randomsnark

Goodbye

U

Aha, thanks! I guess that concludes this thread, as I don't really expect to get a dev chiming in explaining why.

It's not my preferred way of handling it but I don't have the energy to make a fuss. I guess if I click a link that needs to be http, I'll copy it to a browser, and if I post one I'll remind others to do the same. Probably won't come up often enough to care about.

At least you've satisfied my curiosity as to what was going on 😀

Edit: I was repeatedly told while trying to post this comment that the request timeout had expired. When the error stopped appearing, I had posted 4 copies of this message. I have deleted them but I apologize if they still spam your inbox as [deleted] or something.

Thanks for looking into this thoroughly, and for correctly noting what's causing the situation with my specific example.

I contacted Two9A about his weird configuration before I made my original post, but have yet to get a reply from them. The specific example of xkcdsw is a separate issue unrelated to jerboa.

My main question was what is causing http links opened on lemmy through jerboa to redirect to https links - whether that is being done by the app or the instance or what. If it is the intended behavior of the jerboa app, I'm curious as to why it doesn't leave the protocol up to the commenter.

Did you click the links before telling me that's not how it works though? Other people are reporting the same result. I also get the same result on both my phone and desktop. Seems like two clicks would be less trouble than finding sources to back up a condescending and inaccurate response.

Here is some information supporting the fact that URLs can work that way (although the two links you quoted but did not click on from my original post already demonstrate that): https://superuser.com/questions/792202/different-website-at-https-then-at-http

Edit: bear in mind that to reproduce the behavior, you might need to type the http into your browser manually if you are using jerboa.

Yeah, I suspect it's a jerboa problem. I've posted about it on the jerboa community now.

Edit: Confirmed. Jerboa's source code uses a plugin to force all links to be opened as https.

under what circumstances have you peeled a lemon

Super late, but I figured it out because it happened again in a more recent comment. Lemmy seems to automatically change the links to https instead of http, even when http was explicitly included in the url. Somehow, xkcdsw is a completely different site on https than on http. If you copy the link into an external browser and remove the s, the link works as intended. I can only assume this is a behavior of the lemmy app(s), which is why it didn't affect some users. Were you using jerboa?

Relevant xkcdsw (the first link in the comment): https://www.reddit.com/r/xkcd/comments/2wx9ws/today_i_discovered_xkcdsw/covb60y/

Now, why the hell would I link to a reddit comment instead of directly to the comic? Because for some reason, xkcdsw links on lemmy turn into links to a dodgy crypto site: http://xkcdsw.com/687

No idea why this happens - I remember this happening a few months back and I assumed that somehow xkcdsw had gotten hacked in between me fetching the link and other people replying, but just now I discovered that it works fine as long as you're not following the link from my lemmy comment. Also, judging by replies the last time it happened, the direct link from lemmy does still work for some people. I assumed those people on the previous thread got in before the site got hacked, but now I wonder if it's instance-specific. Is my instance just redirecting certain links to a crypto site for some reason? Or my app (jerboa)?

For those not seeing the redirect, the address bar claims it's still xkcdsw, but the content appears to be from dogecoinaverage

The actual xkcdsw is just a shitpost, barely worth the two words and one link in my original comment, but the redirect is weird.

Edit: the fact that the link in the reddit comment works even via jerboa's internal browser makes me think it's the instance.

Edit 2: previous occurrence of this: https://lemmy.ml/comment/5379893 - it doesn't seem to be instance-based, as someone on Feddit.de saw the redirect, but someone else on my instance did not

Edit 3: mystery solved(ish) - lemmy is silently changing the http to https (for some reason), which results in a different site (for some reason). I've alerted the xkcdsw owner to the problem via mastodon.

Edit 4: this is gonna look really confusing now that two9a has fixed the xkcdsw https situation. Like "what is this comment even talking about?" Trust me, it made sense up until about 10 minutes ago. Oh, also I confirmed that jerboa is the what changes all http links to https.