I saw this post (via Dave Winer) about issues with the ability of feed readers to read feeds from websites hosted by or using Cloudflare. I ran into this problem in trying to access feeds from the Seattle Times website (eventually had to use Playwright to act as a web browser to download the files). This is especially sad for the Seattle Times, since it runs on WordPress. However, it is good to see this confirmation of this problem (interestingly, it was posted in 2024).
Cloudflare blocking RSS readers is especially frustrating when even a WordPress-based site like the Seattle Times is affected. Having to impersonate a web browser just to download a feed shows how badly these protections can undermine one of the web’s most useful open standards.
It’s frustrating that Cloudflare can block feed readers from accessing otherwise standard WordPress RSS feeds. The Seattle Times example shows how this pushes users toward browser-emulation workarounds just to retrieve content that should be openly machine-readable.
Cloudflare blocking feed readers is especially frustrating when even a WordPress-based site like the Seattle Times requires pretending to be a web browser just to retrieve its feed. The fact that this issue was confirmed in 2024 suggests it is more than an isolated configuration problem.
The Cloudflare issue is especially frustrating when even a WordPress site like the Seattle Times blocks ordinary feed readers. Having to imitate a web browser just to download the feed shows how badly these protections can undermine RSS.
Cloudflare blocking feed readers is especially frustrating when even a WordPress site like the Seattle Times requires a browser-like workaround to retrieve its RSS files. The 2024 confirmation suggests this has been a persistent compatibility problem rather than a one-off failure.
Cloudflare’s challenge pages can explain why feed readers fail even when the RSS feed itself is valid. It’s frustrating that accessing a feed may require workarounds instead of simply retrieving the published XML.