reddit vs discord

[Cath O'Deray]

… reddit … I never used it, and when I follow a link from here, I find that all my computers are banned from it. …

That's uniquely extraordinary, I never heard of that symptom for NLI (not logged in) users.

I might imagine it in a region where it's well-known that a government/dictatorship attempts to censor/filter Internet traffic. I can't imagine it in the region that's (privately) disclosed in your profile.

Please, can you share a screenshot of the apparent ban?

 

[PMc]

That's uniquely extraordinary, I never heard of that symptom for NLI (not logged in) users.

Well, looks like that:

I might imagine it in a region where it's well-known that a government/dictatorship attempts to censor/filter Internet traffic. I can't imagine it in the region that's (privately) disclosed in your profile.

Well, that might depend on the viewpoint. I for my part place my uplinks deliberately into free countries (like UY, ZA, MX) in order to circumvent censorship in imperialist countries.

 

[tuanth66]

Reddit is quite good, I did try Discord but I didn’t like it.
But I’m prefer forum, it’s like a wiki where I can search for knowledge.

 

[Paul Floyd]

Uhhh... Discord is a platform for chatting, like IRC was back in the day. Easy and immediate back-and-forth (which is as close to in-person conversation as it gets) is a pretty decent investment, considering that the alternative is to buy plane tickets and put people in hotel rooms and feed them, entertain them, and to buy spots on TV and radio.

IRC is still used a fair bit. I follow several channels including GCC gdb FreeBSD Illumos and musl. Unfortunately LLVM doesn't use libera.net.

 

[astyle]

That makes sense now. A chat platform with all the nifty colours and icons.

But it wasn't on me to choose, but rather those people who decided on providing discord as their support platform. And You know as well as me that a support request should contain some structured and useful data, like what you're trying to do, what doesn't work, and what's the environment.

It depends on how you choose to frame a problem that you're trying to solve. If you have a quick question, like "When is the next FreeBSD release coming up?" or "Where does the ls command live?", that kind of quick question can be posted in either Discord or IRC... But if you're trying to solve a complicated problem that requires some knowledge of context (what you're trying to do, what doesn't work, and what's the environment), then Forums might be a better place to ask.

FreeBSD Discord's primary goal is to spread the word about FreeBSD, and be the place for casual support. For seriously time-consuming things, Forums are a better option. For comparison, it's a bit like a primary care clinic where the practitioner can offer advice on diet, write prescriptions, maybe render first aid, but for brain surgery, will send you to a large hospital that has the specialists to do it right.

Forums were never meant to imitate IRC.

 

[drhowarddrfine]

Well, looks like that:
View attachment 18619

A friend of mine asked me about that a while back. He was on his phone and showed it to me. How bizarre.

 

[Cath O'Deray]

… looks like that: …

Thanks. Do you use a VPN and/or a firewall device?

… his phone …

Using a VPN?

 

[Cath O'Deray]

… If you have a quick question, like …

Two recent Discord examples.

The first in Reddit Mods, I got an answer three minutes after a question:

Second, FreeBSD, a brief conversation about problems with PDF in Chromium and the like (neatly in a thread, not mashed up with anything else in the #helpdesk channel):

– screenshot shared with permission of Alexander88207​

 

[Charlie_]

conversation about problems with PDF in Chromium and the like

Useless Link.

Welcome back!
We're so excited to see you again!
EMAIL OR PHONE NUMBER

 

[astyle]

Useless Link.

Welcome back!
We're so excited to see you again!
EMAIL OR PHONE NUMBER

That only means you're not logged into Discord... I can link to one of my profile posts on these Forums, but if you're not logged into Forums, you'll only see the login page instead of my profile post. That's standard practice...

 

[Cath O'Deray]

Useless Link.

Please see <https://forums.freebsd.org/profile-posts/comments/13111/>.

 

[PMc]

Thanks. Do you use a VPN and/or a firewall device?

Certainly, lots of them. All my cloud sites are interconnected into a private network mesh - so if there is a shitty peering somewhere, my stuff can reconfigure and find a different way. And all of them sites run firewalls to make sure that only legitimate traffic can traverse into that private network. But this is transparent to the outside.

 

[Cath O'Deray]

Certainly, lots of them. …

OK, VPNs are almost certainly the reason for what's pictured, "request has been blocked due to a network policy".

<https://www.startpage.com/do/dsearch?query=Reddit+"request+has+been+blocked+due+to+a+network+policy">

• <https://old.reddit.com/r/archlinux/...de_of_vm_but_accessible_on/ksd2gep/?context=1>
• <https://old.reddit.com/r/help/comme...st_has_been_blocked_due_to_a_network/krucy7b/>
• <https://old.reddit.com/r/help/comme...e_the_web_version_without_logging_in/keouknr/>
• <https://old.reddit.com/r/help/comme...e_the_web_version_without_logging_in/koglk7h/>
• <https://old.reddit.com/r/bugs/comments/18kofd0/cannot_browse_without_logging_in/ke3j4ze/>
• <https://old.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/1ah4lq6/vpn_problem/>
• <https://old.reddit.com/r/help/comme...e_the_web_version_without_logging_in/kecu1hn/>
• <https://old.reddit.com/r/help/comme...st_has_been_blocked_due_to_a_network/kj71a4r/>
• <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38705381>
• et cetera.

 

[PMc]

OK, VPNs are almost certainly the reason for what's pictured, "request has been blocked due to a network policy".

That would mean that they hack into my private intranet, to figure out how it is designed.

If I do the same, hack into some company's internal network to figure out how it is designed, that is considered criminal activity.
It is always interesting how different laws apply for the mighty and the slaves.

 

[astyle]

That would mean that they hack into my private intranet, to figure out how it is designed.

If I do the same, hack into some company's internal network to figure out how it is designed, that is considered criminal activity.
It is always interesting how different laws apply for the mighty and the slaves.

Read your own screenshot... Reddit probably just doesn't like the User Agent string supplied by the browser you use.

I know this sounds ridiculous. But if major banks use User Agent to filter people out, nothing stops Reddit from doing something similar.

Also, Reddit might have a problem with the VPN proxy you use. Nothing to do with the design of your private intranet, but everything to do with the public IP address that reddit.com sees on the packets from your devices. Try connecting without VPN, or use a different VPN provider. Just how do you think VPN even works?

 

[PMc]

Read your own screenshot... Reddit probably just doesn't like the User Agent string supplied by the browser you use.

I know this sounds ridiculous. But if major banks use User Agent to filter people out, nothing stops Reddit from doing something similar.

That might be, but I don't have a User Agent string configured - so it must be the one that is provided when compiling firefox from ports.

Also, Reddit might have a problem with the VPN proxy you use.

What is a VPN proxy?

Nothing to do with the design of your private intranet, but everything to do with the public IP address that reddit.com sees on the packets from your devices. Try connecting without VPN, or use a different VPN provider.

VPN provider is security/openvpn on all tunnels. I can't use a different one, because I've already patched a few bugs in this one.

Just how do you think VPN even works?

I don't think, I use it, e.g. to move IP-addresses around from the place where I have spare ones to the place where I need them: simply install openvpn on both ends, create a tunnel and push the IP-address through.

 

[Cath O'Deray]

User Agent

That was the first thing that I tried, failed to reproduce an issue. IE 2.0, and so on; no matter what string I used, Reddit worked.

 

[astyle]

What is a VPN proxy?

You seriously don't know? Here's a good explanation of how they work:

Proxy vs. VPN: What Is the Difference? | Fortinet

Learn the differences between proxy vs. VPN and pick the best for your business. When it comes to data privacy, which is better—a proxy server or a VPN?

www.fortinet.com

When you travel, but want to pretend you're still connected to your home LAN, you use stuff like security/openvpn to connect via a VPN proxy server. It can be a public server (Commercial VPN provider) or a private one that you set up yourself for tunneling into your own LAN from outside.

The VPN proxy server will have a 192.168.1.0/24 private address from your LAN on the inside, and an Internet-legal IP address facing the outside. If you're on your LAN all the time, then it's highly likely that Reddit does not like the IP address of the VPN proxy.

Also, your own screenshot says that blank User Agent strings are prohibited by Reddit. So, check to make sure it's not blank.

 

[dostoievsky]

Well, looks like that:
View attachment 18619


Well, that might depend on the viewpoint. I for my part place my uplinks deliberately into free countries (like UY, ZA, MX) in order to circumvent censorship in imperialist countries.

This is how it looks in my computer with VPN on.
Also there is even recent news about old.redit being included in this block.
That wall piss me off, since I do not use reddit as a logged user.

For that I just run a local instance of redlib every time I need to peek reddit.

I never found desire to write anything on that space. For discord, I allways had used it for gamming or personal meetings. I had entered some comunities but never had trully asked or searched throught the application to find anything interesting.

Comparing both, I never felt reddit an welcoming place, for me, it something more like a soft chan than a real forum. I know that there are really interessant topics and spaces in the community that are focused, dont know if welcoming. Discord and chats in general dosent feel good places to question for me due the "instant" vibe. I like to stay plugged of from this things.

This forum is the first in alot of year that I found interestant to post something. People here seens polite and even there is discussions they manage to keep cool and even funny for what I had seen.

 

[PMc]

You seriously don't know? Here's a good explanation of how they work:

Proxy vs. VPN: What Is the Difference? | Fortinet

Learn the differences between proxy vs. VPN and pick the best for your business. When it comes to data privacy, which is better—a proxy server or a VPN?

www.fortinet.com

This does not make sense. A proxy is something entirely different than a VPN.

And actually the article seems to advertise products for criminals who want to hide their identity and collect data about other people.

This is none of my business. In the old times, any university could get their class-B segment, and any coffee-maker on the campus would have it's own globally routeable fixed IP address. Then for a long time this was not possible anymore, because we would only get a single IP that is dynamic.
Now with the advent of IPv6 it is possible again. Now finally, all my machines run on static globally accessible IPs. Because I'm not a criminal, and neither paranoid.

When you travel, but want to pretend you're still connected to your home LAN, you use stuff like security/openvpn to connect via a VPN proxy server. It can be a public server (Commercial VPN provider) or a private one that you set up yourself for tunneling into your own LAN from outside.

This is exactly what I am doing. For instance when I am on travel or in the garden, I connect back to my home via VPN, so I can access my computers the same way as if I were at home. Consequentially, as a side effect, when I surf the internet, this will also go to my home first and then from there into the network, so it looks very much like I were at home.

Now the essential point: when reddit does spy on people and try and figure out if they are actually at home, or are somewhere on travel and connect to their home via a VPN, then what do they do with that behavioural data they collect? (Besides that this is most likely to be considered a criminal activity.)

 

[PMc]

Just how do you think VPN even works?

Okay, let's get practical. What these criminals do is trying to hide their identity, just like a burglar wears a mask. It has nothing to do with VPN technology, the VPN is just part of their criminal activities, like a mask is a part of clothing.

So what can be done with a VPN:

My basecamp has it's uplink from a shop called "Deutsche Telekom". They are arbitrarily competent, but very elitist.
Then, one of my cloud sites is with Scaleway in Paris. A few years ago those two celebrated a trade war, in order to extort money from the other. The outcome was, half the day you could not get any data through because the peering was saturated.
So what did I do - build another site at a third provider that has good peering with both. And now comes the VPN: just setup tunnels between each site, and route the data through the tunnels.

That was the first step, and it worked. Then I figured: the same scheme does also help me get rid of internet censorship, simply by moving my basecamp through the tunnels into some free country.

 

[Cath O'Deray]

redlib

Not found by FreshPorts. Please, what is it?

 

[Cath O'Deray]

… let's get practical …

If www/tor-browser does not work for you, I'll be surprised.

Sorry, I should have mentioned it, above, yesterday – it's the second thing that I tested here after you reported difficulty. Run, for example:

tor-browser -safe-mode https://old.reddit.com/comments/1bsyf3v/comment/kxio00d/

 

[Cath O'Deray]

… blank User Agent strings are prohibited by Reddit. …

Chromium​

chrome --user-agent="" 'https://udger.com/resources/online-parser?action=my'

chrome --user-agent="" https://old.reddit.com/

The latter confirms what's in PMc's screenshot.

Mozilla Firefox​

I can't tell how to achieve any empty User-Agent string. If you have any answer to this, please take it to a separate topic; thanks.

Firefox/CommandLineOptions - MozillaWiki

<https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/User-Agent/Firefox>

 

[astyle]

This does not make sense. A proxy is something entirely different than a VPN.

The only real difference between a proxy and a VPN is that VPN offers encryption and ability to securely connect to your internal home (or work) LAN. I set up lots of people for remote work in a corporate/enterprise environment, and did troubleshooting when things did not work right. A proxy merely ferries packets between networks that normally do not have NAT between them. That's why it's even called a proxy.

Now the essential point: when reddit does spy on people and try and figure out if they are actually at home, or are somewhere on travel and connect to their home via a VPN, then what do they do with that behavioural data they collect? (Besides that this is most likely to be considered a criminal activity.)

Reddit is gonna see just the VPN provider's IP. So, let's see: Your ISP is Deutsche Telekom, it's the link between your home LAN and the VPN provider. If you did not use a VPN tunnel, Reddit (and any other site on the Internet) would see the Internet-legal IP address that DT gave you. But since you use a VPN tunnel, you connect to a VPN service first, and then the packets go from that VPN service to Reddit. Just try diagramming it out. And it looks like Reddit does not like the VPN service provider you use (for whatever reason). It can be pretty difficult to figure out which VPN service providers are NOT blacklisted... But NOT putting a VPN service provider between yourself and Internet can help with troubleshooting.