Ask HN: Ideas for offering a free trial without users abusing it?

Re:Ask HN: Ideas for offering a free trial without users abu... by DamonHD on Monday June 05, 2023 @06:16AM (#36194445)

I may be misunderstanding, but if "keep uploading the same document" is an issue, retain hashes of recently-uploaded documents and refuse to handle anything seen too recently too many times, unless being paid.

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Re:Ask HN: Ideas for offering a free trial without users abu... by alfarez on Monday June 05, 2023 @06:35AM (#36194556)

Sorry, to be more precise, "same document" could mean the same content but in different formats. OR just slightly tweaked to result in a different hash each time. Harder to abuse for sure, but still has holes.

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Re:Ask HN: Ideas for offering a free trial without users abu... by john_the_writer on Monday June 05, 2023 @07:10AM (#36194772)

Sure.. but at some point you've got a diminished return on efforts to stop users. 99% of abusers won't work around the limits.

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Re:Ask HN: Ideas for offering a free trial without users abu... by throwawayadvsec on Monday June 05, 2023 @08:22AM (#36195243)

use a cheap algo to detect % similarity?

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Re:Ask HN: Ideas for offering a free trial without users abu... by DamonHD on Monday June 05, 2023 @01:59PM (#36200295)

Any sufficiently-determined (and smart enough) user will find a way around any such check; this is just meant to make it a bit harder to do the wrong thing so that some people will stop trying...

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