[AnthonyMouse]

> It's difficult to tell who the owner is changing between and whether or not the new one is a better actor than the former.

This doesn't seem like that hard of a problem to solve, because these are domains with negative reputation, i.e. worse than zero.

So if a) the domain is no longer hosting any of the stuff previously complained about and b) is no longer receiving new complaints over a period of a year, it costs you nothing to reset the domain to zero. Because the bad actors don't have to behave for a year to get back to zero, they can just register a new domain.

All you're doing is giving the new owner the same fresh start that anybody can get by buying a never before registered domain for the same price as a year's renewal on the existing one.

[dustyventure]

Using a domain every second year in that environment would get it a gradually raising rank where it isn't penalized/sanitized (by accident, on principle, etc) so every restart after a $30 pause year would be much more effective than a new domain.

[soared]

It gets reset every year so how would it be more effective?

[dustyventure]

A system gets reset, what happens in obscure places like old HN content?

[AnthonyMouse]

The search index knows when the first time it saw that old link was. If it was before the reset, regard it as pointing to a different domain than the current one.

[dustyventure]

Google can take various actions to put pressure but it ultimately doesn't control how the entire world treats archived text.

A google rank at zero and lots of 2 hop routes to your site that google can either penalize for being an accurate historical record or not is better than a rank of zero and a domain that has never been in historical artifacts.

[AnthonyMouse]

The historical artifacts exist independently of the search ranking. Actual bad guys can get a new domain to get a clean slate without taking the old one down. The reason they care about the cost of domains is their domains get a bad reputation immediately and they have to cycle through far more than one domain a year.

If they were going to consistently use the same domain for links while they churn through hundreds/thousands a year for Google, the extra cost for one extra renewal for the persistent domain would be entirely negligible. And on top of that would make it trivial for Reddit/Facebook/etc. to disable all the historical links because they all go to the same scam site.

[jacobyoder]

How about not even look for a new owner, and just... check the content and complaint levels? If I was hacked and hosted spam, getting blocked/banned for months at a time when... the spam is cleaned and the hole that allowed it is fixed ASAP... that gives folks less incentive to fix/clean/remediate.

[dtdynasty]

3 assumptions that from my read are baked into your comment.

- Any empty domain starts with the same reputation

- Registering a new domain is a 0 cost action

- The eng effort to reset domain reputation is 0

Certain domains are used by abusers more often, usually due to them being cheaper. Forcing them to move domains is extra friction to the abusers which "haunted" domains force more than the proposed new system.

For the last point, I think it's simplifying a complex system change. Even if the new system was marginally better, it could be a large eng effort and not worth pursuing.

edit: styling

[AnthonyMouse]

> Any empty domain starts with the same reputation

What basis would you have to do otherwise, and if there is something (like TLD), why wouldn't "resetting to zero" in terms of past content just mean resetting to that zero?

> Registering a new domain is a 0 cost action

No, that registering a new domain has a similar cost to renewing an existing domain, which is a valid assumption. In fact, the new domains are often cheaper because registrars often discount the initial registration as a loss leader with the expectation that people will make future renewals at a higher price.

> The eng effort to reset domain reputation is 0

It is the job of the party operating that system to make it operate as correctly as feasible. Needlessly causing collateral damage purely out of laziness and unaccountability is how you get people showing up at government offices demanding for you to be regulated or broken up, if not showing up at your offices with a disposition to cause bodily harm.

> Certain domains are used by abusers more often, usually due to them being cheaper.

Running out of domain names is physically impossible. There are more possible domain names in any given TLD than there are atoms in the observable universe. So the low price is going to be the price set by the registry for that TLD.

Whether the TLD itself has some reputation is orthogonal to the reputation of one domain in that TLD relative to another one in the same TLD. Moreover, you would presumably do the same thing for the TLD -- if one TLD is doing promotion and has $1 registrations this year and then gets used for a lot of scams, and then next year it costs $15 and so do the renewals so the scammers move to a different TLD, the reputation of the TLD should be reset just the same as the individual domains.

> Even if the new system was marginally better, it could be a large eng effort and not worth pursuing.

If the primary goal is to reduce engineering effort then the obvious solution is to delete the entire reputation system so it doesn't have to be maintained anymore. If the primary goal is to make it work well then you have to, well, you know.

[dtdynasty]

> What basis would you have to do otherwise, and if there is something (like TLD), why wouldn't "resetting to zero" in terms of past content just mean resetting to that zero?

Fair enough, but I'm not sure it resolves "haunted" domains as a TLD which is often abused could have a lower "0" reputation and thus by default is "haunted". Perhaps it lessens the impact though by how much is quite opaque to us.

> Whether the TLD itself has some reputation is orthogonal to the reputation of one domain in that TLD relative to another one in the same TLD.

I think this depends on how reputation works and is not so clear. Registrars for these TLD also have a responsibility but have no incentives to stop abusers. If TLD domain reputation is not orthogonal to reputation individual domains on that TLD then that could be an incentive for them to also crack down on abuse as their domains have bad SEO etc.

> If the primary goal is to reduce engineering effort then the obvious solution is to delete the entire reputation system so it doesn't have to be maintained anymore. If the primary goal is to make it work well then you have to, well, you know.

I think this is the most uncharitable interpretation. The eng effort could go to features that improves other customer experiences affecting more people.