Please stop blocking VPNS

  • unixandria

    (@unixandria)


    4 months ago

    Parts of wordpress.org block VPN usage, I get a 429 with it on.

    This seems antithetical to WordPress’s own mission.

    Please stop blocking VPNs. Enumerating badness is a losing battle, and some users of WordPress may need to use a VPN to even access it.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
  • Thread Starter unixandria

    (@unixandria)

    4 months ago

    And – to boot – 429 is not a proper block error. It looks a lot like WordPress is trying to hide the fact it’s blocking you and it’s just coincidence that once you turn your VPN off (assuming you can even access the site without it) it just starts working.

    This is honestly so ridiculous it’s not even funny. WordPress is supposedly about freedom yada yada yada – and yet using a very popular anti-censorship tool prevents you from using the very website of the platform! Everything from Trac, to account management, to downloading WordPress is not possible with a VPN.

    • This reply was modified 4 months ago by unixandria.
    Moderator James Huff

    (@macmanx)

    4 months ago

    The 429 error happens when we get too many requests from the same place, and VPNs tend to congregate things through the same place, shared IPs abound.

    We aren’t actively blocking VPNs. We’re blocking IP addresses or ranges that are actively abusing our servers, and you happen to be sharing an IP address or range with a person or bot that’s actively abusing our servers.

    So, it is necessary for us. As a free open source project powered by volunteers and backed solely by donations to a non-profit foundation, we can’t just bring new servers online to mitigate active abuse or expect a volunteer to remain online every minute of the day to monitor.

    But, for you, there really is no general reason to use WordPress.org with VPN, especially when you’re already logged in and we know who you are.

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