Reddit is blocking users based on user agents?

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.

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.

Why are you still using that shitty site?

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

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

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

• please use something unique and descriptive

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

Happened to me as well. Holy shit. Are they trying to nuke web scrappers/robots now? Whatever that is, it's no good.

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

What’s a user agent?

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.

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

Glitch or not, fuck reddit

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.

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

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

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.

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.

oh no

anyway

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.

Permanently Deleted

I was using plain old safari and got this message also

I'm getting that message too, I've tried on Firefox, chrome, with and without VPN. I think it's something wrong with the site?

Edit: seems to work again now

I bet it's a glitch, all of my browsers are blocked on home Internet and on cell data.

I get this error in the Firefox Developer Edition, can't acces it from mobile Chrome either...

Edit: Seems to work again

Reddit does a lot to try to track alts, and it still fails. It's probably impossible to have anything that sophisticated in the fediverse.

It's fucked for me too. As much spicy intrigue is generated by thinking this is nefarious, I think some dumb shit just fucked something up and broke the site

I’m getting this as well. Mobile Safari on iOS 17.

Time to become the Mozilla you wish to be in this world.

I've got Hermit setup for /r/CombatFootage and it's still loading fine.

I've got a custom user agent ('mobile') and I block everything that I can.

Woah there partner. We noticed we can't fingerprint you, so we're not even going to let you in. Please remove your pants, bend over, and try again.

I'm getting the same message on mobile Firefox browser

But they don't care at all about bots.

Image Transcription: Text

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 alternative User-Agent string, try changing back to default as that can sometimes result in a block.

You can read Reddit's Terms of Service here.

if you think that we've incorrectly blocked you or you would like to discuss easier ways to get the data you want, please contact us at this email address.

Wasn't user agent parsing already broken with Mosaik Browser?

Saw the comments so I thought I would check it out. I’m getting that message as of right now, but I am running a VPN.

I think what it is is, they were probably hoping the web integrity would work originally that Google was proposing, and were probably planning to take advantage of that. However, I guess since it has not went through yet at Google that they are still using their version of it but just limiting it to empty user agents in the browser?

Other than for that reason that I wouldn't worry about someone user agent as an owner for reddit. If bots were an issue, wouldn't I issue a warning for the user to slow down and maybe temporarily block the IP or something like that?