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Using Cloudflare on your website could be blocking RSS users

(openrss.org)
556 points campuscodi | 4 comments | 16 Oct 24 22:46 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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conesus ◴[17 Oct 24 17:06 UTC] No.41871474[source]▶
I run NewsBlur[0] and I’ve been battling this issue of NewsBlur fetching 403s across the web for months now. My users are revolting and asking for refunds. I’ve tried emailing dozens of site owners and publishers and only two of them have done the work of whitelisting their RSS feed. It’s maddening and is having a real negative effect on NewsBlur.

NewsBlur is an open-source RSS news reader (full source available at [1]), something we should all agree is necessary to support the open web! But Cloudflare blocking all of my feed fetchers is bizarre behavior. And we’re on the verified bots list for years, but it hasn’t made a difference.

Let me know what I can do. NewsBlur publishes a list of IPs that it uses for feed fetching that I've shared with Cloudflare but it hasn't made a difference.

I'm hoping Cloudflare uses the IP address list that I publish and adds them to their allowlist so NewsBlur can keep fetching (and archiving) millions of feeds.

[0]: https://newsblur.com

[1]: https://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur

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1. AyyEye ◴[17 Oct 24 17:11 UTC] No.41871518[source]▶
Three consenting parties trying to use their internet blocked by a single intermediary that's too big to care is just gross. It's the web we deserve.
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2. ◴[17 Oct 24 19:05 UTC] No.41872758[source]▶
3. eddythompson80 ◴[17 Oct 24 20:29 UTC] No.41873447[source]▶
> Three consenting parties

Clearly they are not 100% consenting, or at best one of them (the content publisher) is misconfiguring/misunderstanding their setup. They enabled RSS on their service, then setup a rule to require human verification for accessing that RSS feed.

It's like a business advertising a singles only area, then hiring a security company and telling them to only allow couples in the building.

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4. AyyEye ◴[17 Oct 24 21:14 UTC] No.41873862[source]▶
If Cloudflare was honest and upfront about the tradeoffs being made and the fact that it's still going to require configuration and maintenance work they'd have significantly less customers.