You cannot access reddit without either an account, or turning off your VPN. Effectively meaning that it’s difficult to access reddit privately, as they can either track you with IP or with account.
Even alternative frontends like RDX for reddit by @[email protected] don’t solve this issue.
I can’t believe more people haven’t left because of that.
Spez (Steve Huffman) moderated a subreddit called /r/jailbait and now he’s adding paywalls to the site. He’s a pedophile with an addiction to greed.
in fairness to spaz, even though he doesn’t deserve it, that was at a time where you didn’t need to approve being added to a sub’s mod team. I believe he tried deleting himself from there, but they kept adding him, which prompted them to implement the approval system. I could be wrong, I don’t know.
I saw spez at the mall one time when I was Christmas early shopping. I recognized him, but I’m not gonna treat a CEO like a celebrity, so I just mind my own business. a while later, I was waiting to get a ticket for the AMC there, Steve Huffman goes up to a kid who is holding popcorn and starts to eat some out of the bucket. The mom tells him to stop and pulls the kid back, but spez just smacks the popcorn out of the kids hands and screams at the mom in the face really loudly (not actual words, literally a scream). popcorn everywhere. the kid is now crying and the mom is at a loss of words and looks so stressed to be in that situation and is about to cry too. At this point, I need to do something. I go up to the situation and tell spez to back off immediately. as a response, he tries to kick me in the balls (missed and tripped a bit), then makes cringry hissing noises.
As much as I dislike the guy, I don’t need fake stories for reasons to hate him. Thank goodness this sounds 100% on-brand for that absolute spaz, no proof needed!
Oh man, I forgot about that. Thanks for reminding me of another reason I hate that guy.
I know I’m a data point of one but this seems sporadically applied. Sometimes it works on a vpn without logging in. Sometimes it doesnt.
They are slowly killing public access.
They don’t want you using reddit unless you are using with an account tied to real ID.
They want to pump up the number of new accounts and/or monthly active accounts by any means necessary now that the stock price depends on it.
you know the drill folks: deny the parasite engagement, seed fedi with discussion.
corpo parasite took the shit poster for granted for too long.
Or… Create accounts on reddit but never use them. That’s gotta bring down number of active users in the long term.
I gotta admit I just discovered Reddit few weeks ago that I spend a bit more time there. Before it was only from Google results when needed.
I don’t know how it was before, but it feels pretty decent now. I don’t have a comparison.
Will be hard to leave Reddit now haha 🙄
Think about this:
Literally all the value of Reddit comes from the users, and most of the moderation comes from volunteers.
That is, everything that made Reddit useful was provided for free.
Now those jackanapes think they’re entitled to create money based on the free labor of millions of people. And what makes that more infuriating is they had the gall to call those volunteers “landed gentry”.
I mean, that is an obvious bullshit, but I thought there’s something else going on there that makes it shit place nowadays.
I mean - capitalism… of course it’s looking to exploit… they couldn’t be content with the ad revenue…
it was way better before, especially they dint force the New UI, you can still use the OLD.reddit feature, which makes it easier to navigate the site. the infinite scroll feature that most social media has now, is not good at all, its also gets very buggy and laggy(if your using it on mobile browser). Also there have been significant ban/purges in the last few months and many accounts were banned. alot of innocent users have been caught in the crossfire, additionally, in my opinion its pretty hostile to new users too, because subreddits have UPPed thier anti-ban evasion ,spam filter, even to the point it harms new users.
remember this comment when you figure out why reddit is fucked haha
prolly under 3 months if you are going to engage on there.
if they can even post/comment as a new user
I’m hearing new users are having a hard time doing that, even if they are not vpn, ban evading or shielding their online metrics from reddit. The spam filter is so aggressive that you can be banned very easily
Actually it turns out my account is 3 years old lol but I started to read it properly few weeks back.
I’m curious to understand it more.
In the meantime I’m exploring Fediverse too 😁
I have a feeling they want to be like Facebook, with the aggressive personal info you have to give in order to login, they can lock the content behind the login feature like fb does
isnt thier Q4 earning, they are reporting, hence the massive bans as of late, gotta look up suck up to investors, who wants to purchase reddit. reddit is on its way to become a FB CLONE. anyone remember Y!Answers(i still think it was the og reddit before people moved there. Y’A was most useful for physics /math, and some science questions from textbooks if you need answers.
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In dark times of desperation, seeking help on the internet, I sometimes find myself tempted by the Reddit thread in the top of my search results.
But I know that if I click it, the only thing that will happen is the familiar cross-armed Snoo popping up and telling me, “You’ve been blocked by network security.”
It’s like a reality check for me: I don’t want to use Reddit, and Reddit doesn’t want me using it. So I’m going to need to either get better at searching for solutions, or try to solve problems in my own way.
In the end, introducing more barriers to entry has simply reinforced my decision not to go to Reddit. Their blocking of VPNs has conditioned me to ignore Reddit links in search results entirely, mentally filtering them out the same way I do with ads/sponsored content.
Nice work, Spez.
BONUS: I just came across a Google support page where someone asks, “How do I Block Reddit and Quora results from all searches permanently”. The top answer is hilarious and sad.
This, and the response that demands you use the app to see the content, or of it’s marked NSFW for any reason, you cannot view it unless you login.
Really irritating to use reddit anymore.
Old.reddit.com still lets you bypass that.
Even NSFW?
So far, at least in the UK.
Huh, ok. Thanks. I’ll give it a shot.
Can’t you ban the entire domain from the network at the router level? I think it would be very fitting to block them on your network in retaliation to them blocking you on theirs.
Try using Kagi search. It’s a subscription based search engine, but it’s much more customizable and doesn’t serve ads or push shopping pages at you as solutions. You can save a filter on there to exclude results from
Reddit and Quora if you don’t want to see them in your searches, but you can also specifically mention websites to whitelist if you find they give you good results for certain types of searches.
I still use Google occasionally because the one thing Google is great at is recommending products to purchase.
…or you could use one of these search engines that are not for profit.
https://www.goodnet.org/articles/7-search-engines-that-give-to-charities
People keep acting like Kagi, desite being part of the capitalist system and even celebrating how profitable they are, are the good guys. And I am tired of seeing people giving them free advertising on Lemmy.
Here’s Kagi using some terrible marketing copy right out of freshman year business school to talk about how them making profits by people paying them to do what can be done for free benefits everyone:
We are also thrilled to report that we have achieved profitability. This significant milestone is a testament to our sustainable growth and fiscal responsibility. It demonstrates that our approach of offering a premium, ad-free search experience resonates with users who support a service aligning with their values. Becoming profitable allows us to reinvest in the business, further enhancing our offerings and ensuring that we can continue to provide a top-notch search experience.
You entirely missed the point of my comment. All the search engines you linked to in the article serve ads to generate revenue. Kagi does not serve ads because they generate revenue from subscription fees.
Giving money to charity does not mean that you will get customizable search results.
Two years ago, on June 1st, 2022, Kagi introduced a search engine that challenged the ad-supported version of the web. Kagi Search instead works for you, the user, and not an advertiser paying for your attention. At the time of launch, we did not know if anyone would pay for their search engine and web browser, but luckily, here we are two years later at the forefront of a movement to humanize the internet’s most-used products and put the user back in the driving seat.
The first paragraph of the Kagi blog post you linked states exactly this fact.
Literally no search engine out there is “free”. The “solutions” you linked sells your data to advertisers and gives part of it to charity.
That’s just not true, we go through a VPN at work and it works
It blocks popular VPN services. I doubt your work is a recognised VPN IP.
The ones they know about.
Some mullvad server aren’t blocked.
Some Proton aren’t either.
What is becoming increasing difficult is Youtube. finding a patched client and the right VPN server is no easy task.
As VPN usage becomes more mainstream I believe “premium” offers will start to appear, offering servers with fewer people, regularly renewed IPs, things like that, for a higher price.
I sometimes have to switch servers to comment on Lemmy
i think the ones that evade the bans, use proxy servers, which are harder to detect than a vpn.
I was about to say, old reddit in browser works fine, but I use Mullvad, so I never noticed. I’m increasingly spending more time here too.
I created a Reddit account a few days ago (for testing purposes) using MullvadVPN and after many captachas I managed to finalize but the account is shadowbanned. I can access the subreddits but my comments don’t show up for anyone
By the way, fuck Reddit!!!
they automatically shadowban vpn users, i was on another forum that they already had been banning vpn accounts(instant ban) for a while they all switched to using proxies, anti-detection browsers, ISP changes to evade the bans. anyone who have been using it recently will get shadowbanned instantly or eventually, hence the use of different proxies instead. even that is not fool-proof , and people are actually paying to do this(for thier OF accounts)
a way to check if your acc is shadowbanned is logout and incognito and try to look up your user profile(or any other redditors profile, if says missing or suspended, you know), it also can tell if a user has deactivated thier acc.
additionally reddit is currently going through a large purge of accounts as of recently, someone mentioned in another forum that there have been an unusual amount of account bans recently(like 3 in the last 3 months). i lost a couple of accs as a normal users, one of my acc got temp suspeneded, suddenly all my other accounts were immediately permabanned.(apparently some mods are extremely anal about reporting other people). theres other instances of other peoples acc were banned for no reason at all, appealing just gets a rejection notice(reddit admins arnt even bothering to look at it, they know)
I think they’re either using google data to link email accounts to phone numbers or using an NLP model to identify users by how they write in the vans.
I hot banned on accounts tied to email addresses I haven’t used in years, logged in from a vpn. Like. 5 email addresses. Many accounts on the email addresses hadn’t been used in years. The only things linking them were a phone number I used for 2fa on google.
It’s the Reddit app. It flags all accounts used to log in on them device.
I now only use the (broken) mobile page
they do the same with you IP too, and additionally if they catch any of your accts, mimicking your other accts, they can put 2 and 2 together.
Yes apparent the app gives them even more info, like you device id , components, Mac address, and it has a anti-vpn measure built in, unlike the browsers
I got like five accounts banned before I figured it out
Don’t use it. Never have.
also using things like vcaptcha v3, which tracks your movements on the site. thats one aspect, if your using the app, they will be able to look at your device signature too. if you have more than 1 acc on an email, it can compromise them all(if one gets banned, perma ban all of them can take a hit). additionally they are purging many accounts right now too.
they can still ban all acc if your using the same VPN, . they are extra aggressive this time around.
they are probably banning datacenter ip addresses to prevent AI companies from skraping. They want to sell the data for money 🤷♂️
people are also use proxies, and some use datacenters for that and reddit found that out too. i think people using mobile proxies which are better.
I was using a VPN to access F*eddit, after 1 or 2 days i got a permanent red bar on top saying that my account was banned, needless to say reddit is no more my preferred media provider.
This also happened to me, i wondered why i got banned
I can say got suspended for using VPN, they say there’s an issue with the security of my account & promoted me to change the password. I never posted any comments only did upvote & downvote. Still got suspended for no reason!!
interesting, through the ban wave last tuesday only one of my accts wasnt pera ban, but it required me to change my password out of the blue, and it also receive the "perma ban message, but i couldnt find it anywhere( the appeals page doesnt let you contact them if you have no ban in place). im almost certain my account was flagged, additionally i checked today searching my acc incognito, it has a restricted box next to the name? havnt tried to comment with it yet.
You are shadowbanned site wide my friend. Just like me. No appeal will help you.
havnt tested it by commenting yet. im not surprised if it is.
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In my case, anytime I used a VPN, my feed wont update.
You know you can use an extension that will redirect you to old.reddit.com which doesn’t need an account? https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-reddit-redirect/
No, that doesn’t always work. They still block that sometimes.
Doesn’t work, they serve you a blank webpage
If you want to use reddit, just find a redlib instance.
For accessing past threads I use LibRedirect and cycle between instances
A lot of them are getting blocked too, presumably by datacenter IPs. I suppose it’s possible to run it off a residential IP.
Been getting that for months.
Work uses a VPN. So if there’s a useful answer to a work question on some technical reddit, I don’t see it. Way to remain a relevant resource for anything but fandom BS.
