After complaining about the lack of cache hits from feed readers, and figuring out why NewsBlur (that was doing the right thing), and then again fixing the problem, I started looking at what other readers kept being unfixed. It turned out that about a dozen people used to read my blog using Tiny Tiny RSS, a PHP-based personal feed reader for the web. I say “used to” because, as of 2017-08-17, TT-RSS is banned from accessing anything from my blog via ModSecurity rule.
The reason why I went to this extent is not merely technical, which is why you get the title of this blog the way it is. But it all started with me filing requests to support modern HTTP features for feeds, particularly regarding the semantics of permanent redirects, but also about the lack of If-Modified-Since, which allows significant reduction on the bandwidth usage of a blog¹. Now, the first response I got about the permanent redirect request was disappointing but it was a technical answer, so I provided more information. After that?
After that the responses stopped being focused on the technical issues, but rather appear to be – and that’s not terribly surprising in FLOSS of course – “not my problem”. Except, the answers also came from someone with a Pepe the Frog avatar.² And this is August of 2017, when America shown having a real Nazi problem, and willingly associating themselves to alt-right is effectively being Nazi sympathizers. The tone of the further answers also show that it is no mistake or misunderstanding.
You can read the two bugs here: ① and ②. Trigger warning: extreme right and ableist views ahead.
While I try to not spend too much time on political activism on my blog, there is a difference from debating whether universal basic income (or even universal health care) is a right nor not, and arguing for ethnic cleansing and the death of part of a population. So no, no way I’ll refrain from commenting or throwing a light on this kind of toxic behaviour from developers in the Free Software community. Particularly when they are not even holding these beliefs for themselves but effectively boasting them by using a loaded avatar on their official support forum.
So what you can do about this? If you get to read this post, and have subscribed to my blog through TT-RSS, you now know why you don’t get any updates from it. I would suggest you look for a new feed reader. I will as usual suggest NewsBlur, since its implementation is the best one out there. You can set it up by yourself, since it’s open source. Not only you will be cutting your support to Nazi sympathisers, but you also will save bandwidth for the web as a whole, by using a reader that actually implements the protocol correctly.
Update (2017-08-06): as pointed out in the comments by candrewswpi, FreshRSS is another option if you don’t want to set up NewsBlur (which admittedly may be a bit heavy). It uses PHP so it should be easier to migrate given the same or similar stack. It supports at least proper caching, but I’m not sure about the permanent redirects, it needs testing.
You could of course, as the developers said on those bugs, change the User-Agent string that TT-RSS reports, and keep using it to read my blog. But in that case, you’d be supporting Nazi sympathisers. If you don’t mind doing that, I may ask you a favour and stop reading my blog altogether. And maybe reconsider your life choices.
I’ll repeat here that the reason why I’m going to this extent is that there is a huge difference between the political opinions and debates that we can all have, and supporting Nazis. You don’t have to agree with my political point of view to read my blog, you don’t have to agree with me to talk with me or being my friend. But if you are a Nazi sympathiser, you can get lost.
¹ you could try to argue that in this day and age there is no point in worrying about bandwidth, but then you don’t get to ever complain about the existence of CDNs, or the fact that AMP and similar tools are “undemocratizing” the web.
² Update (2017-08-03): as many people have asked: no it’s not just any frog or any Pepe that automatically makes you a Nazi sympathisers. But the avatar was not one of the original illustrations, and the attitude of the commenter made it very clear what their “alignment” was. I mean, if they were fans of the original character, they would probably have the funeral scene as their avatar instead.