12/17/2023, 2:10:12 PM
Reddit currently blocks access from VPN ("Whoa there, pardner!" message). However, old.reddit.com is unaffected, except for image. Direct image links like https://i.redd.it/yf54x6mhfq4c1.jpg will be redirected to the main reddit domain (i.e. https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https://i.redd.it/yf54x6mhfq4c1.jpg), where the access is blocked.
I found that the redirection happens only when the browser requests for a html mime types. Compare the following:
$ curl 'https://i.redd.it/yf54x6mhfq4c1.jpg'
Warning: Binary output can mess up your terminal. Use "--output -" to tell
Warning: curl to output it to your terminal anyway, or consider "--output
Warning: <FILE>" to save to a file.
$ curl 'https://i.redd.it/yf54x6mhfq4c1.jpg' -H 'Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/avif,image/jxl,image/webp,*/*;q=0.8'
(307 redirected)
This script fixes that by rewriting the "Whoa pardner" page with a single image element pointing to that image.