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
Just another reason to not be on reddit
Oh no! Anyway…. -Lemmy User
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.
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.
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
I wouldn’t be surprised if they are doing it to block AI from hoovering up all of their data.
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?
