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Reddit is blocking users based on user agents? (feddit.de)
submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by ISOmorph@feddit.de to c/reddit@lemmy.world
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Started to get this message when accessing Reddit. I use LibreWolf as a browser, which does indeed provide a more generic user agent to combat fingerprinting, but nothing out of the ordinary either (Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; rv:109.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/119.0). Anyone else experiencing this?

Edit: seems to have resolved itself. Thanks for confirming I wasn't doing anything wrong. Let's hope this isn't some new algorithm to test if for insufficient fingerprinting so Reddit can kick ad-resistant users.

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[-] LemmyKnowsBest@lemmy.world 240 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Reddit is corrupt. It probably has something to do with them wanting to track you, and they can't track you if you have a blank user agent.

Stay here at Lemmy where humans are respected as humans instead of data mines. Life is more dignified here at Lemmy.

[-] KrummsHairyBalls@lemmy.ca 34 points 11 months ago

Stay here at Lemmy where humans are respected as humans

I saw a post a few days ago where one Lemmy user threatened to triangulate another user via IP, and then hurt them, because they said Linux doesn't work out of the box as well as windows in their experience.

This was on a main instance. The person didn't get in any trouble.

[-] kilgore_trout@feddit.it 31 points 11 months ago

Did you report the comment?

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[-] zorrothefox2001@lemmy.world 30 points 11 months ago

That's all well and good but now that the smoke cleared it's a Twitter/Mastodon situation

[-] LemmyKnowsBest@lemmy.world 22 points 11 months ago

Yeah. You're not wrong.

Ever since I discovered I can have infinite conversations with infinite people about infinite topics, I am addicted to this format.

Now see how they exploit us 😡

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[-] RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world 28 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Stay here at Lemmy where humans are respected as humans instead of data mines. Life is more dignified here at Lemmy.

I like the sentiment, but it is so incredibly naive to think that there aren't crawlers scraping every ounce of data from Lemmy as possible. While Lemmy itself may not be collecting user data (depending on who is hosting your home instances of choice), other data that is valuable can still be collected, particularly for LLM AI.

If you can access it, the data scrapers have already crawled it.

[-] DasAlbatross@lemmy.world 14 points 11 months ago

Especially considering the post from a little while ago showing that admins of Lemmy instances can see what individual users are upvoting and downvoting. There's nothing to stop a bad actor from setting up an instance and just harvesting data.

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[-] redcalcium@lemmy.institute 13 points 11 months ago

Why use scraper on Lemmy when bots can federate and have the data directly sent to them?

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[-] Fades@lemmy.world 13 points 11 months ago

Just look at how Reddit uses fingerprinting, absolutely part of their tracking

[-] Claidheamh@slrpnk.net 10 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

and they can't track you if you have a blank user agent.

They absolutely can. A blank user agent is a fingerprint like any other.

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[-] ZeroCool@feddit.ch 89 points 11 months ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/17vbyr8/whoa_there_pardner_error_message/

Text:

Hey all!

It looks like most of you had difficulty reaching the site for about 5 minutes, but those issues should have subsided.

During that time, you may have been shown an incorrect error message that read:

Whoa there, pardner! reddit's awesome and all, but you may have a bit of a problem.

Make sure your User-Agent is not empty, is something unique and descriptive and try again. if you're supplying an alternate User-Agent string, try changing back to default as that can sometimes result in a block.

To share some additional context on what happened - we pushed a bad code change in our tooling that resulted in a significant amount of users getting blocked without doing anything wrong. So if you happened to see that error message within the last hour, don't fret! We've reverted the code change that caused this error and things should be back to normal very soon if they aren't already.

[-] brax@sh.itjust.works 52 points 11 months ago

"bad code change" describes pretty much every vide change they've done over the past 7ish years lol

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[-] alienzx@feddit.nl 64 points 11 months ago

Why are you still using that shitty site?

I say this as someone that was there since before the digg migration.

[-] ChimaericDesire@lemmynsfw.com 41 points 11 months ago

I hate using it, but there are some things I just can't find info on anywhere else. Reddit is always a last resort, but it frequently turns out to be the only resource.

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[-] pastaPersona@lemmy.world 59 points 11 months ago

Wish they would at least be honest in their messaging, the whole “quirky” official reddit branding doesn’t really work anymore now that they’ve gone full corporate mode

[-] murmelade@lemmy.ml 13 points 11 months ago

Au contraire, it's totally kawaii-dystopia-punk! :P

[-] aes@lemm.ee 42 points 11 months ago

Now that Web Environment Integrity is shut down, Reddit decides to take matters into their own hands..

[-] kSPvhmTOlwvMd7Y7E@lemmy.world 40 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)
  • please use something unique and descriptive

Best I can do is "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64)"

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[-] MaxVoltage@lemmy.world 35 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Same here on firefox mobile just started 10 minutes ago

Im not tech certified so i just figured out its my privacy possum doing this user agent thing which i like

[-] OhStopYellingAtMe@lemmy.world 30 points 11 months ago

What’s a user agent?

[-] __ghost__@lemmy.ml 46 points 11 months ago

Little descriptor your browser has to tell websites what it is and where it comes from

[-] Wes_Dev@lemmy.ml 83 points 11 months ago

It also tells the website the OS you're running, as well as the browser, and various version numbers of stuff.

One interesting experiment is to use a user agent changer to view a website, and watch how the website changes every time you load a new user agent.

Google will remove search options if you're using Firefox (mobile?), for example. But if you change your user agent to say you have Chrome, even if you are actually using Firefox, those options magically come back and work. It's almost as if that's anti-competitive behavior or something...

It's also how a lot of websites know whether or not to give you Windows executables or Mac executables, or Linux executables, etc.

[-] antrosapien@lemmy.ml 44 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Firefox with user agent as chrome

Firefox with user agent as firefox

[-] OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml 12 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Holy smokes, the whole graph is removed.. and they moved up "Shopping"

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[-] TunaCowboy@lemmy.world 10 points 11 months ago

It also tells the website the OS you're running, as well as the browser, and various version numbers of stuff

While it's true that many browsers choose to follow a convention that includes that info, User-Agent is just a string, so something like fuku is a legitimate UA

https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1945#section-10.15

curl -vA fuku example.com 2>&1 | grep -E '^[<>] (User|HTTP)'
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[-] Agent641@lemmy.world 20 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Hello

Can confirm I have a problem with Reddit and I am empty inside.

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[-] downdaemon@lemmy.ml 14 points 11 months ago

tells a website what browser or app you're using

[-] TimewornTraveler@lemm.ee 26 points 11 months ago

Couldn't find any explanation on Google so I tried emailing them about this. I got back this lovely gem:

Reddit Support (Reddit Support) Nov 14, 2023, 15:29 PST

Hi there!

Thanks for contacting us! At this time, we are not currently accepting inquiries via email. If you need support with our API or have questions, please submit your request here.

Cheers, Your friends at Reddit

But VPN worked.

[-] ugh@lemm.ee 25 points 11 months ago

RiF just kicked me out. I think reddit is trying to do another sweep to break unofficial apps/plug-ins/etc.

[-] Mr_nutter_butter@lemmy.world 10 points 11 months ago

Patched boost still working can't post as I'm temp banned for reporting spam

[-] grue@lemmy.world 14 points 11 months ago

I’m temp banned for reporting spam

Funny how that works, isn't it?

I got perma-banned for "mod abuse" for reporting too much misinformation.

[-] Mr_nutter_butter@lemmy.world 10 points 11 months ago

The fuck are they doing over there

they do realise bullshit kills a platform

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[-] glowie@infosec.pub 19 points 11 months ago

Glitch or not, fuck reddit

[-] Clbull@lemmy.world 18 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Happened to me yesterday (Windows 11, Chrome latest version.) A simple wipe of my browser files fixed it.

I don't even know how to use an API, let alone write code more complex than a For or Do Until loop in VBA, which I literally learned on the job to automate a finance task I was picking up.

Either Spez is turning paranoid that everyone and their mother is leeching off his data, or this was a critical bug.

Spez is a morally bankrupt cuck anyway.

[-] KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 15 points 11 months ago

User agent blocking is typically done when they are trying to block bots or crawlers.

[-] rodolfo@lemmy.world 13 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

they're trying to limit automated scrap or the like. avoid that domain as much as you can

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[-] ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml 13 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Let’s hope this isn’t some new algorithm to test if for insufficient fingerprinting so Reddit can kick ad-resistant users.

Why hope that? That's exactly what it is. If anything we should encourage shit like that so the site can crash and burn even more. They deserve nothing. It's too bad many of the subreddit blackouts only lasted 48 hours, and even worse people gave up and went back to reddit.

Let's hope they do something really crazy and start requiring ID for all users so more people will get fed up and leave.

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 13 points 11 months ago

Let’s hope this isn’t some new algorithm to test if for insufficient fingerprinting so Reddit can kick ad-resistant users.

Oh, it is. I assure you. Anything but lose ad revenue.

[-] deepfreezing@lemmy.world 12 points 11 months ago

Still ongoing on multiple IP's and different browsers. Plain Edge and their app works - so it seems that Chrome/Brave and FF are not welcome, which smells like a privacy issue. Well reddit - that was the last straw.

[-] metaStatic@kbin.social 12 points 11 months ago

oh no

anyway

[-] themojova@lemmy.world 10 points 11 months ago

I was using plain old safari and got this message also

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this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2023
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