Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by pantalaimon 75 days ago
I don't know anyone who goes through the trouble to spoof their user agent and I know plenty Linux users.
4 comments

Unfortunately I have to use some government websites which refuse to work when my user agent contains "Linux x86_64". So I just always spoof it.
This is the reality - most people won't spoof until they figure out it's the way to make a specific site work; and then they'll likely spoof for everything.
I'd also like to add that we forget that we're doing it, or at least I do. Once you set something up like that, there's never any reason to get rid of it; nobody is positively discriminating towards Linux.
I love when a ruleset (firewall, for example) has a "comments" field because I inevitably forget why I added something and then Chesterton's fence means I leave it forever, lest I spend hours a year later wondering why something broke.
Every time I try to change my user agent with a FF extension I get hit with brutal cloudflare captcha loops. How are you changing your user agent in a way that this is not a problem?
The archwiki Firefox privacy guide comes to mind, which mentions UA spoofing:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Firefox/Privacy

Actual reason: SBC retro handheld consoles now run Linux and people are using them to play steam indie games. The China holiday had some blow out pricing.

Non primary devices more likely to run Linux. Primary still windows.

I do, to access YouTube TV on my Ubuntu HTPC.
Tons of people did and do this to get higher resolution on a certain streaming site.