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

393 points by thih9 3y ago

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

keepamovin 3y 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 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!
- thih9 3y 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/ https://old.reddit.com/login/
  - keepamovin 3y 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.
    - thih9 3y ago
      My setup doesn’t include a remote browser and I’d prefer not to add one. I listed what I’m using - safari desktop, nordvpn, the sign up link that I checked is in the grandparent comment. This worked earlier for me, now it doesn’t.
      - keepamovin 3y ago
        No worries! That must suck that you can't get on reddit via vpn. I noticed the change a while ago, but was like 'blargh old still works'. So I really appreciated your post today that old no longer works! Re connecting: I'm just sayin you can still connect to reddit over a remote IP if you login/signup per my tests.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - maroonblazer 3y ago
    Works for me.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - keepamovin 3y 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 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 3y 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"
  - hyperdimension 3y 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
    - xandrius 3y ago
      You're not the target user.
      - hyperdimension 3y ago
        I know. A few years later, I was helping my mom set up a new laptop and during the same OOBE, I made pretty much the same comment, and she seemed to think it was just fine or at least not weird-sounding. Come to think of it, I wonder if it's for the same thing that gets people to refer to Google Assistant/Siri/et c. as 'she'. I've noticed that a lot also.
        nullindividual 3y ago
        It's normal behavior, we assign gender to all sorts of objects be they made of metal and float on water or are just a series of electrons informing metal gates. The message is fine for the true target audience which is vastly different from the audience of the 80s and 90s. Microsoft and Apple (well, Apple HAS been using friendly language since the 80s!) are smart to use friendly language. Plus, it gets us all used to our corporate god-kings when we're dominated by the AI angels.
    - 3y ago
rrr_oh_man 3y ago
That’s great. Worked similarly for the twitter addiction.
- voisin 3y 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 3y ago
    You're write.
    - stvltvs 3y ago
      Your rite.
      - bombcar 3y ago
        The suppression of the .old rite by the modernists will be the death of Reddit!
    - voisin 3y ago
      Oh gosh - my mistake. Whoops!
  - rrr_oh_man 3y ago
    I’m huffin' and I’m puffin' and I’m gonna burn my house down
  - samstave 3y ago
    [dead]
  - EasyMark 3y ago
    [dead]
- djcannabiz 3y ago
CommieBobDole 3y 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 3y 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 3y ago
The worst thing about VPN:s is the other users who get you blocked with them.
- cess11 3y 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.
- havaloc 3y 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 3y 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.
    - havaloc 3y ago
      CGNAT is also unusable. I had to buy a static from my ISP as they only do CGNAT otherwise.
  - Beijinger 3y 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 3y ago
  North American Boy Love Association #9 Is that an acronym?
jonahbenton 3y ago
Use Tor?
- michaelbuckbee 3y 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 3y 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 3y ago
Reddit is dead to me.
mfiro 3y 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_ 3y 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 3y ago
    Or it will since self control is not a binary, so more barriers can reduce use
  - BadHumans 3y 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.
    - ijijijjij 3y ago
      [dead]
  - Spooky23 3y 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 3y ago
    Speak for yourself. It's enough for plenty of people, myself included.
  - cocacola1 3y ago
tsujamin 3y ago
Super annoyingly iCloud Private Relay triggers this for me too
- bhelkey 3y ago
  Is iCloud Private Relay not Apple's VPN?
kogir 3y 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.
- thih9 3y 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39884164
- Antrikshy 3y ago
  Are you logged in? They’re only blocking suspicious bot like traffic on VPN. Logged in accounts can still use it over VPN.
koreanguy 3y ago
[dead]
thallium205 3y ago
Yes but it isn’t a recent development. They’ve been blocking ExpressVPN IPs for the past year or so.
0cVlTeIATBs 3y 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 3y 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?
  - lxgr 3y 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.
    - pixl97 3y ago
      I mean yes, tons of discussion has moved to places like Discord to disappear forever. But unlike the previous poster, who blames the information creator for revoking what they published, why are we not blaming the actual abusers? Every site that is build on growth, Facebook, Google, Reddit, et al eventually turns into an authoritarian capitalist nightmare dystopia. Gobble up, lock down, and extract wealth.
      - lxgr 3y ago
        > tons of discussion has moved to places like Discord to disappear forever. This is actually even worse than the new Reddit. Every open source or other project that links to their Discord as a main place of providing support immediately loses a lot of respect from me: Chat is a horrible way of creating a searchable knowledge base. Besides being opaque to search engines, it effectively signs up their users and contributors for either having to maintain parallel long-term-visible and searchable FAQs and other docs, or answering the same new user questions over and over again. Having to publicly join a Discord (unlike Reddit there seems to be no way at all to browse anonymously) just to be able to see if anybody else has had my compile or setup error is completely unacceptable as well.
sunshine_reggae 3y 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 3y ago
  Losing the VPN crowd will cost them next to nothing.
  - hipadev23 3y ago
    A vast amount of reddit “users” are persona bots behind proxy and vpn networks.
  - lxgr 3y ago
    Only because they've already lost most of what is actually valuable (to most early users; maybe not to advertisers).
    - andsoitis 3y ago
      > Only because they've already lost most of what is actually valuable (to most early users; maybe not to advertisers). There are many many users who were not early users who find Reddit very useful and a positive in their daily lives.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - lxgr 3y ago
        Is that despite or because of the changes they've made in the past years?
- marcrosoft 3y ago
dboreham 3y ago
Curious why a VPN is necessary to access Reddit. NSWF content that's blocked by the ISP?
- PM_me_your_math 3y ago
  [dead]
- chilling 3y ago
  some countries block Reddit by default.
- thih9 3y ago
  I sometimes enable vpn system wide for reasons unrelated to reddit and want to access reddit on the same machine.
- oyster143 3y ago
  If you use vpn for other purposes,its just a hustle to constantly switch it on and off.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
  You misunderstand; I run all my traffic through VPN to stop my ISP from spying on it.
- superkuh 3y 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).
- EasyMark 3y 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
enronmusk 3y 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 3y 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?
- Tijdreiziger 3y ago
  Check if your IP is accidentally marked as a VPN IP at the big IP location providers (e.g. https://ipinfo.io/ https://ipinfo.io/).
  - enronmusk 3y 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 3y ago
    {"vpn":false,"proxy":false,"tor":false,"relay":false,"hosting":false,"service":""}
chilling 3y 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 3y ago
What if you make your user agent a crawler?
- morkalork 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 3y ago
Currently working for me with ProtonVPN
avnfish 3y ago
Yep, for me this means I simply can't use the site anymore. Recommend: https://old.lemmy.world https://old.lemmy.world as an alternative
SushiHippie 3y 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#instances https://github.com/redlib-org/redlib?tab=readme-ov-file#inst...
- nouryqt 3y 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/ https://libredirect.github.io/
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y ago
  https://libreddit.privacydev.net/ https://libreddit.privacydev.net/ works for me.
perihelions 3y 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.
- Kuinox 3y ago
  The fediverse, lemmy, mastodon.
  - sentientslug 3y ago
    I suppose that works if you want to interact with the three people on there.
    - AnarchismIsCool 3y ago
      It's actually starting to get really good. It's like early reddit before eternal September
      - throwanem 3y ago
        On the fediverse it currently is eternal September.
        AnarchismIsCool 3y ago
        I was there before the reddit explosion when the majority of the posts on the fediverse were from one guy who just vomited cccp propaganda all day. I think it's in a much more interesting place right now. Reddit otoh started to become boomer-Facebook-meme-town some time around the onset of COVID and then hockey sticked last year.
      - itsTyrion 3y ago
        I actually dislike the fedi fragmentation too much. Yes, ik that's the appeal for some people but I really don't like just how split it is
KevinMS 3y ago
Works fine with ExpressVPN, at least the New Jersey-1 outlet
tatpacc 3y ago
I can access both including old subdomain while on VPN.
mark_l_watson 3y 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 3y ago
Doesn’t work on Mullvad. That “Whoa there, pardner” is so condescending
different_base 3y 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 3y ago
  uBlacklist maybe? if you use Google for search https://github.com/iorate/ublacklist https://github.com/iorate/ublacklist
  - I_Byte 3y ago
    This is what I use! I recommend it.
- I_Byte 3y 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 3y ago
Been like this for over a month on old.reddit for me... Tis a shame.
k8svet 3y 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 3y ago
It worked with ProtonVPN.
stillTwerkin 3y 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.
superkuh 3y 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 3y 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 3y ago
  Good Ukrainian War info, though
  - EasyMark 3y ago
    imagine downvoting you for expressing an opinion. HackerNews should be better than this.
  - GaryNumanVevo 3y ago
    Telegram has much better info, Reddit's is usually a few hours or days old
    - joshxyz 3y ago
      this.
    - euazOn 3y ago
      I dont always necessarily need or want the latest info. I find Reddit to be a good aggregator/filter that also acts as one of the walls against disinfo, i.e. some of the content never gets posted, or gets immediately debunked. /r/credibledefense is my go-to
      - GaryNumanVevo 3y ago
        I simply do not trust reddit and random mods to censor the real time feed of information coming out of the conflict.
  - Gunnerhead 3y 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.
pmarreck 3y 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 3y ago
  I'd love an invite, people keep talking about it i'd like to check it out at least... {name} {g mail}
  - pmarreck 3y ago
    Sent.
- beeburrt 3y ago
  Me too! Can I have an invite?
- beeburrt 3y ago
  I didn't realize my email address wasn't in my profile. I'm: {name} at {outlook}
  - pmarreck 3y ago
    Sent!
pmdr 3y 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.
- itsoktocry 3y 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.
  - asdff 3y 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.
    - pmdr 3y ago
      The coup failed and whatever reddit's been doing is obviously good for business. I'd wager the majority of people boycotting reddit are still using it like nothing happened.
    - jazzyjackson 3y ago
      > more people how are you so sure the extra traffic is from people?
      - pmdr 3y ago
        VPNs, datacenters and Tor are pretty much blocked and API costs money, plus everyone I know uses it nowadays. I think it's mostly legit traffic.
nickphx 3y ago
Ok? Do we need a topic anytime some site decides to make changes? :(
EMM_386 3y 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.
- tyingq 3y 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 https://imgur.com/a/3cDv851 Perhaps when they detect abuse (screen scraping folks trying to avoid the API costs) from these shared IPs?
  - iLoveOncall 3y ago
    So you can bypass it by creating an account? Absolute non-issue once again.
    - tyingq 3y ago
      Maybe? Reddit isn't renowned for accuracy.
  - joveian 3y 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).
- thih9 3y ago
  This happened for me when I wasn’t logged it, this is a likely factor. Were you logged in when testing this?
ttul 3y 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?
- itsoktocry 3y ago
  What subreddits do you frequent? If the smart people are still there, stay. If they are leaving, find out where to.
alecsm 3y 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 3y ago
Mine's fine.
hnf 3y ago
Since it started "paywalling" content read to be logged I stopped using it. Miss Swartz era. Wishing to find a good replacement.
feverzsj 3y ago
Why would they do that? For China's investment?
pogue 3y ago
It's working fine for me. I'm on Windscribe. Have you tested with TOR?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
zavertnik 3y ago
I have had the same results with multiple VPN providers for the better part a month now.
ruined 3y ago
depends on the vpn endpoint. i suspect they're mainly getting hit by ratelimits. switch to a less popular endpoint
INTPenis 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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.
Slava_Propanei 3y ago
[dead]
EasyMark 3y ago
try a different IP aka switch vpn servers. No problem here at all
ddingus 3y 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
- beeburrt 3y ago
  There's https://lobste.rs https://lobste.rs
  - ddingus 3y ago
    Thanks!
ddingus 3y ago
I have quit using Reddit. Sad day. Frankly, I love old Reddit.
polski-g 3y ago
How are they detecting VPNs? Is it because the MTU isn't 1500?
matteoraso 3y 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 3y ago
Last time I hit this, all I had to do was log in. Is that still the case?
fastaguy88 3y ago
I have no problems connecting with Cisco AnyConnect
skygazer 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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_foe 3y 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.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
florid 3y ago
[dead]
replwoacause 3y 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 3y 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 3y ago
I am able to access reddit this morning using protonvpn
grigio 3y ago
So move to lemmy ?
0987789i75 3y ago
asd
garfieldnate 3y 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.
ctrlqirl 3y ago
[dead]

393 points by thih9 3y ago

keepamovin 3y 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 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!

thih9 3y 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/ https://old.reddit.com/login/
- keepamovin 3y 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.
  - thih9 3y ago
    My setup doesn’t include a remote browser and I’d prefer not to add one. I listed what I’m using - safari desktop, nordvpn, the sign up link that I checked is in the grandparent comment. This worked earlier for me, now it doesn’t.
    - keepamovin 3y ago
      No worries! That must suck that you can't get on reddit via vpn. I noticed the change a while ago, but was like 'blargh old still works'. So I really appreciated your post today that old no longer works! Re connecting: I'm just sayin you can still connect to reddit over a remote IP if you login/signup per my tests.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- maroonblazer 3y ago
  Works for me.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- keepamovin 3y 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 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 3y 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"
- hyperdimension 3y 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
  - xandrius 3y ago
    You're not the target user.
    - hyperdimension 3y ago
      I know. A few years later, I was helping my mom set up a new laptop and during the same OOBE, I made pretty much the same comment, and she seemed to think it was just fine or at least not weird-sounding. Come to think of it, I wonder if it's for the same thing that gets people to refer to Google Assistant/Siri/et c. as 'she'. I've noticed that a lot also.
      - nullindividual 3y ago
        It's normal behavior, we assign gender to all sorts of objects be they made of metal and float on water or are just a series of electrons informing metal gates. The message is fine for the true target audience which is vastly different from the audience of the 80s and 90s. Microsoft and Apple (well, Apple HAS been using friendly language since the 80s!) are smart to use friendly language. Plus, it gets us all used to our corporate god-kings when we're dominated by the AI angels.
  - 3y ago

rrr_oh_man 3y ago

That’s great. Worked similarly for the twitter addiction.

voisin 3y 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 3y ago
  You're write.
  - stvltvs 3y ago
    Your rite.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      The suppression of the .old rite by the modernists will be the death of Reddit!
  - voisin 3y ago
    Oh gosh - my mistake. Whoops!
- rrr_oh_man 3y ago
  I’m huffin' and I’m puffin' and I’m gonna burn my house down
- samstave 3y ago
  [dead]
- EasyMark 3y ago
  [dead]
djcannabiz 3y ago

CommieBobDole 3y 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 3y 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 3y ago

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

cess11 3y 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.
havaloc 3y 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 3y 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.
  - havaloc 3y ago
    CGNAT is also unusable. I had to buy a static from my ISP as they only do CGNAT otherwise.
- Beijinger 3y 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 3y ago
North American Boy Love Association #9 Is that an acronym?

jonahbenton 3y ago

Use Tor?

michaelbuckbee 3y 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 3y 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 3y ago

Reddit is dead to me.

mfiro 3y 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_ 3y 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 3y ago
  Or it will since self control is not a binary, so more barriers can reduce use
- BadHumans 3y 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.
  - ijijijjij 3y ago
    [dead]
- Spooky23 3y 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 3y ago
  Speak for yourself. It's enough for plenty of people, myself included.
- cocacola1 3y ago

tsujamin 3y ago

Super annoyingly iCloud Private Relay triggers this for me too

bhelkey 3y ago
Is iCloud Private Relay not Apple's VPN?

kogir 3y 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.

thih9 3y 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39884164
Antrikshy 3y ago
Are you logged in? They’re only blocking suspicious bot like traffic on VPN. Logged in accounts can still use it over VPN.

koreanguy 3y ago

[dead]

thallium205 3y ago

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

0cVlTeIATBs 3y 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 3y 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?
- lxgr 3y 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.
  - pixl97 3y ago
    I mean yes, tons of discussion has moved to places like Discord to disappear forever. But unlike the previous poster, who blames the information creator for revoking what they published, why are we not blaming the actual abusers? Every site that is build on growth, Facebook, Google, Reddit, et al eventually turns into an authoritarian capitalist nightmare dystopia. Gobble up, lock down, and extract wealth.
    - lxgr 3y ago
      > tons of discussion has moved to places like Discord to disappear forever. This is actually even worse than the new Reddit. Every open source or other project that links to their Discord as a main place of providing support immediately loses a lot of respect from me: Chat is a horrible way of creating a searchable knowledge base. Besides being opaque to search engines, it effectively signs up their users and contributors for either having to maintain parallel long-term-visible and searchable FAQs and other docs, or answering the same new user questions over and over again. Having to publicly join a Discord (unlike Reddit there seems to be no way at all to browse anonymously) just to be able to see if anybody else has had my compile or setup error is completely unacceptable as well.

sunshine_reggae 3y 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 3y ago
Losing the VPN crowd will cost them next to nothing.
- hipadev23 3y ago
  A vast amount of reddit “users” are persona bots behind proxy and vpn networks.
- lxgr 3y ago
  Only because they've already lost most of what is actually valuable (to most early users; maybe not to advertisers).
  - andsoitis 3y ago
    > Only because they've already lost most of what is actually valuable (to most early users; maybe not to advertisers). There are many many users who were not early users who find Reddit very useful and a positive in their daily lives.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - lxgr 3y ago
      Is that despite or because of the changes they've made in the past years?
marcrosoft 3y ago

dboreham 3y ago

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

PM_me_your_math 3y ago
[dead]
chilling 3y ago
some countries block Reddit by default.
thih9 3y ago
I sometimes enable vpn system wide for reasons unrelated to reddit and want to access reddit on the same machine.
oyster143 3y ago
If you use vpn for other purposes,its just a hustle to constantly switch it on and off.
yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
You misunderstand; I run all my traffic through VPN to stop my ISP from spying on it.
superkuh 3y 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).
EasyMark 3y 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

enronmusk 3y 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 3y 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?
Tijdreiziger 3y ago
Check if your IP is accidentally marked as a VPN IP at the big IP location providers (e.g. https://ipinfo.io/ https://ipinfo.io/).
- enronmusk 3y 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 3y ago
  {"vpn":false,"proxy":false,"tor":false,"relay":false,"hosting":false,"service":""}

chilling 3y 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 3y ago

What if you make your user agent a crawler?

morkalork 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 3y ago

Currently working for me with ProtonVPN

avnfish 3y ago

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

SushiHippie 3y 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#instances https://github.com/redlib-org/redlib?tab=readme-ov-file#inst...

nouryqt 3y 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/ https://libredirect.github.io/
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y ago
https://libreddit.privacydev.net/ https://libreddit.privacydev.net/ works for me.

perihelions 3y 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.

Kuinox 3y ago
The fediverse, lemmy, mastodon.
- sentientslug 3y ago
  I suppose that works if you want to interact with the three people on there.
  - AnarchismIsCool 3y ago
    It's actually starting to get really good. It's like early reddit before eternal September
    - throwanem 3y ago
      On the fediverse it currently is eternal September.
      - AnarchismIsCool 3y ago
        I was there before the reddit explosion when the majority of the posts on the fediverse were from one guy who just vomited cccp propaganda all day. I think it's in a much more interesting place right now. Reddit otoh started to become boomer-Facebook-meme-town some time around the onset of COVID and then hockey sticked last year.
    - itsTyrion 3y ago
      I actually dislike the fedi fragmentation too much. Yes, ik that's the appeal for some people but I really don't like just how split it is

KevinMS 3y ago

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

tatpacc 3y ago

I can access both including old subdomain while on VPN.

mark_l_watson 3y 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 3y ago

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

different_base 3y 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 3y ago
uBlacklist maybe? if you use Google for search https://github.com/iorate/ublacklist https://github.com/iorate/ublacklist
- I_Byte 3y ago
  This is what I use! I recommend it.
I_Byte 3y 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 3y ago

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

k8svet 3y 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 3y ago

It worked with ProtonVPN.

stillTwerkin 3y 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.

superkuh 3y 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 3y 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 3y ago
Good Ukrainian War info, though
- EasyMark 3y ago
  imagine downvoting you for expressing an opinion. HackerNews should be better than this.
- GaryNumanVevo 3y ago
  Telegram has much better info, Reddit's is usually a few hours or days old
  - joshxyz 3y ago
    this.
  - euazOn 3y ago
    I dont always necessarily need or want the latest info. I find Reddit to be a good aggregator/filter that also acts as one of the walls against disinfo, i.e. some of the content never gets posted, or gets immediately debunked. /r/credibledefense is my go-to
    - GaryNumanVevo 3y ago
      I simply do not trust reddit and random mods to censor the real time feed of information coming out of the conflict.
- Gunnerhead 3y 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.

pmarreck 3y 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 3y ago
I'd love an invite, people keep talking about it i'd like to check it out at least... {name} {g mail}
- pmarreck 3y ago
  Sent.
beeburrt 3y ago
Me too! Can I have an invite?
beeburrt 3y ago
I didn't realize my email address wasn't in my profile. I'm: {name} at {outlook}
- pmarreck 3y ago
  Sent!

pmdr 3y 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.

itsoktocry 3y 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.
- asdff 3y 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.
  - pmdr 3y ago
    The coup failed and whatever reddit's been doing is obviously good for business. I'd wager the majority of people boycotting reddit are still using it like nothing happened.
  - jazzyjackson 3y ago
    > more people how are you so sure the extra traffic is from people?
    - pmdr 3y ago
      VPNs, datacenters and Tor are pretty much blocked and API costs money, plus everyone I know uses it nowadays. I think it's mostly legit traffic.

nickphx 3y ago

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

EMM_386 3y 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.

tyingq 3y 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 https://imgur.com/a/3cDv851 Perhaps when they detect abuse (screen scraping folks trying to avoid the API costs) from these shared IPs?
- iLoveOncall 3y ago
  So you can bypass it by creating an account? Absolute non-issue once again.
  - tyingq 3y ago
    Maybe? Reddit isn't renowned for accuracy.
- joveian 3y 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).
thih9 3y ago
This happened for me when I wasn’t logged it, this is a likely factor. Were you logged in when testing this?

ttul 3y 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?

itsoktocry 3y ago
What subreddits do you frequent? If the smart people are still there, stay. If they are leaving, find out where to.

alecsm 3y 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 3y ago

Mine's fine.

hnf 3y ago

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

feverzsj 3y ago

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

pogue 3y ago

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

deleted 3y ago

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zavertnik 3y ago

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

ruined 3y ago

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

INTPenis 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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.

Slava_Propanei 3y ago

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EasyMark 3y ago

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

ddingus 3y 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

beeburrt 3y ago
There's https://lobste.rs https://lobste.rs
- ddingus 3y ago
  Thanks!

ddingus 3y ago

I have quit using Reddit. Sad day. Frankly, I love old Reddit.

polski-g 3y ago

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

matteoraso 3y 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 3y ago

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

fastaguy88 3y ago

I have no problems connecting with Cisco AnyConnect

skygazer 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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_foe 3y 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.

deleted 3y ago

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florid 3y ago

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replwoacause 3y 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 3y 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 3y ago

I am able to access reddit this morning using protonvpn

grigio 3y ago

So move to lemmy ?

0987789i75 3y ago

asd

garfieldnate 3y 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.

ctrlqirl 3y ago

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