_action_code.php

[BlackJack]

We can say that we have an up-to-date version, 6.0.1, but we did not have such a file. Thank you for your responses)

[Tech Support]

3 hours ago, BlackJack said:

We can say that we have an up-to-date version, 6.0.1, but we did not have such a file. Thank you for your responses)

This file is not included as a part of KVS update, since it may contain custom code that otherwise will be overridden. So it is normal that some projects do not have this file.