This is an issue with all popular VPNs on various websites. VPNs use shared IP addresses so just a few bad actors using that VPN can get it blocked for everyone. I can't even load Google sometimes without multiple human verification checks.
Let's not pretend it's all about "bad actors". They don't want masked traffic at all, the "bad actors" gives them an excuse.
And we know this because if the IP was the issue, they wouldn't let you use the site at all, but they will work fine after signing in. Any of these VPNs work as long as you're logged into reddit, even with a throwaway account.
I'd just be grateful you found Lemmy. I suspect Reddit is mostly bot spam at this point hidden as real users. Sucks that so many old posts are now being gatekept, a pinnacle of the real enshittification that's happening right now.
It's just sometimes it feels a bit lonely in my main communities. I'm a francophone Quebecois and there isn't a lot of us on Lemmy. Most of them didn't seem to care about the whole API thing and don't seem to care about the bots and the AI either.
The Quebecois are creatures of habit and one they've settled down on something it's hard to make them change.
VPNs in general and for quite a long time now.
You can use LibRedirect to use a different frontend (please note that a lot of the alternative instances for other sites are pretty much broken).
If you just want to browse Reddit and have a user script extension installed, you can use LibReddit Redirector to browse via a third-party frontend without turning off your VPN.
The internet is becoming worst and worst to use everyday with a VPN. Using Private Browsing... on Firefox? That's a triple signal for you to fuck off from any stock traded company's website.
I have Proton VPN on my phone, I use RedReader app to browse reddit, works fine. I havent used my laptop in a long time, I'll have to see what happens, has Proton VPN also. I have a paid plan with them.
Second comment, the only browser I got this message on my laptop is Mull, but Firefox w/o addons, Brave browser and Tor all allowed me to view reddit dot com with my VPN on. With Tor you can visit their onion site.
My guess is it’s to reduce scraping. A single bad actor can swap between IPs from VPN providers easily. They also seem to ban blocks of IPs since both my colocated server IP (had it since 2019) and PureVPN dedicated IP (recent) are blocked despite me being the only user. Forcing account creation adds an extra step and way they can block you.
That would surprise me. Companies like Akamai maintain very up-to-date lists of Tor exit nodes, commercial VPN exit nodes, etc. My employer uses Akamai and blocks all traffic from Tor given the huge volume of malicious traffic coming from it. It would be trivial for us to block VPN traffic as well if we wanted to. Those blocks occur on Akamai’s systems before it ever makes it to ours. No browser-based tool is going to get around an IP based block like that.
No idea if Reddit is doing something similar here, but my guess is they are.
Just make a throwaway account. The VPNs work fine when you're signed in.
I know that's not an acceptable answer for some but if they want to associate your activity with a throwaway account, let them, because they still have no way of knowing which person on the VPN is using that throwaway account.
No I deleted my Reddit account for a reason. I just go sneak sometimes to see what's happening in my old community. Sometimes steal some posts and put them up here.
Really? I use PIA all the time and haven’t had any issues with normal internet usage including reddit. Wirst I get is google making me check a captcha box once in a while.