Using Cloudflare on your website could be blocking RSS users

I get blocked from websites with some regularity, running Firefox with strict privacy settings, "resist fingerprinting" etc. on OpenBSD. They just give a 403 Forbidden with no explanation, but it's only ever on sites fronted by CloudFlare. Good times. Seems legit.

Cloudflare is a fantastic service with an unmatched value proposition, but it's unfortunately slowly killing web privacy, with 1000s paper cuts.

Another problem is "resist fingerprinting" prevents some canvas processing, and many websites like bluesky, linked in or substack uses canvas to handle image upload, so your images appear to be stripes of pixel.

Then you have mobile apps that just don't run if you don't have a google account, like chatgpt's native app.

I understand why people give up, trying to fight for your privacy is an uphill battle with no end in sight.

The privacy battle has to be at the legal layer. GDPR is far from perfect (bureaucratic and unclear with weak enforcement), but it's a step in the right direction.

In an adversarial environment, especially with both AI scrapers and AI posters, websites have to be able to identify and ban persistent abusers. Which unfortunately implies having some kind of identification of everybody.

No, it's more than that. Cloudflare's bot protection has blocked me from sites where I have a paid account, paid for by my real checking account with my real name attached. Even when I am perfectly willing to give out my identity and be tracked, I still can't because I can't even get to the login page.