Ability to block URL Previews of Specific Domains

[kevincox]

trafficstars

Your use case

What would you like to do?

I often find myself sharing links that I would not like a URL preview for. The two main reasons are

1. The preview will be useless (for example a private site where every preview is just the login page.
2. The URL may be sensitive and I don't want to send it to my homeserver.

I also find that these are very often from a small number of frequently shared domains. For example a company's wiki.

It would be nice if there was a configuration to skip URL previews of these domains (by default).

Why would you like to do it?

These previews tend to take up lots of space for basically no value. I don't need every other message to give me a preview of the login page.

How would you like to achieve it?

I'm currently thinking a user setting that contains a set of blocked domains/URL patterns. The user's clients would then not generate URL previews of these domains by default. If something like MSC2385 ever ships sent messages could also be tagged to now show previews (maybe).

Have you considered any alternatives?

This could also be a room or space setting, possibly with some sort of inheritance.

Another option would be to try to make these useful, for example some way to provide credentials to the site. That may be useful but is probably a more specific use case than this general one. If both options existed I imagine that blocking would still be more common, and credentials would be provided for a very short list of sites.

Additional context

Eventually it would be nice to standardize this so the list can apply cross-client but I think it makes sense to experiment in Element clients first.