Delay in posting comments

I had pretty bad response time for me today when posting on Personal Profile. Upper Right Bars twirling. Over 20 seconds.
It seems to be spotty recently. Usually my experience is positive.
 
Phishfry said:
I had pretty bad response time for me today when posting on Personal Profile. Upper Right Bars twirling. Over 20 seconds.
It seems to be spotty recently. Usually my experience is positive.
Click to expand...
For me too and I posted link and it shows like:
https://[do not visit]_www_freebsdsoftware_org_[do not visit ]/blog/freebsd-pkg-reference.html
 
It seems to come and go. But even when slow, my posts, or edits, show up. And even when it's a bit bad, it still takes less than 30 seconds.
 
Posting my last append above got the 3 moving vertical bars animation in upper right corner of browser window for approximately 10 seconds. Not too bad. The problem is when it sits there for 30 secs, but that doesn't happen all the time.
 
Whereas my second post above, commenting on my first post today completed instantly. Is there a cache being initialised on the first post from a user that day? Just guessing.
 
This is what I see when there is a delay. Note the 3 red vertical bars at upper right. The bars are moving animation and stay visible for a variable amount of time up to around 30 secs, after which the post completes. I think the red-bars animation is being produced by the forum website, not by the browser.

Screenshot_20260925_114320.jpg
 
I came to ask about this. Please tell me straight up: Are you guys partnering with any of these security/AI companies that are scanning user submissions before allowing them to be posted? By that I mean: automated LLM powered moderation.

The reason I ask is I've been tracking the deployment of these tools all over the web over the past 2-3 years (well actually since 2015 but that's another story). The delay when posting here is exactly what I'm getting on places where I know these tools have been deployed under the guise of poking around in the end user's browser to "verify they're human". Firefox suffers the most from it because the vast majority of Firefox users ime run ad/script blocking add-ons like ublock and this LLM powered third party software really hates any version of firefox with that on or certain piracy enhancing about:config/user.js settings.

I only get this delay when posting new threads/posts. If I edit an existing post the reply is posted instantly as it should be. But if I wait say 30 minutes then go back and add say 3 paragraphs to a post I made the delay comes back. This can only lead me to one conclusion.

I should tell you straight out that I'm very familiar with how Xenforo works. Along with what came before it (vBulletin) and what came before that (UBB). So I know what I'm seeing isn't related to any type of bug in the Xenforo software itself. I haven't had the time to go poking through the javascript I allowed to run in my browser from the freebsd.org domain yet. But if I go poking through it and find what I'm expecting to find I won't be happy and I'll stop posting here.

On the various forums, discussion platforms, social media websites and imageboards where I've seen the software I'm talking about deployed I've seen some very concerning things that go beyond just poking around the end user's browser settings and cache. I've seen things like code to track mouse/keyboard input 24/7. Code to hold the webpage open in the background even if you have auto-tab unloading set-up to auto-kill tabs not accessed in several minutes. Code to go snooping around the end user's storage devices. Code to do all manner of spyware/malware-tier stuff.

I have had to stop using many forums, boards and related web discussion platforms in the last year or so because this stuff is being widely deployed and I refuse to allow it to snoop on me so much. Most of the time it feels like it has the right to sit in the background consuming 20-40% of my CPU when I'm using input devices and I have a pretty high-end CPU on my machine. So I can't imagine how horrible it is for most people running less beefy hardware on their desktop or laptop. This javascript based spyware won't even execute correctly on OpenBSD due to Firefox and Chrome having full support for pledge and unveil in the OpenBSD ports. So it just marks my OpenBSD laptop (no matter what browser) as "suspicious" and most of those platforms either don't work at all or instantly demand I hand over my Government ID to continue browsing.

Take for example reddit. Which recently started using one of these Government-backed US companies offering this spyware to help them "monitor bots". Well "monitoring bots" and making sure none of the no-no words in their list of no-no words are seen by anyone on their platform. Any comments expressing banned words (or banned "thoughts" as I like to call them aka complex concepts expressed through sentences/paragraphs designed to by-pass old school word blacklists) are instantly shadow banned on there now and the user's account is placed on a list where only other shadowbanned users can read his comments. You get placed in a bubble with other people hit by the auto moderation in other words. Keeps the user from figuring out their posts aren't being seen by the vast majority of other users.

On my OpenBSD machine it'll ask me to "prove my humanity" after I click 2 links (e.g. click link from google search to view a thread then click link to the sub-reddit's main page). Which always fails. At which point I get an error screen claiming I'm "making too many requests" and "I've been auto banned for suspicious activity". Never mind the fact that they recently blocked old.reddit.com from all non-logged in accounts. So you're forced to use the new UI where half the crap like clicking on "view rest of thread" fails to work all together and you can't even see recent threads.

I'm not trying to accuse you guys of anything but I've seen this same software deployed across 99% of forums/boards/etc on the web over the past 1-2 years. The behavior of initial post/reply taking a long time to appear is always the first big clue that the LLM auto-moderation is now active. I've seen the same "error" on all forums/boards where I know it has been deployed. On most though they try to hide it by simply instantly taking you to the comment like it has been posted. You can see it but no one else can. At least not until it's processed. Then depending on if it passed the automated moderation it'll either be shown to others or they'll try to trick you by continuing to show it to you but no one else can really see it (shadow banned in other words).

I really really hope the FreeBSD project is not using this spyware. If I find out I'm going to have to pull all my donations. I refuse to do business or use any website (or service) that uses this software. Its only purpose is to censor people. I don't buy the "we need it to stop the bots" excuse either. Since the same companies selling you the solution (LLM moderation for censorship) are the same companies selling the problem (LLM based bots for posting spam/propaganda/rage bait).

If you really do have an issue with Xenforo itself then PM me. I will help you fix it for free. Trust me, you'll get no better support (even through official support channel) than just letting me take a look at it. I don't want to post my real name here. I'll leave it at this: I am very familiar with the source code.
 
Without going so far as to talk about spyware, the latency of all websites has skyrocketed; there's too much indirection, too much dynamic processing, and too many services that serve no purpose. I particularly noticed this when I switched from ADSL to fiber; yes, downloading large files is fast, but for websites, it didn't change much.
 
Usagi This site has been hit lately by denial of service attacks. So software was installed to monitor that and sometimes delay the actual posting. It's not AI or anything else. Just something to help blocks another attack. Nothing more.
 
doul said:
Without going so far as to talk about spyware, the latency of all websites has skyrocketed; there's too much indirection, too much dynamic processing, and too many services that serve no purpose.
Click to expand...
I've had faster website loads than others for like 10 years :p (it's easy with nginx and no abstraction)
 
doul said:
Without going so far as to talk about spyware, the latency of all websites has skyrocketed; there's too much indirection, too much dynamic processing, and too many services that serve no purpose. I particularly noticed this when I switched from ADSL to fiber; yes, downloading large files is fast, but for websites, it didn't change much.
Click to expand...
We need modular browsers that listen to selected web standards. Everything is now javascript wasting resources to keep on selling faster hardware and maintain the advertising and tracking empire.
 
Usagi said:
I came to ask about this. Please tell me straight up: Are you guys partnering with any of these security/AI companies that are scanning user submissions before allowing them to be posted? By that I mean: automated LLM powered moderation.

The reason I ask is I've been tracking the deployment of these tools all over the web over the past 2-3 years (well actually since 2015 but that's another story). The delay when posting here is exactly what I'm getting on places where I know these tools have been deployed under the guise of poking around in the end user's browser to "verify they're human". Firefox suffers the most from it because the vast majority of Firefox users ime run ad/script blocking add-ons like ublock and this LLM powered third party software really hates any version of firefox with that on or certain piracy enhancing about:config/user.js settings.
...
Click to expand...
It's worth knowing about this stuff. Interesting.
 
I've seen the red bars with the delay a few times today. And a couple of times it actually times out and I get an error message saying the website has timed out.
 
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