Marshall Sutherland

Thu, 02 May 2024 21:41:02 -0400

dwatney@hub.farthinghalearms.com

Is the embed tag supposed to actually do something? I stopped using the "Insert web link" button because, except for a few sites, all I get is the link in an embed tag and all that gives me is the link. Is it supposed to do something and my server has just been jacked up for years?

Here is the link from my previous post put into an embed tag. Do you see more than a link?
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/04/first-post-a-history-of-online-public-messaging/

show all 11 comments

Thu, 02 May 2024 22:00:09 -0400

Marshall Sutherland

dwatney@hub.farthinghalearms.com

In the past, the insert web link button would usually generate BBCode with a link, picture, and quote. Now, it usually just makes an embed link, so I make the BBCode myself like I assume you did.

It occurred to me tonight that maybe I had never asked if this is everyone's experience.

Thu, 02 May 2024 22:18:19 -0400

Mike Macgirvin 🖥️

mikedev@fediversity.site

This may have changed in hubzilla over the last few years but from memory it's supposed to be auto-generated when we discover an OEmbed service at the link you inserted (via the link button). If there is no actual OEmbed service or your instance has OEmbed disabled for the target site, you'll only get a link. By default OEmbed is disabled because it lets large sites install tracking code directly into your stream. There's an addon called std_embeds that allows a very small number of sites (including google and soundcloud) to insert their media players, but you'll also get all their trackers.

Thu, 02 May 2024 22:31:14 -0400 last edited: Thu, 02 May 2024 22:39:04 -0400

Jason Cook

jason@hub.inktada.com

My experience with hubzilla is the same as Techriot - insert web link is working fine for me, but not every site. About a year ago mine rarely worked, so it has been nice to not have to "force" a related image.

Thu, 02 May 2024 22:40:21 -0400 last edited: Thu, 02 May 2024 22:40:44 -0400

Mike Macgirvin 🖥️

mikedev@fediversity.site

The standard 'insert web link' looks for Facebook's OpenGraph tags and if I recall falls back on a small selection of Twitter tags. It also checks for an OEmbed service. If none of these are present, it will just return a link. Many many years ago we parsed the content and tried to find some kind of interesting content, but gave up doing that around 2011 because it's really hard to find interesting content in a modern web page and not end up with an ad. Most internet sites support OpenGraph, but you don't have to look very far to find some that don't.

Thu, 02 May 2024 22:45:59 -0400

Jason Cook

jason@hub.inktada.com

Another tidbit: On my site, I went to your above link and copied it and inserted it as a link to test. It gave the image and a quote.

Fri, 03 May 2024 07:39:38 -0400

Marshall Sutherland

dwatney@hub.farthinghalearms.com

I have both the noembed and standard embed add-ons enabled. Maybe I am missing a php library they require to be fully active? Youtube and Rumble are the only sites seem to result in a post assembling for me.

I tried the same sample link on my streams server. One option gave me just the link (with a url tag, not an embed tag) and the other option gave me the link with a title of "React app", Both Hubzilla and Streams are running in the same environment, so something like a missing library would affect them both.

Fri, 03 May 2024 12:53:40 -0400

Marshall Sutherland

dwatney@hub.farthinghalearms.com

I compared my php libraries to Jason's and added 6 additional ones he had, but it didn't seem to change anything.

Fri, 03 May 2024 16:24:32 -0400

Mike Macgirvin 🖥️

mikedev@fediversity.site

I don't recall if there are serious differences between streams and hubzilla w/r/t oembed. But the streams implementation has a few settings.

only embed ssl
allowed embed domains
not allowed embed domains

The 'only embed ssl' setting might be affecting you.

Otherwise the way that it works is oembed results are purified - which removes all javascript by default. Many oembeds will not work at all if you remove the javascript. If you want different behaviour, the std_embeds addon allows 3-4 popular (and potentially dangerous) sites to bypass the filter.

I don't recall if noembeds sites are filtered or not. Otherwise if you want something to be unfiltered or blocked completely, you'll need to add sites manually to allow or deny filtering in your admin security settings.

I've been personally moving away from oembed because it is a security nightmare and relying solely on opengraph tags. I've left it in the code for convenience, but the default is for everything to be purified and therefore crippled.

There may be differences in the opengraph tag support between hubzilla and streams. There also may be differences in the oembed allow/deny lists or ssl setting.

Fri, 03 May 2024 16:55:03 -0400

Jason Cook

jason@hub.inktada.com

Agreed Mike, opengraph meta seems adequate. That alone is enough get the above link with image, I'm pretty sure (just briefly looked at their header).

Fri, 03 May 2024 21:26:20 -0400

Marshall Sutherland

dwatney@hub.farthinghalearms.com

I think it might be fixed now (just not for the original sample link). Because the sample continued to fail, I don't know what fixed it. I think the only real changes were to add 6 php libraries and to disable the 2 embed add-ons.

Another link on the arstechnica site works for me...

#^Here’s your chance to own a decommissioned US government supercomputer

145,152-core Cheyenne supercomputer was 20th most powerful in the world in 2016.

Fri, 03 May 2024 23:53:52 -0400

Marshall Sutherland

dwatney@hub.farthinghalearms.com

i didn't keep the list, but looking through my phpinfo, I think this is right:
bz2
cgi
ldap
mcrypt
snmp
xmlrpc

Some seem clearly unrelated, but I didn't feel like going back and going through a process of elimination once I realized it was actually working.