Song Blacklist; Restrict Playlist Playback

[tjrgg]

I've looked through the bot a couple times and couldn't find this feature, but I think it's a really needed one. I'd like to be able to block certain songs from being played in my server. A command to blacklist the current song would be good, as well as an option to add songs to the blacklist, either via a command or by adding them directly to a file, perhaps blocked.txt? The command to block a song could be something like "!block " and "!skipblock" could be used to skip the song and add it to the block list. "!unblock " could be used to remove a song from the blocked list. Anyway, this is a feature I'd really like to see in the bot and I think it's important for larger communities that use this bot so they can filter out any inappropriate music for their server.

Python is still relatively new to me, but if I'm not the only one looking for this features, I'd be happy to try and contribute to adding these features. I do think they are important for moderated communities.

[rrbailey89]

The issue with this is that people could just upload videos with fake titles.

[tjrgg]

Well, that might be true, however, that's not really what I was thinking at all. I was just thinking of something as simple as a blocked.txt file with a list of links (YouTube links, SoundCloud links, what have you) and the bot would simply not download those links or allow those links to be played.

The commands would just add the media link to the blocked.txt file.

[imayhaveborkedit]

The problem with this kind of thing is the cat and mouse game you have to play. Blocking specific links means someone just plays one from a different source. Blocking entire sites is probably ok for NSFW sites but there's plenty legitimate sites with mixed content. Blocking by regex is unreliable. If someone really wanted to, they could just upload something and play that file directly. Blocking "generic" files is bad because that would break a few things. Its not easy to do this well, and people will always try to find a way around any block. Obviously moderating your users is another way, but people can just make a new account and queue links, unless you set the verification timeout in the server settings. There's always a way around it. I'll probably add some sort of site blacklist at least, but moderating your users is pretty much the best way of content curation.

[tjrgg]

Of course. However, I always like having a few moderation tools under my belt.

Speaking of blocking sites, that's also an interesting idea and would help my community out a lot actually. I'd prefer that my particular community only be allowed to pull media from certain sites and not any site they choose. How hard is that to implement?

[OrdinatorStouff]

Just adding my two cents that yes, there will always be a way around "blocked" videos, and user moderation is ultimately necessary. While this will not outright prevent abuse, it can still be useful to help reduce it. Rick rolls, for example are usually "harmless" but annoying and if the most commonly used urls/links are blacklisted, it might help prevent some impulsive abuse.

Possibly a whole different feature request would be to implement a "timeout" system where the bot can place users into a muted role for a temporary period of time. It could be invoked manually my moderators as a user moderation tool, OR automatically if a user attempts to play a blacklisted song or blacklisted "title" term like from #520