Federation with lemmy communities breaking due to user agent identifying as browser.

2026-07-13 11:38:06

development@hubzilla.org

Saiwal wrote the following post Mon, 13 Jul 2026 11:38:06 +0200

Federation with lemmy communities breaking due to user agent identifying as browser.

my replies were being rejected by lemmy.world because they were identified as coming from a browser due to the user agent being `Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; zot)` and were presented with a challenge.
In discussion with lemmy.worlds admin it was suggested that hubzilla should use its url in user agent.

2026-07-13 15:57:46

Mario Vavti

mario@hub.somaton.com

@Hubzilla Development i changed the code some time ago to allow to set the useragent via an argument. This was because some diaspora pod redirected all traffic to some shady bot catching site except if the useragent had something diaspora in it.

We should probably make the default user agent configurable and default to something more common...

2026-07-14 10:35:08

Mario Vavti

mario@hub.somaton.com

Here are some examples...
Friendica:
Friendica/2026.05 DatabaseVersion/1595 Request/ActivityPub/1 +https://host.tld

Mastodon:
Mastodon/4.5.11 (http.rb/5.3.1; +https://host.tld/)

Peertube:
PeerTube/8.2.2 (+https://host.tld)

I like the peertube one because it does not overshare information.

2026-07-14 10:41:18

Der Pepe (Hubzilla) ⁂

pepecyb@hub.hubzilla.hu

@Hubzilla Development @Mario Vavti @Saiwal

Changing the user agent is a nice idea and can certainly make sense. But let’s look at the bigger picture:
It doesn’t change the actual problem. Suppose I change the user agent string so that it works with instance “A”; that, however, means it won’t work with instance “B” using that string, which expects a different string – which in turn won’t work with instance “C”…

How are we supposed to deal with that? Where will it end? “Floating user agent strings”?

You’ll never get to grips with this “gatekeepers against AI bots” nightmare this way. Anyone who puts their Fediverse server behind such a barrier has to accept that their instance is no longer fully integrated into the Fediverse.

2026-07-14 11:38:36

Mario Vavti

mario@hub.somaton.com

https://framagit.org/hubzilla/core/-/commit/3c2eb561182cd0234abc7076a264a827f9d52d18