Bug: "gated" subreddits inaccessible via OAuth

https://www.reddit.com/r/redditdev/comments/tjl1c8/bug_gated_subreddits_inaccessible_via_oauth/

created by talklittle on 21/03/2022 at 20:21 UTC

7 upvotes, 1 top-level comments (showing 1)

There is a new HTTP 403 Forbidden reason: "gated" with a content warning for certain subreddits. For example /r/MorbidReality.

Normally your browser gets past it by doing a POST to `/gated` and Reddit sets a cookie with value:

_options={%22pref_gated_sr_optin%22:true};

This cookie works on api.reddit.com too. But the cookie is completely ignored on oauth.reddit.com. So there is no way to access these subreddits on OAuth while remaining unsubscribed to them. A poor workaround is to join the subreddit.

Really, the "gated" error should not apply to API clients. Cookies should not be involved.

Comments

Comment by Watchful1 at 21/03/2022 at 20:29 UTC

6 upvotes, 1 direct replies

There was a post here two days ago about this[1] that had a solution, but the author deleted it. I'll see if I can reproduce the solution.

1: https://www.reddit.com/r/redditdev/comments/thut8k/some_subreddits_api_are_gated_now/

Edit:

const https = require('https')
const options = {
  hostname: 'api.reddit.com',
  path: '/r/MorbidReality/about',
  headers: {
    'user-agent': 'test user agent',
    cookie: 'edgebucket=; _options={%22pref_gated_sr_optin%22:true}',
  },
}\
const req = https.request(options, res =&gt; {
  res.on('data', d =&gt; {
    process.stdout.write(d)
  })
})
req.end()

There's the code he had. So looks like you can get it working if you format the cookie the right way.