Reddit appears to be blocking VPNs (unverified)

tokyo@beehaw.org to Technology@beehaw.org – 194 points –

I’m on iOS 17.1.1 using Safari. I also have Proton VPN enabled in the states but if I try to visit any page on the website I see this:

If I disable it, the page will load.

Edit: as per a comment, this may not be a VPN only issue.

Additional edit: Reddit has written an official post stating it was an issue after production code deployment and was reverted

45

Apparently it was a bug:

https://reddit.com/r/help/comments/17vbxz8/whoa_there_pardner_error_message/

It's not a bug. It's them running A/B tests to completely block mobile users that aren't on the app. They've been implementing different versions of this for over a year now. They always lie about what it was. Actually they pretty much habitually lie about all of their tests and changes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s\_razor

I got this bug on desktop, running chrome, with no VPN.

This was, as most things like this are, just a pure dumb fuck-up by some guy putting things on prod without properly testing and staging. No need to put on any more tin foil hats than we already have, the incompetence is plenty reason enough to point and laugh.

Both can be true. The incompetence could have happened while trying to block mobile use.

The amount of dark patterns pushing users onto the app has already established the malice.

If an internet corporation has a history of enshittification, it gets increasingly hard to clock up these kind of things to incompetence. While stupidity can certainly explain some things, it's usually safe to assume it's a bit of both

Thank you for sharing some clarification.

It appears as if reddit is trying so hard to fuck everyone off the site. And yet so many people aren't paying attention and just visit it every time.

They should just make a new landing page: "We don't want you here! Go somewhere else!"

Reddit has so many users now, that they can filter out everyone who is in the very least problematic or not fully profitable, and still sell ads to millions.

That's not how greed works, nor how reddit works.

The only time they'll do something that reduces profits is when they're confident it will mean more profits in the near future (and they can't figure out a way to have both).

That's why they were happy to platform mask off neo-nazis, the dangerously stupid and communities dedicated to getting as close to child pornography as possible without technically breaking any laws and why they waited until the last possible moment to pull the plug on them.

That's when they were in the "growing" phase, they used every tactic in the book, or even slightly off the book, to increase their numbers.

Now they're in a "distilling" phase, where they can get rid of the unwanted 1% to end up with a 99% pure zombie base whose ad consumption won't get interrupted by some undesirable critical thinking.

After they enroll enough ad purchasers or "content creators", they'll go into a "squeezing" phase, possibly after the IPO, where they will tighten the monetization mechanics in search of a balance between maximizing ad revenue and alienating advertisers... until they overtightened it, and go bust... only for another zombie-targetting platform to take their place.

Wash, rinse, repeat! The online golden days are far behind us.

Momentum is hard to change

Reddit has high inertia 👍

I mean it literally does. It's the same reason Twitter hasn't completely imploded yet, despite Musk doing his best to turn it into a cesspit. People stay on it because it has lots of people and their niche subs, which makes it harder for people to leave and coalesce in new areas and recreate niche subs, which feeds into the cycle

Agree 👍

And some would say Elon succeeded with the cesspit.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they are doing it to block AI from hoovering up all of their data.

Are AI using VPNs now?

Those little buggers!

I Imagine they’ll use whatever connections are provided to them by their AI overlords.

The VPn may be necessary if their IP address ranges are being blocked, or it could be to get around an API limit?

More likely, they blocked IP addresses belonging to a cloud service provider which happened to also be used by the VPN service.

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.

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

----------------V---------------

1000013915

Also started seeing this today while browsing on my work computer, which I believe utilizes a VPN.

I had been getting these for years already. “Had” because you know…

Additional edit: Reddit has written an official post stating it was an issue after production code deployment and was reverted

In their mind the issue was not the blocking of users, but that the users have started complaining. I bet they just reverted it so that they can bring it back slowly, after just checking whether it is effective at all

it's a bug, i got the same ban screen without a vpn

Looks like I can get to reddit pages via Libreddit with Mullvad up and running, if that helps at all.

EDIT: And reddit via reddit too!

I don't have a VPN and I got this error too. It resolved itself after about an hour

Your VPN doesn't have the ability to strip user agent strings on HTTPS requests, this doesn't seem VPN related imo.

Assuming the error message is accurate.

I had this when using my corporate VPN. Disconnected and still got it. I thought maybe it was a bug that had to do with Firefox.

A few minutes later I refreshed and it was all fine.

Seriously doubt this is an API issue. The error itself would make it seem like it's a problem with your browser, but unless you have some overzealous privacy extensions installed that are hiding your user agent, it's more likely to be a temporary problem on their side.

Nah, this is an anti scraper mechanism.

They've lost this fight before it's even begun lol.

I had it earlier as well, no VPN at the time, went away after VPN was connected