Reddit started blocking VPN users on old.reddit.com

Reddit taught me to never trust a silicon valley, centralized, proprietary service on the internet with my data and/or content
- Well you shouldn't trust a public, decentralized, open source personally hosted service either.
  I don't really know who's hosting the Lemmy or other fediverse services I use and what access they have to the data that we post on there.
  Basically, you shouldn't trust any online service with your data and your posts.
  
  Off the grid it is, then
  
  I went the other route. I am very noisy online. I post and comment all over the place but I treat all of that as what it is, content I have given away freely and publicly. Now, when I need to do something privately, you are going to need serious mojo to be able to dig it out. Plus, who would assume that I do certain things privately when almost everything I do is out in the open.
  
  You can trust that the service will persist. The fediverse is practically speaking unkillable since no one group holds all the strings. The trade off is that any data you post is shared freely with all. At least it's clear from the start and no one is profiting off of it. Unlike Reddit, you know exactly what's going on as soon as you sign up.
  
  You...you realize you just posted right?
  
  Of course you shouldn’t but there is a categorical difference between the risk of a corporation exploiting you because of a power imbalance (you want to use Reddit, there aren’t alternatives in this hypothetical scenario) and the rando running your fediverse instance abandoning the project or being weird about your data.
  The second category can definitely be problematic, but it just isn’t the same level of awfulness and systematic exploitation that corporations wield every day to extract a profit.
  It sounds like a weird statement because we have been trained to think the average “other” we will encounter in society as dangerous, but if you actually think about the statistics then yes absolutely it makes way more sense to trust a random person or handful of people to run your instance than a corporation. Publicly traded corporations are legally required to be assholes in the pursuit of profit, on the other hand most of the time randos usually aren’t assholes, though to be safe you should always be cautious as you say.
  
  What about a whiteboard?
  
  You could message the instance admin on matrix and get to know them...
- Internet 101 if you want control, self host.
  
  If it was easy, I would have done it by now
- Could have learned that a long time ago. Everybody learns it somehow from some greedy company. Luckily you've learned it now.
- Same.
  I’m switching everthing over to federated, self-hosted, decentralized, open source…
  It’s a brave new old school world!

whoa there pardner
People who write "funny" error messages should be tied to a tree and have old circut boards thrown at their feet
- everything about that error page is Toxic AF
- Oopsie woopsie!
- Why do only the first half of the paragraphs start with a capital too?
  
  If there's one thing I learned working in IT it's that devs actively half-ass their error messages, routinely misspell critical words you're gonna grep for in logs, and never even consider having someone in Product read over customer-facing error messages like this. All they see is a Jira ticket that says "include the following verbiage in the VPN rejection message" that was typed up by a mostly plastered PM one afternoon after they downed 3 margaritas at "lunch" at the taqueria next to their office. And then they just copy and paste that shit into whatever bullshit HTML template took the least effort to find.
- Error pages are a point where something bad happened, so the user is already in a bad mood. A shitty joke just makes the situation worse.
  The only time I can remember enjoying novelty error messages is for 404 not found pages. It's usually stuff like the Google T-Rex thing, or I've seen an astronaut floating in space, stuff like that.
- Yes fucking please
- Slow down there, Satan

Started? Been having that issue for months now. It only works on VPN if you're logged on.
Certain VPN servers can go through it they haven't implemented a block for it yet. AirVPN launched some new servers that worked for a bit, but Reddit blocked them a few weeks later.
- They started also blocking OLD.reddit.com this week. I made a comment a couple months ago alluding to old.reddit.com still working even though they were blocking tor and known VPNs on www.reddit.com. I'm sure about 10,000 other people figured it out at the same time as me, since it was such a simple bypass, and I'm surprised it took this long to fix.
  There are still at least 2 other unpatched ways.
  
  old.reddit.com is the only Reddit website I use. I have every reddit link automatically redirect to that website as well. I haven't been able to access old.reddit.com for months on most servers of 3 different VPNs I've used.
  
  It’s definitely been a thing for more than just a week. I saw a post complaining about this on old Reddit months ago.
  
  Can someone tell me how they would know if someone uses a VPN to access their site? I believe OpenVPN has a way to make traffic look like normal HTTPS traffic
- I think its a move to keep banned people out, as old reddit was the loophole people used to make new accounts. can't create an account via VPN on old reddit if you can't access without being logged in

These assholes forget that people need to use VPNs in many situations. All the bitch ass corporate folks that never have to use their computers in a coffee shop, etc. Fuck spez.
- It goes much deeper than just coffee shops and other public wifi. There are people in oppressive countries that have to use VPNs to get around their country-wide bans of certain sites, such as anything that provides access to information. Reddit used to be a sanction for tons of information sharing. But now, with Reddit going public, they have to appeal to their shareholders, who probably have business or other deals in those oppressive countries. So, even if Reddit is simply trying to force users to be trackable, it still behooves the shareholders to make information and knowledge more difficult to access to certain people.
- You can still use the site via VPN if you’re logged in. Which is really the entire point. They don’t actually care if you’re using a VPN; It’s just another method to force people to make an account, so the “active accounts” number looks good to shareholders.
  
  Then Reddit's notice should say that instead of scolding sbout VPNs. This problem is not simply with Reddit and a login, it is pervasive. Hell, even lemmy.world blocks vpn connections from making new comments, often.
- They likely didn't. They just don't care.

And I just discovered this some weeks ago. The "woah there, pardner!" is so cringeworthy.
- The whole website is cringe. It has some of the best little communities are on there, but they are the exceptions. Most of it is power-tripping mods and disingenuous arguments from far-right lunatics on a foundation of "narwhal bacon lol."
- To me it sounds like a racist, homophobic Southern US citizen that likes to tote their guns and "defend" their property through the Castle doctrine because freedom (fuck yeah!).
  Actually the perfect encapsulation of the brainrot on reddit.
  
  Nobody in the south says shit like this unironically lmao.
  
  You've never been to the South
  
  stop watching so much CNN geez

what an absolute garbage site it has turned into

Workaround if you are using uBlock Origin:

reddit.com##+js(set-cookie-reload, reddit_session, 0) old.reddit.com##+js(set-cookie-reload, reddit_session, 0)
Add this to your filters.
- Gasp
  Tempting but the block page is helping remind me to stay mad at Reddit
  
  You need a reminder?
- Hehe, as expected of the Internet. I block most cookies and JS anyway but this will work for most people. But won't it affect logins?
- I love you brother...

Evil bastards will continue to wring every bit of tracked engagement they can, now that they're publicly traded. It's the only way to satisfy capitalist markets. Woooooo!
I'm glad I'm over here now.

They really want to track you
- VPNs don't prevent tracking, especially when you're logging into services.
  They can help obfuscate your identity to varying degrees, but honestly this is a pretty odd decision. I'm guessing it has more to do with malicious activity, or some other type of activities that Reddit is trying to curtail, and they feel blocking VPN IP ranges will help them.
  
  Maybe blocking Russian spam bots. Because they interfere with their own spam bots.
  If the Russians want their propaganda on Reddit, they will have to pay to use the Reddit bots like everybody else.
  
  Sometimes I read reddit post while not logged in on old.reddit with vpn on. Just the other day I got this message. After changing servers the message went away
  
  Many users don't log in. After the fall of the 3rd party apps, I only use the rdx webapp if I want to view reddit. I don't log in with an account at all anymore. So all of my data looks like some anon browsing from the same VPN server as hundreds of other anons. Yes they can analyze all of that traffic and individualize it, but that takes work. I'm glad to make them expend more effort, even if they get the same data in the end. Every step that makes it less cost effective for them is better, even if not perfect.

Jokes on them I block them on the DNS level.
I'm making a list, and I'll be checking it thrice lol.
Gonna ban all major sites and IPs. The Internet used to be about the small guy not the downtown.
- Your meter could use some work but it sings well enough
  
  I'm making a list
  and checking it thrice
  Gonna ban IPs
  and all major sites
  The In-ter-net isn’t what it used to be.
- I don't even need to do that because my country do that "for me" lmao. VPN was the only way I ever accessed reddit at all.
- I think the only four I have set to block are reddit, twitter, facebook's products and fandom. A shame those are always the top 10 results from any search.
  
  Wait, why fandom?

To clarify, you can still use old reddit logged in with a VPN, but they no longer allow you to browse logged out with a VPN. Still bad of course. But if you're willing to log in you don't have to turn off your VPN. You can sign up with a throwaway/obfuscated email if needs be
- I just, don't visit reddit anymore.
  Problem solved...
  
  Sadly, when researching problems or interests, often Redditposts have useful info.
  
  This is an oversimplification of the problem. Many times a search engine returns useful results inside reddit. You're not going there because you love reddit as a platform, but because you need something that someone posted in there.
- PSA: you still don't need an email to register. Simply register via old.reddit.
- Not necessarily.
  My primary account was banned from Reddit. (I suggested arson as a way of solving the early stages of a Nazi infestation in a neighborhood, and Reddit claimed this was "instigating violence", as though Nazis were humans.) They also banned all of my alternate accounts. Any account that i tried to open--regardless of which computer I used, browser, VPN, e-mail address, etc.--also ended up getting banned. I think that they must have been doing some kind of hardware fingerprinting that I wasn't able to get around, even with canvas blocker etc., and any computer that I'd used to log into Reddit on my primary account was linked to that account, and hence banned from creating an account.
  It took a while, but I did manage to overwrite every single post and comment I'd made in the last 10+ years for that account.
  
  regardless of which computer I used
  That's really bizarre. I wonder how they did that. So a different computer on a different network with a different email address and everything would still get you banned for ban evasion?
  Really creepy too, obviously they're keeping a lot of data on you to be able to be that thorough.
  
  Have you tried registering an account through the Tor browser? If they banned you on that as well, then that’s either creepy as hell, or something is wrong with your setup.
  
  had the same issue. built a new pc and was able to access it fine, just gotta be careful not to use reddit on any device my old account was present on.
  the funny thing is, I'm not even using a VPN or doing anything to mask my identity. it seems to be purely hardware recognition
- I thought reddit require an email to create an account
  
  Not if you go through old.reddit.
  
  Just leave it blank.
- Just tried it without login and for me it works with vpn (proton)

The Redlib frontend still works. In my opinion it also provides a much nicer UI than the official Reddit website or even old.reddit.com. This is the list of public instances: https://github.com/redlib-org/redlib-instances/blob/main/instances.md

Ok, you do that, but people who don't want to get cut off from 400 million people, how do we fuck up and breakthrough reddit's anti anonimity defenses ?
Killing reddit is on the table, but is there a more practical approach ?
- i dont have an account anymore but for anytime i need to view a reddit post i use RedReader. its an open-source thirdparty app thats still allowed to use reddits API for accesibility reasons.
  
  Not to sound like I'm claiming to be up on a moral high ground or anything, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth using accessibility tools for non accessibility reasons when it comes to Reddit. Ordinarily, I wouldn't care, but Reddit has shown me that they don't give a shot about people who need accessibility tools at all. Allowing some of them to stay around was just a desperate attempt at preventing some bad PR. If they thought an accessibility tool was mainly used by people trying to bypass their stupid and greedy decisions, they would 100% kill it off in an instant
- If you’re anonymously browsing the site without being logged in while on a vpn are you really being “cut off” from the people there?
  I mean… if you have a relationship with those 400 million people that’s cultivated through your unrecorded, invisible, surreptitious reading of their comments that’s a deeply diseased thing.

RedLib, the continuation of LibReddit,
still works:
https://github.com/redlib-org/redlib
I use it in combination with this GreaseMonkey script,
to redirect me to a random RedLib instance:
https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/469587-reddit-to-libreddit-redirect
Due to instances often going down and/or stop working.
- On Android you can use Stealth . That's what I use for searches that pull up Reddit posts.
  It also lets you subscribe to subs without having an account if you want. You actually do not have the option to sign in on Stealth.
  ETA: this works with VPNs and Orbot
  
  stealth doesn't work at all, it just says something went wrong.
  
  Regarding: "On Android you can use [Stealth] . That's what I use for searches that pull up Reddit posts."
  The stealth protocol does not have anything to do with accessing individual sites or services. The purpose of stealth is when trying to estata VPN connection to a provider that does not allow VPNs. For example, a public wifi that blocks VPN connections or some countries that require ISPs to block VPN connections.

That's bad, Reddit is blocked in my country. VPN is my key to the open world
- You can still use reddit with a vpn if you login. The error message even tells you that.
- What country are you in?
  
  Indonesia

there is libreddit with multiple public instances, for example https://libreddit.lunar.icu
No clue how long it will take until they block that as well, but for now it works with VPN.
You can use a browser plugin for automatically redirecting.
- Libreddit is discontinued and due to draconian API limits most instances rarely work
  
  One could use one of the Lemmy instance dedicated at mirroring reddit (ex: https://lemmit.online/) as a workaround I suppose.

I looked up to see is my VPN is connected. It is. Good. Moving right along.
- It's easy to disable a VPN remotely though, especially on handheld devices.
  All you need to is to point the user to a post or a website that is bloated with JS and contains high rez images and/or video.
  The device then has to either begin paging memory like crazy - or more likely - begins to kill background processes that it thinks are not used by the foreground apps (e.g. your VPN).
  For newer smartphones this is less of an issue, since their RAM can handle it. For > 5 year old smartphones though? They might struggle.
  
  If you run a VPN app, you can use AFWall to force all traffic through the VPN. So if the VPN app isn't running for some reason, the apps set to only go through the VPN service will have no internet access.
  
  You run your VPN on your router to fix this. Then every device on your network are forced through the tunnel, and this risk does not exist.
  
  Not sure why you’re getting downvotes. I’ve seen VPN apps get background killed on some devices.

So I can NOT access old.reddit anymore on any of my linux machines with firefox and nordvpn extension, but I can access both old and new on windows with firefox and extension, and old on android with FF mobile and nordvpn app. Haven't tried new on android for obvious reasons.
- Proton VPN doesn't work but my cheap shitty VPN that isn't well known works. Linux with Firefox or android with ff
  
  Been having issues with Google/Reddit etc. lately as well on Proton, managed to get around it by switching to a new IP subnet. It's likely they've just blocked IPs with malicious users behind them, which sucks for the rest of us.

Oh, they did this with my actual ip lol don't know what I did

I’m not your pardner, buddy.
- I’m not your buddy, pal!
  
  I'm not you pal, guy!

Fck reddit. We have lemmy. Let reddit rot.
- Every day spez is DIGGing himself into a deeper hole...
  
  He got his IPO money. He gives zero fucks what happens now.

It is likely someone using the same VPN service using the same server or server on the same subnet was scraping data or similar and got blocked. Therefore you are too.
- I like how Activity Pub encourages sharing of content while annoying companies like reddit for stupid reasons see this activity as bad.
  If they dont want me to scrape, then why dont they just expose a rate limited public & free API...
  
  Because money.
- Yeah I get that occasionally, swapping to another endpoint fixes it right up

Good. The more they abuse their user base the more people will look for alternatives. Hello Lemmy! :)

Confirmed by me

That's what i experienced today with tor, it didn't even surprise me

Same issue. I guess I'm never going back there. I've already stopped doing it, but from time to time a question I was researching let me to Reddit.
What's the best tool to delete your account, while also overriding all of your posts and comments?
- I havent tried it, but I was told about Redact. It replaces all of your post with gibberish.
- Please do not do this. Not creating new content is the best option.
  
  Nah, just migrate it to some other site
  
  Why, though? I have helpful answers in many threads, giving support about arcane issues people have been dealing with. I don't want this content to be monetized further.

USE EU VPNs let them block the EU.

How can they distinguish VPN users? I'm guessing it's a IP blocklist.
- Lol it's simple just watch for a shit ton of traffic from single ip addresses.
  
  They appear to also have blocklists independent of "shit ton of traffic." I have a VPN to my VPS (Oracle), which has a public IP (and I'm the only user). I also get whoa pardner'd when going through that VPN.
  Perhaps I fall into the "we don't want other people scraping our site unless they pay" category though. I would make sense to just block off all VPS/cloud IP blocks (e.g., AWS, Azure, Oracle, Google Cloud...).
- Exactly that, I wohld assume. I could still get on with a VPN IP from some 3rd world countries over Western countries but even those are now failing.

It’s been doing that for sometime now

Fuck Reddit.
- And Reddit wants you to do that without protection.

old.reddit.com (and the .onion one) works in the Tor Browser, for me at least. I am not logged in
- I wonder if the Tor version of Reddit still works
  https://forum.torproject.org/t/reddit-onion-service-launch/5305
  
  Onion link for posterity.
- That's good to know the onion service still works, thanks

An obvious chipping away at old reddit. They are trying to get rid of it altogether.
I consider their new format to be unusable.

It is weird how many times I have to tell myself out loud "reddit is bad for me; close that tab!"
I am grateful that facebook/instagram requires a login. It means I never have to look at it even when I am feeling weak.
Same with The Atlantic, The NY Times, and the ~~Jeff Bezos Suck Billionaire Cock Machine~~ The Washington Post.
Thank you for keeping me from reading that trash, rich people.

Still works for Mullvad.
- Depends on which node I guess. I'm on mullvad and its not working.
  
  One of the biggest downsides of a VPN; you share an exit node with lots of other people, only takes one bad actor to get your exit node ip banned
- It depends for me. Sometimes it works first try, sometimes I have to bounce around a few locations before it'll let me in.

I only go there on accident.

The hurensohn getting his own damn way with just about everything. 🤬🤬🤬

Use Redlib front end should be able to open reddit. Some instances don't work, but you there are many that work. I use this extension: https://github.com/libredirect/browser_extension
- Firefox also has a libreddit extension that will automatically direct you there if you type in any reddit address.

Errrr, I use bing and just click the cache button instead. I have to use a VPN for work and it's annoying to turn it off just to see one thing on reddit.

I used TOR with I2P as it's layer, still, the program automatically redirect me to old.reddit.com.

I’m still able to get in but I’ve only checked because of this post, lol
Edit: I use Proton (not logged in)
- I've been blocked before. I would guess it happens if the IP your using got banned due to some user violation or abuse. But I don't know.
- I occasionally get IP blocked with Proton. Previously I just toggled the random button a few times until it let me through, but Proton seems to have removed that in the latest update for no readily apparent reason.
- As others have pointed out it's going to vary from service to service. It's like how some VPNs aren't blocked by Netflix.

They've been doing this for ages. Some think it's just Old Reddit either.

Still works with ExpressVPN
Also works with Apple Private Relay
Edit: tested while logged out
- Don't use express VPN
  
  ?

I started seeing this a few days ago. It will allow you to browse with a vpn after logging in, and you can log in with the vpn in use.
Funnily once logged in you can log back out and continue browsing old.reddit like normal. I wonder if it's using some kind if authentication cookie to validate browsing

How dare you not let us track your location!

Huh, interesting. I was wondering why twitter wasn't loading in my browser and it's because I was behind the duckduckgo VPN. I guess this is a thing websites will be doing now.
- Only eveil websites.

Oopsie

Only the investors matter now

Can confirm. At this point, I just want a solution to completely remove Reddit links from search results.

One more step away from log in to view this post. Back away from the trash fire. I see that I’m unable to login through two different VPNs.

Unfortunately this means I can now longer find answers to some error messages.

All 1000 scanned ports on 146.70.168.154 are in ignored states. Not shown: 1000 filtered tcp ports (no-response)
Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 26.88 seconds

Changed my upvote to a downvote. Please dont post screenshots of text. Just copy & paste the text here (instead).
- I for one would much rather see the screenshot.
  
  Ok, then post it in addition to the text. The point is that we can't l see the screenshot because some of us are blind, but everyone can read the text.