Block Gab's user agent in the server configuration

[jhaye]

It has been pointed out by @[email protected] that Gab's fork uses a custom user agent for fetches. This user agent can be blocked by nginx by altering its configuration as follows:

add
if ($http_user_agent ~* (gabsocial)) {
return 403;
}

A few things that need to be done:

• add this to our docker image by default
• provide documentation on doing this for manual installs
  • research how to do the same thing with Apache2
• strategise clear communication on what this will protect people from exactly

While this protection is trivial to bypass, the developer of Gab seems to insist on their own branding of the fork, so I would say this is worth doing.

[vitunvuohi]

A lot of folks are using 444 to immediately close the connection, might be a better option?