Tell HN: Reddit now blocks VPN access via browser, 'old' subdomain included

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39883747

by thih9 • 2 years ago

393 322 2 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I'm unable to access reddit via browser when using VPN. I see an error message both on regular 'reddit.com', as well as 'old.reddit.com' subdomain.

This is new develompent. They started blocking VPN access on their regular website three months ago[1], but back then 'old' subdomain still worked; today it no longer does.

I'm testing with desktop Safari and NordVPN from EU; curious if others are seeing similar results.

[1]: I posted about it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38666028

keepamovin6• 2 years ago

This is IP based blocking. You can get around it by creating a Reddit account, or logging in. I Just did that on my remote browser app, the demo of which is here:

https://puter.com/app/cloudtabs-browserbox

If you read past the "Woah, there pardner." You'll see a paragraph that says, Try logging in or creating an account here to get back to browsing.

This works. You can use reddit if you just create an account or sign in.

I guess this is IP-based blocking to counter bots.

edit: Oh boy, these tiny servers are not meant for this kind of hug. They may suffer!

thih95• 2 years ago

Edit: parent commenter seems to be promoting their product. Looks like a random remote browser, perhaps avoid entering important credentials there.

Didn't work for me. I tried creating an account[1] moments ago; after filling out the form and submitting, I got back: "an error occurred (status: 403)".

[1] https://old.reddit.com/login/

keepamovin6• 2 years ago

OK, I don't know. Did you try just visiting some random reddit website from the remote browser I provided?

edit: I just tried again on a fresh CloudTabs browser and I could successfully create an account and sign in to reddit. So this does work!

What did you try? I think it might matter how you arrive at reddit. Try going through the address bar search to a sub you like, rather than pasting in a direct "login to reddit" URL. Idk for sure, but that might be more sus to their systems haha! :)

You need to click through a Captcha (at least I did ~ first time I got 1 "bicycle", this time I got 1 "motorbikes" and 1 "stairs").

Perhaps they adapt their IP blocking, this demo only uses 4 IPs globally. Maybe if we push too many users through there, they'll block anyway?? Idk.

Anyway, I just tested after your comment and it worked so we'll need to discover what happened for you.

maroonblazer• 2 years ago

Works for me.

keepamovin6• 2 years ago

Edit: parent commenter seems to be promoting their product. Looks like a random remote browser, perhaps avoid entering important credentials there.

True. Maybe I should have put a full disclosure? I thought it was obvious, but I get if it wasn't. I'm sorry for not being more clear!

It's a good point to advise people to avoid entering important credentials in something that probably looks untrusted. I'd also advise that at this stage as we have no SLAs for now, and are just testing this SaaS-to-be demo of this source-available product:

https://github.com/BrowserBox/BrowserBox

Thank you for pointing out the reasonable and important security concerns. Although I should have probably done that myself, I was just so eager to help!

Aside: I am surprised tho that you were unable to even login on your VPN. I would think that the IP blocks we run the browser form and those of a VPN would be in the same category of 'cloud IPs', so why should it work on CloudTabs but fail for you directly on a VPN? Who knows?

TomSwirly• 2 years ago

"Woah, there pardner."

Cutesie error messages aren't funny even the first time, and by the tenth time they are wildly annoying.

if you just create an account

"Just"

hyperdimension2• 2 years ago

I remember getting a laptop with Windows 8 about ten years ago and upon turning it on, the Out-of Box Experience (OOBE) "greeted" me, something like 'Hi. We're getting things set up for you'

"Hi?" "We?" You are a piece of software. There is no "we" here. I can't even begin to express how infantilizing that sounds to my ears.

Anyway, I didn't last long on Windows for that laptop. /rant

soraminazuki• 2 years ago

Agreed, surrendering our privacy is anything but "just."

rrr_oh_man4• 2 years ago

Reminds me of Jurassic Park

rrr_oh_man4• 2 years ago

That’s great.

Worked similarly for the twitter addiction.

voisin2• 2 years ago

I’ve heard of Growth Hacks, but it really does seem like Steve Huffman could right a book on Decline Hacks. He may be the GOAT.

lurn_mor• 2 years ago

You're write.

rrr_oh_man4• 2 years ago

I’m huffin' and I’m puffin' and I’m gonna burn my house down

djcannabiz• 2 years ago

I noticed something similar happen to me when youtube started blocking adblockers.

CommieBobDole• 2 years ago

I use Mullvad and have been encountering this error occasionally for at least the past few weeks. Usually disconnecting and reconnecting to get a new IP makes it go away.

I assumed it was just automated blocking based on suspicious activity from a particular IP; though I guess it also could also be an attempt to ban all known VPN provider ranges and they just don't have all of the ranges for Mullvad.

mmsc• 2 years ago

I was shadow banned for some time when using Opera’s proxy once. Was quite annoying since I didn’t know for awhile, but when I contacted them they removed the ban immediately.

nabla9• 2 years ago

The worst thing about VPN:s is the other users who get you blocked with them.

cess11• 2 years ago

I've had that happen with IP:s handed out to ADSL and 4G as well.

Maybe it's more common with VPN:s, though it's not with the provider I use.

havaloc2• 2 years ago

I'm trying to stick with Brave browser after moving away from Chrome, and the fingerprinting protection is already driving me up the wall; I can only imagine how much trouble being on a VPN IP is. I get why sites use IP reputation, but it's not a great experience.

rixthefox• 2 years ago

I’m more impressed that places are still trying to hold onto IP Reputation in the age of CGNAT where the age old assumption that 1 IP mapped to 1 customer’s house is completely shattered to 1 IP shared in a geographical region.

Beijinger• 2 years ago

Astrill works pretty well. I am currently with AirVPN and AirVPN gets blocked a lot. Guess you get what you pay for.

Reddit also blocks a lot of Ukraininan IPs

cyanydeez• 2 years ago

North American Boy Love Association #9

Is that an acronym?

Y_Y2• 2 years ago

I'm sure you know that NAMBLA is the North American Marlon Brando Look-Alikes and nabla is a name for the upside-down capital delta used to denote things like vector gradient.

jonahbenton• 2 years ago

Use Tor?

michaelbuckbee• 2 years ago

These type of blocks are meant to try and counter abusive bots that hide behind VPNs, Proxies and Tor.

In general, Tor exit nodes are quite well known and blocked to a greater degree than VPNs.

shrimp_emoji• 2 years ago

But not in this case.

Tor still works, but VPNs don't. Reddit even has an onion domain, but I gather the new IPO-centric management might axe it soon.

treetalker• 2 years ago

Reddit is dead to me.

mfiro• 2 years ago

It's been a while that VPNs were blocked on the main website. But I have noticed this since a week that old.reddit.com subdomain has been included.

The next step for Reddit would be a complete Login wall like Instagram and co. I would be happy if they do, because it will save my time more (like twitter).

Cthulhu_• 2 years ago

I would be happy if they do, because it will save my time more (like twitter).

Why is that? If you don't have enough self-control to not use Reddit, a login wall won't stop you.

eviks• 2 years ago

Or it will since self control is not a binary, so more barriers can reduce use

BadHumans• 2 years ago

This is very wrong. One of the most studied ways of breaking bad habits is by introducing friction. Nothing stops me from getting in my car and going to McDonalds but that is a lot of friction. It's easier to just stay home and cook something I have.

Spooky23• 2 years ago

It would kill Reddit as a Google result that people seek.

Honestly, they jumped the shark years ago. It’s Digg 4.0 at this point.

zettabomb• 2 years ago

Speak for yourself. It's enough for plenty of people, myself included.

cocacola1• 2 years ago

Untrue in my case. Needing to create a Twitter account stopped me going to the site at all.

malwarebytess• 2 years ago

Totally disagree. Killing my third party app reduced my reddit usage by like 90%. Now I really only use it on my desktop PC.

On mobile, when I tap reddit search results I am never logged in which means I have to go to old.reddit.com to see the full thread and comments. If they added a log in wall I'd just stop tapping reddit results on mobile.

QuesnayJr• 2 years ago

I used to check Twitter 50 times a day, but the login wall combined with killing Nitter completely broke the habit.

EasyMark8• 2 years ago

I suspect they will soon remove old.reddit.com. I think that will be my exodus call. I've been doing more on mastodon, lemmy, discord, etc and hope those continue to grow

tsujamin• 2 years ago

Super annoyingly iCloud Private Relay triggers this for me too

bhelkey• 2 years ago

Is iCloud Private Relay not Apple's VPN?

kogir• 2 years ago

Everything works fine via iCloud private relay. No account or other mitigations required.

So perhaps it’s not VPNs that are blocked and instead the traffic you’re sharing an IP with.

thih95• 2 years ago

That is a possibility. Then again, another user reported icloud private relay not working[1].

Thresholds, location constraints, or ab testing could be at play too.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39884164

Antrikshy• 2 years ago

Are you logged in? They’re only blocking suspicious bot like traffic on VPN. Logged in accounts can still use it over VPN.

thallium205• 2 years ago

Yes but it isn’t a recent development. They’ve been blocking ExpressVPN IPs for the past year or so.

0cVlTeIATBs• 2 years ago

That's the final blow for me. The last use case was when esoteric discussion there would be one of the few search engine results.

I've already long ago edited out all my old posts and deleted the accounts. So sad to see sites grow to become gated advertiser-friendly communities.

zeta0134• 2 years ago

As an aside, I get irritated as all heck by the old, previously useful reddit threads that now show up in search results but with the actually useful information deleted by someone in a fit of rage. This is frustrating, since the information is not necessarily easy to find somewhere else. Or at all.

If you find that you must do this, could you at least re-host your answers elsewhere and link to them?

lxgr4• 2 years ago

Yes, this is incredibly frustrating.

I wonder if we've surpassed "peak publicly searchable discussion". It definitely seems harder to find quick answers to obscure topics than it used to be 2-3 years ago.

LLMs will gladly hallucinate something, but given that this stuff is literally the training data that could help ground them in truth, I wonder where we're going to go next.

kps• 2 years ago

That's the reason I haven't erased my Reddit content, so far. (If they go behind a login wall, that reason goes away.)

betterbase• 2 years ago

You could try the PullPush archive, it may have the original comments prior to to deletion.

Main site:

https://pullpush.io

Frontends:

https://undelete.pullpush.io

https://search.pullpush.io

https://ihsoyct.github.io

asdff5• 2 years ago

chances are the thread was crawled on something like archive.org

koiueo• 2 years ago

deleted by someone in a fit of rage

It sounds like you are blaming the authors of the actually useful information here.

There used to be an ecosystem: real people share their knowledge and experience, driving users to Reddit, and in exchange, Reddit provides free storage and a convenient collaboration environment.

I admit, it's not easy to monetize real people's contributions. But, regardless, the fact is, that Reddit destroyed this ecosystem. I can no longer use Reddit conveniently. And as a mildly active OP on Reddit I don't see, why Reddit should keep benefiting from my contributions while I can no longer benefit from Reddit. I think it's fair.

sunshine_reggae• 2 years ago

Yes, same here.

Let's just QUIT using Reddit. Enough is enough. If we tolerate corrupt behavior, we support corrupt behavior.

And quite honestly, it's become such a pile of trash, anyway. Also, it's become so obvious that submissions and comments are being manipulated and pushed by tons of bots and industry interests, it's just a bad joke at this point.

tootie• 2 years ago

Losing the VPN crowd will cost them next to nothing.

hipadev23• 2 years ago

A vast amount of reddit “users” are persona bots behind proxy and vpn networks.

lxgr4• 2 years ago

Only because they've already lost most of what is actually valuable (to most early users; maybe not to advertisers).

swed4204• 2 years ago

Agreed. The manipulation became obvious with the capital fueled shareblue / "correct the record" campaign from Dems years ago and has only gotten worse since.

The stated purpose of CTR was to defend against Trump, but it was of course also abused to help sabotage Sanders. A tool like this will always be abused to perpetually elevate capital interests over human interests.

Whatever solution everybody jumps to, it needs to somehow prevent this behavior because it's not going to stop on its own.

tomrod4• 2 years ago

Is this "CTR" from the world of alternative facts, or a real thing?

rrr_oh_man4• 2 years ago

I love /r/askhistorians, though. Excellent posts.

blakblakarak• 2 years ago

This (and r/stopdrinking and r/peloton for race feeds) are my only reasons to visit nowadays.

butz• 2 years ago

There still is a lot of useful information posted on Reddit. Was it scraped somewhere for preservation purposes?

rglullis2• 2 years ago

https://lemmit.online and https://zerobytes.monster mirror the posts into their own instances

https://alien.top mirrors the posts and comments from some communities into a set of topic-specific instances and is my project to help people migrate from Reddit to Lemmy. Visit https://portal.alien.top to get started.

no_time• 2 years ago

Actually yes, the entire thing: https://academictorrents.com/details/9c263fc85366c1ef8f5bb9d...

Nobody is actively hosting it with a frontend though.

ktosobcy• 2 years ago

Unfortunatelly it won't work/happen... even after huge protest and backlash reddit is still strong and go-to-place :-(

Tijdreiziger2• 2 years ago

Ain’t that the truth.

I tried moving to Lemmy, but turns out that the only people there are other techies who are mostly interested in techie topics (and I already have HN for that).

If you want a broader perspective or you want to discuss non-techie topics, Reddit is still the place to be, for better or worse.

gamepsys• 2 years ago

I hear a lot of people talk like this, and I understand that reddit has huge traffic numbers. However, for me Reddit peaked in interesting content around 2013, and I stopped daily browsing in 2015. Sometimes some subreddits have interesting posts, but interesting content is far from the norm. Now each subreddit feels like it is having the same discussion again and again, and the median post is a meme or some chat-gpt generated text dump. As Reddit became more and more popular the most upvoted posts became more and more mass-appeal and easily digested content.

Other platforms have taken it's place as where the truly interesting discussions are happening. Twitter and Discord being the biggest two.

omoikane• 2 years ago

I have observed a recurring pattern of "this popular place is doing something I don't like! Let's all move to a less popular place, that will show them!" Time and time again, the people who made the move learned that they were the minority in what they didn't like. Also, while the old place might have a greater variety of people (good and bad), the new place is often filled with many people who were angry about the old place (maybe mostly "good", but makes a lot of angry posts).

So now, people who are at this newer, possibly better, but quieter and angrier place, they have to wonder if they made a good move. Sometimes, with enough patience, the new place do eventually turned out to be just as great. But usually my observation is that people just give up and leave, possibly returning to the old (still popular) place.

Dwedit• 2 years ago

The protest was done in the worst possible way.

You don't PRIVATE the subreddits. You keep them visible, lock out new posts, and direct visitors to a successor website to continue the discussion.

goplayoutside• 2 years ago

If Lemmy had an automod I'd happily try to move the niche communities I help mod over, but without even the basics (regex rules + mod queue) attempting to mod any sizeable community is ime an exercise in frustration, making Lemmy essentially useless for us.

That's a real shame, because otherwise it looks like great software. I've got an offline instance sitting on AWS since last summer just waiting for any bit of progress, but gave up hope some time ago.

rglullis2• 2 years ago

Please tell me which communities you mod, and if it's not anything 18+ I can help you with moderation and use it to guide the development of the moderation dashboard I started working on.

culopatin• 2 years ago

Maybe if I was a teenager again I would spend the time to figure out how to use Lemmy, but at this age: I go in, curiosity takes me to “instances”, I see a million. Click a few, many are dead and I start wondering “wait, I have to navigate through this sea of non descriptive URLs that tell me nothing about the instance to get to the data?”

And even if that’s not true, that’s about where I drop it, because it seems like a big climb for something I already know won’t work as a Reddit replacement because there is no way my friends will be convinced to put this kind of effort, and because it’s hard to discover.

dhalucario• 2 years ago

https://github.com/hjalp/automod

It seems like someone has made an autoposter. Maybe someone could have a look to extend it.

weregiraffe• 2 years ago

Let's just QUIT using Reddit. Enough is enough. If we tolerate corrupt behavior, we support corrupt behavior.

Might as well quit using Internet.

doodlebugging15• 2 years ago

it's become such a pile of trash, anyway. Also, it's become so obvious that submissions and comments are being manipulated and pushed by tons of bots and industry interests, it's just a bad joke at this point.

Very true. Over the last few months as more bots and reposters come online you have seen the subreddits bleed back into related subreddits. Most of the posts on /r/popular (landing point for navigating to old.reddit.com when not logged in) come from subs that never appeared before last summer's mod rebellion about 3rd party apps. Subs like /r/AITAH, /r/SipsTea, /r/TikTokCringe, and several others hit /r/popular regularly.

/r/news will see stories that are functionally dead with no comment activity hang around for multiple days. The sad fact that the mods for the sub require you to have an email associated with your account keeps me from adding any content there since I don't give that out.

A lot of content that rightfully belongs in one sub is cross-posted to related subs for additional karma. /r/pics is one targeted sub that catches a lot of content that normally one would only find on /r/oldschoolcool.

It's almost like reddit is returning to the pre-subreddit days where there were no boundaries on the content that one would see on the main, and only, page as it updated. Memes, rick-rolls, news, questions, etc all just fell into line and as the site grew, faded quickly into the mist.

With all this in mind I have been cutting way back on my engagement. I have walked back through my post history and edited a bunch of them, using Yossarian's censoring rules - death to all adverbs, nouns, verbs, adjectives - or just replacing the posts with meme text or song lyrics to stupid songs.

If the post involved answering a question commonly encountered on the sub, one that would be easily discovered if reddit had a high-functioning search functionality, then for the most part, I leave it in place. Most subs I interact with are DIY type subs for automobiles, home projects, etc. and there are problems common to some models of car, truck, etc that people always ask about so removing that content seems wrong.

It is sad to see a tool like reddit become such an enormous pile of suck but I think it was inevitable.

scarface_7411• 2 years ago

been cutting way back on my engagement. I have walked back through my post history and edited a bunch of them, using Yossarian's censoring rules - death to all adverbs, nouns, verbs, adjectives - or just replacing the posts with meme text or song lyrics to stupid songs.

So you don’t see that you are being part of the problem?

Y_Y2• 2 years ago

Yossarian's censoring rules
Death to all modifiers, he declared one day, and out of every letter that passed through his hands went every adverb and every adjective. The next day he made war on articles. He reached a much higher plane of creativity the following day when he blacked out everything in the letters but a, an and the. (Heller, '61)

asdff5• 2 years ago

Kind of a waste of your own effort going through your post history when everything is crawled already

marcrosoft• 2 years ago

I thought we all quit when they disabled API access and ruined Apollo. People are still using Reddit?

bluish29• 2 years ago

Apollo can still be used with sideloading a patch that allows you to enter new API key. As a single user it is hard to get to the limit.

EasyMark8• 2 years ago

tens of millions a day, I sometimes wonder why people take on these false "people are still using __________?" when they know that people are still using twitter and reddit and facebook. Do you have any explanation as to why one would act pseudo-shocked? Is there a point?

redox99• 2 years ago

Around 2 years ago I got incorrectly banned site wide for 3 days for "ban evasion". Haven't used it ever since (except through google searches). There's no downside to leaving reddit really.

EasyMark8• 2 years ago

probably the cabal of mods that run the more popular subreddits. I deleted an account because of that; I had posted in one of the antivax subs about how stupid people in there were being and the popular reddit mod cabal sentenced anyone who posted ever in a slew of those antivax subs to "bans" and if you used a different account you were "ban evading". It's a petty power play by very small minded people to hurt those even though reddit possesses no mechanism to know you are "banned" in a sub other than a one time message. It just shows how pathetic and small their lives must be to try and reach out and cause other folks trouble

danslaboudoir• 2 years ago

The day Apollo ceased connecting is the day I deleted my account. I wish Steve and the crew my very worst.

smokel4• 2 years ago

Let's just QUIT using Reddit.

This suggests that you need others to join you in quitting. Why not simply quit yourself?

smolder• 2 years ago

More people leaving means less FOMO. Or perhaps they want to harm reddit in some karmic justice way.

mitthrowaway2• 2 years ago

People want to talk in the place where other people will listen. People want to listen in the place where other people are talking. If you walk out by yourself and end up standing in an empty room, you'll just end up turning back.

kilroy123• 2 years ago

I did several years ago and it's been great.

I'm still a bit hooked on HN. But not nearly as bad. ;)

My strategy was to slowly unsub from everything until it got so boring I just stopped visiting all together.

itsoktocry3• 2 years ago

That's why reddit, as an investment, is so strange.

Running forums as a business is antithetical to the needs of the community. Fortunately, there's always "another forum". Quitting is really easy. I know because I've been doing this for almost 30 years.

bwanab• 2 years ago

All true, but I haven't found any forum that works for very localized (geographically or otherwise) interests than reddit. I've long ago stopped looking at or participating in any non-localized subreddit.

badrabbit2• 2 years ago

What is the alternative? lemmy and mastodon are protocols, what specific site with high engagement and good (not over zealous) moderation is worth checking out?

HN is nice to lurk but you really gotta be a conformist. It all just feels like tribal bubbles. It really is making me appreciate free speech, I prefer the days when horrible people were allowed platform/reach. The state of society right now (not just on the internet) is not compatible with liberty and free thinker idealisms.

smokel4• 2 years ago

The alternative is to simply not use it. Read books, hang out with friends, do some tinkering.

Free thinking is perfectly well possible without Reddit, in our very society. Unless you have some really weird thoughts? Rubbing these thoughts in other peoples faces may not be viable, but it has never been, as far as I recall. And I'm glad for it.

al_borland3• 2 years ago

X/Twitter is supposed to be the free speech platform.

A course I’m taking told students to post daily updates there for some accountability and community. I signed up to do that. I followed some normal stuff as part of the onboarding (some tech people, some local news, a couple podcasters… only 17 people) and the “for you” feed it gave me is nightmare fuel. To be fair, I turned off the content filters, as I do on every site, but it’s usually not that bad. I’m thinking of turning the filters back on to see what that looks like. So far it hasn’t really been a community I want to get invested in. Not to mention the comments on posts are littered with completely unrelated posts. A 3rd party app would go a long way, but like Reddit, Twitter killed that off.

someonehere• 2 years ago

I gave up over a year ago. Best decision ever. It’s just garbage now that gets posted.

racked• 2 years ago

If not site:reddit.com, what am I going to type into Google to get any kind of reasonable search result?

dboreham• 2 years ago

Curious why a VPN is necessary to access Reddit. NSWF content that's blocked by the ISP?

chilling2• 2 years ago

some countries block Reddit by default.

thih95• 2 years ago

I sometimes enable vpn system wide for reasons unrelated to reddit and want to access reddit on the same machine.

oyster143• 2 years ago

If you use vpn for other purposes,its just a hustle to constantly switch it on and off.

yjftsjthsd-h• 2 years ago

You misunderstand; I run all my traffic through VPN to stop my ISP from spying on it.

superkuh2• 2 years ago

I always use a proxy to my VPS when browsing the web since ~2013 when my ISP Comcast started (and never stopped) it's MITM attacks which inject javascript into HTTP sessions' HTML. This behavior would be illegal for most entities but Comcast is a big enough corporation they don't have to follow the law (CFAA).

EasyMark8• 2 years ago

- I use a VPN as generic connection, always

- i'm often on public wifi as I work remote and travel

- It's not really for reddit, it's for random other sites, and I switch IPs often as part of a multilayered privacy protocol

- I like keeping people trying to track me on their toes

- Primary reason is to keep ISP from tracking my activties when at home ~75% of my time. AT&T (and other ISPs) is well known for selling your info to 3rd parties

enronmusk2• 2 years ago

FWIW I too am unable to access reddit using my home (residential) IP. I've never had an account there, so I have no idea why they would block my IP. I also haven't scraped anything, ever.

Previously I could access old.reddit.com, but now that's blocked too. I also can't create an account -- I get "403 forbidden", even if I specify an email address and clear my cookies.

I even created a support ticket about this a few weeks ago, which went unanswered (apart from an automated message which wasn't helpful or applicable at all).

I suspect it might be because I often use RedReader on my Android phone, which is still working somehow regardless of the IP ban.

Funnily enough I can access Reddit through a VPN.

graemep• 2 years ago

FWIW I too am unable to access reddit using my home (residential) IP.

That is an interesting development.

I wonder how much overblocking there is? Every time Cloudflare says they have block a huge number of attacks/bots/whatever, I wonder how many are false positives?

Tijdreiziger2• 2 years ago

Check if your IP is accidentally marked as a VPN IP at the big IP location providers (e.g. https://ipinfo.io/).

enronmusk2• 2 years ago

Thanks, but I did check that earlier as well. My private, static address is correctly labeled:

  privacy:
    vpn: false
    proxy: false
    tor: false
    relay: false
    hosting: false
    service: ""

fabian9• 2 years ago

{"vpn":false,"proxy":false,"tor":false,"relay":false,"hosting":false,"service":""}

chilling2• 2 years ago

I work with Chrome-based addon "AdGuard VPN" and it still works fine. It will be pitty to block users from using VPN as there are countries (like Indonesia) that blocks Reddit by default.

jzig• 2 years ago

What if you make your user agent a crawler?

morkalork• 2 years ago

The big, important crawlers have known IPs don't they? Isn't that how news sites, quora and friends selectively apply their pay wall and still get indexed?

karaterobot• 2 years ago

I gladly quit Reddit more than five years ago, but have found myself edging back into it because the most active communities for two of my interests happen to be there. At first I would go a couple times a month to read updates, then a couple times a week, then I started logging in to my old account so that I didn't have to type in the URLs, and then not long ago I found myself writing a comment.

So, I'm sort of glad Reddit is adding an obstacle to recidivism. I don't think they're doing it to help me, but that's the net effect.

neurostimulant• 2 years ago

Reddit is blocked in some countries and the best way to access it is by using a vpn as those countries usually block or transparently routed dns queries to other dns servers to enforce their national block list. I guess redditors in those countries is in for a surprise.

diehunde• 2 years ago

Currently working for me with ProtonVPN

avnfish• 2 years ago

Yep, for me this means I simply can't use the site anymore. Recommend: https://old.lemmy.world as an alternative

SushiHippie• 2 years ago

If you don't need to be logged in, redlib (previously libreddit) works well. Similar to what nitter was to twitter.

https://github.com/redlib-org/redlib?tab=readme-ov-file#inst...

nouryqt• 2 years ago

I would like to add the browser extension LibRedirect[0] that automatically redirects your reddit (and others) links to your configured instance

[0] https://libredirect.github.io/

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK• 2 years ago

https://libreddit.privacydev.net/ works for me.

perihelions• 2 years ago

So, going forwards—where should someone who lives in a repressive country go, to read and interact with Westerners? Now, practically every social website (*except HN) blocks you if you use a VPN, and you go to prison if you don't. You're twice-walled in.

Kuinox2• 2 years ago

The fediverse, lemmy, mastodon.

sentientslug• 2 years ago

I suppose that works if you want to interact with the three people on there.

takeda4• 2 years ago

I would also add https://tildes.net

maqdev• 2 years ago

They're not blocking VPN access. They're blocking scraping and avoiding their API limits, VPN is side-effect of that it seems. If you login, VPN works fine.

newdee• 2 years ago

Do they let you get to the login page if you’re on a VPN?

matteoraso2• 2 years ago

Facebook and Reddit both have an onion mirror.

facebookwkhpilnemxj7asaniu7vnjjbiltxjqhye3mhbshg7kx5tfyd.onion

reddittorjg6rue252oqsxryoxengawnmo46qy4kyii5wtqnwfj4ooad.onion

KevinMS• 2 years ago

Works fine with ExpressVPN, at least the New Jersey-1 outlet

tatpacc• 2 years ago

I can access both including old subdomain while on VPN.

mark_l_watson• 2 years ago

I am used to having streaming video providers blocking VPNs to reduce account sharing with friends, and I understand that.

However, move regular sites are blocking VPNs which is bad, especially when using public WiFi networks.

throwaway4220• 2 years ago

Doesn’t work on Mullvad. That “Whoa there, pardner” is so condescending

different_base• 2 years ago

I deleted my Reddit account long back after they blocked VPNs. I used old.reddit.com usually from DDG or Google search results. Now this is fucked up. I am not able to access Reddit through either VPN or Tor. They are dead to me now.

I just want a solution to completely remove Reddit links from appearing in search results. Anyone has any solution?

lgvld• 2 years ago

uBlacklist maybe? if you use Google for search

https://github.com/iorate/ublacklist

I_Byte2• 2 years ago

This is what I use! I recommend it.

I_Byte2• 2 years ago

You may be able to find an extension for your browser of choice to do just that! I have one for Firefox but I’m on mobile right now and can’t find it. I can send it later if you’d like. But they do exist!

derpymcderpface• 2 years ago

Been like this for over a month on old.reddit for me... Tis a shame.

k8svet• 2 years ago

Damn shame, there are some fun, very above board subreddits that I wouldn't care to be on without a VPN. Granted it would be easy to migrate them as well. And in fact, those same communities are probably on Discord.

anshumankmr• 2 years ago

It worked with ProtonVPN.

stillTwerkin• 2 years ago

Still works on VPN via old.* if you click “comments” link instead of the big blue thread link.

But yeah otherwise concur with the sentiment regarding social media.

HN isn’t much better. Whole lot of vanity and thin skin for a community of “radical truth seekers”.

IMO humans are social but not meant to be social this much

Big tech has yet to crank out a wheel. A technology with a Lindy effect measured in centuries or greater. Just 1900s electronics and on the software side, one state compression and copy-paste protocol after another.

superkuh2• 2 years ago

Not just VPN/VPS proxy access. They block my home residential IP too if I'm not using a megacorp browser. I opened a ticket about this a couple months ago and despite a few auto-replies assuring me they'd look into it and get back I've received nothing and nothing has changed.

Their ticket system is just there as a tar-pit to dissuade people from contacting them.

FredPret• 2 years ago

Reddit is such a toxic hole anyway. It's all posturing, stupid cutesy language, and victim mindset. I'm so glad the site got awful as the content - we're all better off without.

Ylpertnodi• 2 years ago

Good Ukrainian War info, though

EasyMark8• 2 years ago

imagine downvoting you for expressing an opinion. HackerNews should be better than this.

GaryNumanVevo2• 2 years ago

Telegram has much better info, Reddit's is usually a few hours or days old

Gunnerhead• 2 years ago

Extremely Western biased, at least last time I visited several months ago. You’d get the sense that Ukraine is absolutely winning the war and kicking Russia’s ass from what I saw on there only to realize there’s much, much more to the story.

lazylion2• 2 years ago

Like any social website, it depends on how you filter it and which communities you join.

pmarreck3• 2 years ago

Short Reddit. Join Lobste.rs.

I got locked out of the whole site, essentially because I use multiple accounts for anonymity reasons (as many do, given that almost all Reddit clients support it) combined with the fact that I accidentally posted to a subreddit from a different account than one I had been banned on, on that subreddit. (I'd literally forgotten. The reason doesn't matter, because even a single untoward or misinterpreted comment shouldn't result in a sitewide ban. Mod having a bad day? This one literally did not accept my apology. WTF?)

Anyone who actually looked at the accounts they traced back to me via advanced machine-learning-driven fingerprinting and considered me guilty for "circumventing a ban" without even investigating, would have seen that 99% of the time I tried to be helpful. I absolutely hate trolls and trolling. (But unfortunately, there are times I'm just "in a mood" thanks to a sleep disorder.)

I can invite anyone here to Lobste.rs if you'd like. It feels like early Reddit. They do ding me if I invite you and you misbehave, though, so please be nice.

FergusArgyll• 2 years ago

I'd love an invite, people keep talking about it i'd like to check it out at least...

{name} {g mail}

pmarreck3• 2 years ago

Sent.

beeburrt3• 2 years ago

Me too! Can I have an invite?

beeburrt3• 2 years ago

I didn't realize my email address wasn't in my profile. I'm: {name} at {outlook}

pmarreck3• 2 years ago

Sent!

pmdr7• 2 years ago

We were told that the boycotts last year were the end of reddit, or at least a substantial brain drain. Reddit was going to be a lawless wasteland because no mod would accept tending the garden anymore.

Reddit is now a public company with a CEO that just got a huge compensation package while mods still work for free. Far from lawless, far from being a wasteland.

Even the hacker community is still using reddit despite everything that's happened. This probably means that it hasn't lost any of its value.

Blocked VPN access or not, reddit already won.

itsoktocry3• 2 years ago

Uh, reddit already won what exactly? How does going public have anything to do with success for a company like this? It's a way to raise capital and compensate insiders, nothing special

Communities come and go. They are 95% reliant on the members, and some of their recent moves are adversarial. Everything there is becoming corporate, even the porn.

asdff5• 2 years ago

More active users than ever before just in the last 2 quarters of 2023 after stagnating for years. Its almost like the API thing backfired and that bad press was in fact good press and got more people onto reddit.

pmdr7• 2 years ago

Uh, reddit already won what exactly?

The right to do whatever they want and still keep the communities and content with pretty much no impact on their bottom line thereafter.

How does going public have anything to do with success for a company like this? It's a way to raise capital and compensate insiders, nothing special

You raise capital if investors believe in the direction the company is heading. They're betting on reddit to make them money.

Everything there is becoming corporate

Reddit didn't start out that way, at least it wasn't the impression that seasoned internet users got. It used to be developer-friendly and open, whether you were using Tor, a VPN or a datacenter's IP.

It's, of course, their right to steer the company as they see fit and towards profitability. My only wish is that people providing valuable content and moderation work would start to see that the company's values have changed.

Takennickname2• 2 years ago

Reminds me when someone declared that phpBB won.

echohack5• 2 years ago

Anecdotally I am seeing communities I am part of gone from Reddit and other public social media in favor of private or semiprivate ones like Discord, or avoiding digital entirely in favor of physical spaces.

What I see on social media is more just the leftovers. There's little authentic interaction and engagement there.

NegativeK• 2 years ago

Respectfully, this is a small sampling of what's happening.

Reddit and Twitter, the two posterchildren of poor management, have plenty of actual interaction. They also have a significant amount of shitty noise, which is incredibly off putting, but the average person is still more likely to go there than where our niche communities end up.

They might be dying slowly, but they're not even on life support yet.

add-sub-mul-div4• 2 years ago

The vast majority of people turned out to be highly passive and docile in the face of extreme enshittification. Sad, but that's where we're at.

Reddit only "won" the Eternal September types. The others have moved on.

yieldcrv• 2 years ago

Populist protests usually fail, they only get their way when moneyed special interests are also lobbying for the same policy change out of coincidence, their interests usually pass regardless of public interest or not

People waste their energy and call it “using their platform”, or just reminding people how irrelevant and inconsequential they are but bragging about it

handsclean• 2 years ago

Front page vote counts are now typically 1/10th what they were before the exodus, and bot content is visibly more prevalent. If you expected the website to die overnight, that was just an unrealistic definition of failure for a large website. Digg, the failure that founded Reddit, is still alive today. MySpace still exists. AOL is still selling dial-up internet. Failure at this scale is a slow slide to irrelevance, and Reddit is well on its way. The only winner here is the CEO.

pmdr7• 2 years ago

Front page vote counts are now typically 1/10th what they were

Is that really a reliable metric for activity there? Genuinely curious. What if more content is being published and popular posts don't get as much voting because of the churn?

before the exodus

Exodus to where, exactly? A few thousand users switching to some obscure alternative isn't much. Sure, people left Twitter, but Threads and Bluesky are way bigger than any reddit alternative.

aitchnyu• 2 years ago

Digg became a newsletter with cat pics, cute "you matter, don't give up" messages and other assorted clickbait. And it was forced upon the former userbase.

rkagerer• 2 years ago

The only winner here is the CEO.

And the whiz kid who launches the new and improved competitor. Every failure story like this is also a seed of opportunity.

dotnet002• 2 years ago

I do still insist that they've suffered a brain drain that has not recovered. A lot of niche communities are instead mainly on discord now (which is arguably worse due to no search engine visibility) and when I stumble onto reddit looking for info on something technical, I often see deleted/edited out comments instead of potentially useful responses.

illiac786• 2 years ago

That. So much deleted content…

Sleepful• 2 years ago

For anyone reading this and wondering about other good platforms... Discourse [1] is awesome. Of course, someone has to pay for the hosting. Can't have someone else's cake and eat it too.

[1] https://discourse.org/

JeremyNT• 2 years ago

It's just so much better than anything else even despite it all.

Which, honestly, is perplexing. It doesn't seem like it would take much capital to replicate Reddit pre-enshittification, but nobody seems to even be trying.

I guess nobody can imagine making money off of a less shitty Reddit. Maybe the things about it that suck for users are the only things that make business people excited.

commandlinefan2• 2 years ago

Lots of people tried (voat comes to mind), but they ran into the same advertiser pressure monetization problem that pushed reddit to become the abomination that it is today. For whatever reason, hosting is expensive, and too few people are interested in making it truly accessible.

al_borland3• 2 years ago

Before Reddit (and digg, and Facebook groups), forums were pretty popular. I was on many of them and they were simply run by passionate members of a community, not someone looking to scale to a multi-billion dollar company. It was just some guy willing to burn a little time and a little cash to talk to like-minded people about stuff they found interesting. It’s expensive when consolidated into one mega-site like Reddit, but very manageable for a smaller site. The people I know/knew running them were average people with average jobs.

Intralexical• 2 years ago

Reddit reports something like 200 million active users. It could lose 99% of those, and it would still have more people than most cities.

What, you want tumbleweeds to physically roll across your screen when you look up "reddit.com"?

It's just a website. Use it, or don't. Save what you want, knowing it won't last. Sucks, but the Internet was meant for document delivery, not to become the one and only permanent home of certain social interactions.

rchaud2• 2 years ago

Reddit reports something like 200 million active users. It could lose 99% of those, and it would still have more people than most cities

Which would make it completely useless as an ad platform, which is the only way Reddit makes money.

commandlinefan2• 2 years ago

Well, that’s just it - we can have a lawless wasteland, or we can have arbitrary and capricious censorship. There’s no in between. If prefer the lawless wasteland (I remember them, they were much better than what we have now). Unfortunately, I’m in the minority.

wolverine876• 2 years ago

The only thing stopping people is defeatism. People organized effective mass movements before the Internet - now it's infinitely easier, and so is the defeatist propaganda.

The Reddit CEO has been successful - one absolutely necessary reason is a lack of defeatism.

codingdave• 2 years ago

Sure, it is public, but the price is going down, not up, as the IPO was just the exit strategy for all the investors who funded a site that never made a profit. And the overall vibe of the contents is bots and memes, not substantial content. There are exceptions to that, but that is exactly what they are - exceptions.

I'm not saying it'll be dead next week or anything... on the contrary, it probably will find a groove to survive in. But "substantial brain drain" sounds like a perfect description of what it really is.

nickphx• 2 years ago

Ok? Do we need a topic anytime some site decides to make changes? :(

EMM_386• 2 years ago

Tested, and ... no?

I tried two different VPNs, currently on NordVPN ... no issue accessing Reddit.

And I get that it's cool to bash Reddit on HN, but the sense that "I don't visit sites like that ... I exclusively visit HN" is really weird.

For what it's worth I have an 18 Year Club account on Reddit and I'm still active.

tyingq2• 2 years ago

It's not a perfect "block every VPN ip setup".

See this for the screen you get when it's blocking:

https://imgur.com/a/3cDv851

Perhaps when they detect abuse (screen scraping folks trying to avoid the API costs) from these shared IPs?

iLoveOncall• 2 years ago

So you can bypass it by creating an account? Absolute non-issue once again.

joveian• 2 years ago

It is not just shared IPs, I have a personal VPN/proxy that only I use (although in an IP range that likely includes shared VPNs) and it is blocked. It could be that they are blocking all "non-residential" IP addresses and the VPNs that work are using botnets (or some other way they get "residential" IP addresses) to route traffic.

My memory isn't that great and I rarely look at reddit (just the occasional search results) but I think there might have been a similar block on old for a bit earlier (closer to when the block on the main domain started).

thih95• 2 years ago

This happened for me when I wasn’t logged it, this is a likely factor. Were you logged in when testing this?

friend_and_foe2• 2 years ago

Not who you're replying to, but it happens to me logged in.

lupusreal• 2 years ago

Just because you can't presently reproduce something doesn't mean that others are imagining it or making it up / "bashing". Remember that, besides VPN blocking being an imperfect and fickle thing, these companies like to A/B test on the unwitting public so different people can inexplicably get different experiences. When you can't reproduce something other people claim to be experiencing, resist the urge to call them a liar and spend a moment to consider other possibilities.

ttul• 2 years ago

Reddit is so far from what it was back when it was cool. I get it: they need to make money. And they will make money. But I don’t want to play there. Where else can I go?

itsoktocry3• 2 years ago

What subreddits do you frequent? If the smart people are still there, stay. If they are leaving, find out where to.

alecsm• 2 years ago

I thought it was my company VPN that blocked reddit at first but no.

Weird move. I just wanted to see a discussion about some problems with I don't remember what software. I guess reddit is out of the list of websites to reach to.

archsurface• 2 years ago

Mine's fine.

hnf• 2 years ago

Since it started "paywalling" content read to be logged I stopped using it. Miss Swartz era. Wishing to find a good replacement.

feverzsj• 2 years ago

Why would they do that? For China's investment?

pogue• 2 years ago

It's working fine for me. I'm on Windscribe. Have you tested with TOR?

zavertnik• 2 years ago

I have had the same results with multiple VPN providers for the better part a month now.

ruined• 2 years ago

depends on the vpn endpoint. i suspect they're mainly getting hit by ratelimits. switch to a less popular endpoint

INTPenis• 2 years ago

It's getting harder and harder to be anonymous on reddit. I used to rotate my accounts every year but now they keep shadowbanning me. So I had to jump through some hoops, and while one VPN was indeed instantly network blocked, another country/server from the same vendor was not.

So eventually I got my new account for 2024 sorted.

But now I'm afraid to login from my regular browser because I'm pretty sure they have it fingerprinted. The only reason I got this far with the account was through Firefox private mode, and creating the account at a friends place.

So I've upgraded Firefox now and hopefully that, and releasing my ISP DHCP IP, will be enough.

bun_terminator• 2 years ago

reddit is _much_ more lenient on anything if you use the official app. This concerns shadowbanning from known devices as well as banning the account for things they don't like. You get away with a lot more

throwaway4975• 2 years ago

It's not VPN access that's blocked specifically; it's access from IPs that are identified as hosting providers (AWS, Hetzner, etc.). If it affects you, the workaround is to be logged in.

EasyMark8• 2 years ago

try a different IP aka switch vpn servers. No problem here at all

ddingus3• 2 years ago

Surely one of us here can start a new Reddit.

Call it not Reddit.

The original vision of the site being self funded by users for users is a good one.

I would argue a necessary one. Just look at all the high value discussion being lost due to Reddit being enshittified

beeburrt3• 2 years ago

There's https://lobste.rs

ddingus3• 2 years ago

Thanks!

ddingus3• 2 years ago

I have quit using Reddit. Sad day.

Frankly, I love old Reddit.

polski-g• 2 years ago

How are they detecting VPNs? Is it because the MTU isn't 1500?

matteoraso2• 2 years ago

For some reason, the Reddit onion mirror keeps working. Makes me wonder if the VPNs not working is a bug rather than an intentional choice.

Mirror: reddittorjg6rue252oqsxryoxengawnmo46qy4kyii5wtqnwfj4ooad.onion

web3-is-a-scam• 2 years ago

Last time I hit this, all I had to do was log in. Is that still the case?

fastaguy88• 2 years ago

I have no problems connecting with Cisco AnyConnect

skygazer• 2 years ago

I just tried via my VPN (Speedify) and get a network policy page that forced me to log in, but gave me unfettered access thereafter.

ChrisArchitect• 2 years ago

So you want to use Reddit, but you don't want to be a user of Reddit?

who knows what their reason for blocking some commercial VPNs is, but they have their reasons good/bad. You can still 'access' Reddit.

metflex• 2 years ago

In my view, this action should not have been taken without first ensuring that people from countries where internet access is heavily restricted, such as Iran(where using a VPN is most common method to access the free internet and information is already limited), still have a means to access it.

I had a friend who discovered she had to undergo an STD.free-test when she needed to through reddit. and now reddit is not accessible anymore to people living where she used to live.

friend_and_foe2• 2 years ago

I've run into this issue also, for the past week or so. I'd rather stop using reddit altogether than use it without a VPN.

replwoacause• 2 years ago

I quit Reddit and use HN exclusively. I miss the forum days, early Reddit, and feeling of community. Is there anyplace to go these days, aside from here of course, that has quality content with good moderation on a diverse set of topics?

athinkingmeat• 2 years ago

Have tested a couple of Surfshark locations - most of them are blocked by Reddit (new/old).

When Reddit farts - Fediverse ignites the fire: influx of users to Lemmy and other similar sites is visible, so I encourage to checkout it and maybe run an instance for yourself and your friends as well.

loughnane• 2 years ago

I am able to access reddit this morning using protonvpn

grigio• 2 years ago

So move to lemmy ?

0987789i75• 2 years ago

asd

garfieldnate• 2 years ago

Reddit has lots of niche content that is extremely valuable the one time you use it, and I'm sick of seeing sites with valuable user-generated content dying off because the incentives of the owning company are misaligned with their community. Would it be possible to just re-implement something like Reddit on top of IPFS? Ideally that knowledge should never be allowed to die off until truly no one cares about it.

Tell HN: Reddit now blocks VPN access via browser, 'old' subdomain included

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