Posted under General
Recently, Lofter has started booting me to the login screen if I click to view a tag or a full artist page. While this fortunately doesn't disrupt looking at the artist's archive page or individual pages (meaning I can still upload from there painlessly), it does make life more difficult if I want to, say, add a new lofter link or just want to browse a tag for anything worth uploading. Anyone else having this issue? Or a solution?
I used https://www.lofter.com/tag/* until like two weeks ago, but yeah looks like it's not possible to browse tags without an account anymore.
I don't have a solution for browsing tags. For browsing blogs you can add /view to the URL, e.g. https://retsuretsu.lofter.com/view.
To automate this when visiting a blog you can use Redirector.
After installing the add-on, add a new rule:
| Description: | Lofter blog to blog archive |
| Example URL: | https://retsuretsu.lofter.com/ |
| Include pattern: | https://*.lofter.com/ |
| Redirect to: | https://$1.lofter.com/view |
The web API still works without authentication.
You can use this userscript to browse tags. Example URL: https://www.lofter.com/tag-workaround/%E9%8F%88%E7%B8%81. Scroll to the bottom or click Go to load more posts.
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ehh said:
The web API still works without authentication.
You can use this userscript to browse tags. Example URL: https://www.lofter.com/tag-workaround/%E9%8F%88%E7%B8%81. Scroll to the bottom or click Go to load more posts.
Nice.
Back to finding the only Arknights stuff there is on the internet. Thanks.
Thanks for that advice on /view.
The only downside is that the script you need to block to right click and view the full-size image without the same login redirect, also seems necessary to get the thumbnails to load in /view mode. But toggling scripts on and off all the time is still better than no access.
Nameless_Contributor said:
I don't have a solution for browsing tags. For browsing blogs you can add
/viewto the URL, e.g. https://retsuretsu.lofter.com/view.To automate this when visiting a blog you can use Redirector.
After installing the add-on, add a new rule:
Description: Lofter blog to blog archiveExample URL: https://retsuretsu.lofter.com/Include pattern: https://*.lofter.com/Redirect to: https://$1.lofter.com/view
Unfortunately this doesn't work anymore. They've now blocked the /view page for blogs if you're not logged in, but individual posts can still be accessed.
I noticed you can't use the bookmarklet on some Lofter posts as well. You have to open the image in a new tab and remove the thumbnail string.
Has anyone tried to create an account? I wanted to create one because navigation has become extremely painful with their new policy, but when I click on the "register" button it'll just redirect me to the login page. It looks like it's not possible to sign up anymore? I tried to look it up but I couldn't find anyone talking about this.
Normally, that would be the ideal solution. However, Chinese social media (Lofter included) have a terrible tendency to require a Chinese phone number, which...Yeah, good luck obtaining one. And who's to say they won't softlock your account for being a foreigner, like Weibo has? So finding a way around the login wall is generally the better solution in our case (unless you happen to be located in mainland China, which I sincerely doubt many people who use this site are going to be).
Although...If anyone does find a way to make an account as a foreigner, I'm all ears.
Maiden_in_Orange said:
Normally, that would be the ideal solution. However, Chinese social media (Lofter included) have a terrible tendency to require a Chinese phone number, which...Yeah, good luck obtaining one. And who's to say they won't softlock your account for being a foreigner, like Weibo has? So finding a way around the login wall is generally the better solution in our case (unless you happen to be located in mainland China, which I sincerely doubt many people who use this site are going to be).
Although...If anyone does find a way to make an account as a foreigner, I'm all ears.
What you said was right, chinese platforms have terrible policies obstructing navigation that are especially harmful to archive site like us, and sadly a lot of western sites are starting to implement similar approaches (yeah I’m definitely not talking about twitter). But I was referring to the fact that it is not even possible (for me) to access the registration page on Lofter. Clicking on "register" will redirect to the login page, despite the fact that the page address literally says https://www.lofter.com/front/register. It's not even asking me to use a chinese phone number, it's completely gone.
I want to know if it's just me or the same happens to everyone, cause just like when Weibo locked foreign accounts, it's hard to find people talking about this, it's like nobody's aware of it happening.
update: I was on desktop, just tried mobile, looks like it's still possible to register on mobile but a chinese phone number is required.
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magcolo said:
update: I was on desktop, just tried mobile, looks like it's still possible to register on mobile but a chinese phone number is required.
Don't you have a "邮箱" icon for registering via email?
I have one Chinese mail, Weibo and Lofter, so I can’t check whether the registration conditions have changed from previous years. Trying to register new data would require more effort (time) than I want to spend.
Dolmatov said:
Don't you have a "邮箱" icon for registering via email?
From what I can see. There is no "other sign-in options", but a "other log-in options" button (其他登录方式) is available and it displays a mail icon when you expend it. When you click on the mail icon it redirects you to another page which asks you to log-in with email. There is a "go to register" (去注册) button. If you click it, it'll redirect you to NetEase's site and ask you to register an email from their platform. Nowhere to sign up using your own email from another platform.
Dolmatov said:
I have one Chinese mail, Weibo and Lofter, so I can’t check whether the registration conditions have changed from previous years. Trying to register new data would require more effort (time) than I want to spend.
Pretty sure they're changed.
magcolo said:
What you said was right, chinese platforms have terrible policies obstructing navigation that are especially harmful to archive site like us, and sadly a lot of western sites are starting to implement similar approaches (yeah I’m definitely not talking about twitter). But I was referring to the fact that it is not even possible (for me) to access the registration page on Lofter. Clicking on "register" will redirect to the login page, despite the fact that the page address literally says https://www.lofter.com/front/register. It's not even asking me to use a chinese phone number, it's completely gone.
I want to know if it's just me or the same happens to everyone, cause just like when Weibo locked foreign accounts, it's hard to find people talking about this, it's like nobody's aware of it happening.update: I was on desktop, just tried mobile, looks like it's still possible to register on mobile but a chinese phone number is required.
Oh damn, like not let you register at all? Dear lord...What the actual fuck? I thought it was just Chinese platforms being obstructive as usual and not...this. Before all this went down, I've been seeing quite a few artists leaving Lofter too...Don't think they're related, but I wouldn't be shocked if something else was going on behind the scenes here. Something feels...Really fishy about this. Not sure what, but definitely something's amiss over there...
In any case, at least a mobile registration is better than nothing.
Maiden_in_Orange said:
Oh damn, like not let you register at all? Dear lord...What the actual fuck? I thought it was just Chinese platforms being obstructive as usual and not...this. Before all this went down, I've been seeing quite a few artists leaving Lofter too...Don't think they're related, but I wouldn't be shocked if something else was going on behind the scenes here. Something feels...Really fishy about this. Not sure what, but definitely something's amiss over there...
In any case, at least a mobile registration is better than nothing.
The artist incident was because Lofter introduced an AI avatar generator in early 2023, like everyone else, following the AI art trend. Problem is Lofter is an art site, so it got way more backlashes from its userbase than most sites because its userbase are the ones creating art and they 1. Already hate AI art, 2. Has suspicions that Lofter might be profiting from its users' work to train its AI generator. And some artists straight up abandoned their account. (I can't believe there are site runners this stupid *laughes*)
I'm not sure if the site changes are related to this or a coincidence. Either way a big trouble for us.
magcolo said:
The artist incident was because Lofter introduced an AI avatar generator in early 2023, like everyone else, following the AI art trend. Problem is Lofter is an art site, so it got way more backlashes from its userbase than most sites because its userbase are the ones creating art and they 1. Already hate AI art, 2. Has suspicions that Lofter might be profiting from its users' work to train its AI generator. And some artists straight up abandoned their account. (I can't believe there are site runners this stupid *laughes*)
I'm not sure if the site changes are related to this or a coincidence. Either way a big trouble for us.
I suspected the reason was related to AI, but sweet jesus, Lofter took a page right out of fucking DeviantArt's book. That's... Really bad, to put it mildly.
I don't know about you guys (much less if I'm just catastrophizing as I tend to in these situations), but I have a sneaking suspicion that Lofter might end up going the way of BCY sooner rather than later. This all feels really shady, and not just in a "keep the foreigners out" way. This whole thing is really really bad, and not just for us. I know plenty of people offbooru who like to browse Lofter for fandoms either originating from China or have a strong Chinese fanbase too. These people are effected just as badly as us.
I suppose the most we can do right now (barring anyone who can find a way around this) is what we do best: grab as much art up to our quality standards from there as we can, limitations or no.
After 3 months, I finally found a way to access and scroll the full artist page on Lofter without an account (Thanks, random Zerochan artist link). It’s like the “adding /view to the end of the URL” trick but the change is more complicated. The interface is a bit more difficult to navigate than the usual one, but maybe someone will need it, me included.
Example URL: http://shiraving.lofter.com/ —> https://www.lofter.com/front/blog/home-page/shiraving
There is a limit to how many posts you can see via this interface however, so for posts that lie further you can only access by manually going back with the arrow at the bottom of the post page.
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