←back to thread

Using Cloudflare on your website could be blocking RSS users

(openrss.org)
556 points campuscodi | 1 comments | 16 Oct 24 22:46 UTC | HN request time: 0.201s | source
Show context
jgrahamc ◴[17 Oct 24 08:00 UTC] No.41867399[source]▶
My email is jgc@cloudflare.com. I'd like to hear from the owners of RSS readers directly on what they are experiencing. Going to ask team to take a closer look.
replies(7): >>41867476 #>>41867836 #>>41868190 #>>41868888 #>>41869258 #>>41869657 #>>41876633 #
viraptor ◴[17 Oct 24 08:15 UTC] No.41867476[source]▶
It's cool and all that you're making an exception here, but how about including a "no, really, I'm actually a human" link on the block page rather than giving the visitor a puzzle: how to report the issue to the page owner (hard on its own for normies) if you can't even load the page. This is just externalising issues that belong to the Cloudflare service.
replies(3): >>41867521 #>>41867531 #>>41873429 #
methou ◴[17 Oct 24 08:23 UTC] No.41867521[source]▶
Some clients are more like a bot/service, imagine google reader that fetches and caches content for you. The client I’m currently using is miniflux, it also works in this way.

I understand that there are some more interactive rss readers, but from personal experience it’s more like “hey I’m a good bot, let me in”

replies(2): >>41867783 #>>41867984 #
_Algernon_ ◴[17 Oct 24 09:13 UTC] No.41867783[source]▶
An rss reader is a user agent (ie. a software acting on behalf of its users). If you define rss readers as a bot (even if it is a good bot), you may as well call Firefox a bot (it also sends off web requests without explicit approval of each request by the browser).
replies(1): >>41867953 #
1. sofixa ◴[17 Oct 24 09:44 UTC] No.41867953[source]▶
Their point was that the RSS reader does the scraping on its own in the background, without user input. If it can't read the page, it can't; it's not initiated by the user where the user can click on a "I'm not a bot, I promise" button.