Stereogum links don't create a Onebox

If I paste this link, it should then become a Onebox, however it doesn’t.

https://www.stereogum.com/2292587/tobacco-city-autumn/music/

Discourse have a guide for fixing broken oneboxes, with the following steps:

  1. Validate that onebox requests work for the site :white_check_mark:

  2. Check that Discourse isn’t being blocked :x:
    In the preview above, I can see

Sorry, we were unable to generate a preview for this web page, because the web server returned an error code of 403. Instead of a preview, only a link will appear in your post. :cry:

So the request from Discourse is getting a 403 forbidden response which means that for some reason Stereogum are blocking onebox requests from Discourse.

I’ve messaged Stereogum about it to see what they say.

1 Like

Stereogum replied

We are experiencing some blocking of VPNs because of recent AWS security setting upgrades made to block spambots.
But we don’t intend to keep blocking VPNs and are working on it. But can you tell me what Onebox is?

Me

Onebox is a method of rendering SEO metadata into an iframe-like display, like you see on this site: Generate responsive embed codes - Iframely

Whenever the request is being made by any Discourse Meta sites (https://www.discourse.org), it gets a 403 response. Discourse themselves have created a troubleshooting page to try and resolve when this happens, which I am currently following Configuring and troubleshooting oneboxes - Site Management - Discourse Meta

They replied

Good to know! Ok we are troubleshooting this

3 Likes

I noticed that even iframely gets blocked with requests now, sent Stereogum another email to let them know.

They updated the entire website and this works now finally!

3 Likes

Wouldn’t get too excited looks like it’s going to a Hearing Things esque subscription model