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Comment by labrador | Hacker News Reader

I can no longer use old.reddit.com with a VPN. I wonder why. To prevent anonymous scraping maybe.

I can use it with a VPN but only if I have an already logged-in session.

Without a logged-in session, I can only see error messages which change randomly. Most of them seem to be either an IP range blocking page or an image with "You broke reddit" message on it.

Same experience here. Also seems that when using `old.reddit.com`, it logs you out a lot sooner than before (or in using `new.reddit.com`. It's just another layer of friction on using it.

It started for me some time ago with a “unknown user agent” or something along those lines, now it show a “funny” can we see some id? Message, no reddit i will not disable my VPN to view your everyday-getting-worst content. Good riddance, you’re going the way of “x”.

I get the "woah there" message but can't log in. The login request returns the 403 "woah there" page and the user experience is that nothing happens.

What a terrible experience.

Within maybe the last couple weeks, they also seemed to start blocking some Tor exit nodes.

I guess at least 50/50 it's an anti-abuse measure (rather than surveillance capitalism), at probably some human cost of denying reddit as a venue/channel to oppressed people.

Incidentally, if anyone is using Tor in ways that show up as significant abuse to Reddit, that's hurting Tor for those who need it for more legitimate purposes.

I'll point out that Reddit runs an onion service (https://www.reddittorjg6rue252oqsxryoxengawnmo46qy4kyii5wtqn...) so blocked exit nodes is more likely to be collateral damage from something else than a deliberate action.

Generally speaking, if you're getting blocked (from old.reddit.com or otherwise), the workaround is to login. If you're logged in and still getting blocked (or are getting blocked trying to login, that's a different problem entirely).

old.reddit.com doesn't work for me when I have uBlock Origin enabled. Also, on the narwhal app that I pay for and uses the official API, comments aren't loading at all.

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