I noticed some time ago that three Mastodon features had stopped working on my blog. Each of them seemed like a separate problem, but they had the same root cause. In this blog post, I aim to describe these issues and propose a simple solution.   Domain verification   Mastodon allows you to prove that you own a domain.

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A Java geek

Three Mastodon features stopped working on a blog: domain verification, post preview cards, and author attribution. All three rely on Mastodon's server crawling the page. The blog runs behind Cloudflare with Bot Fight Mode enabled, which blocked Mastodon's crawler because it runs on Hetzner infrastructure — IP addresses that carry a high threat score in Cloudflare's database. Cloudflare served a JavaScript challenge that Mastodon's HTTP client couldn't solve, causing all three features to silently fail. The fix is simply turning off Bot Fight Mode in the Cloudflare dashboard, which is low-value protection for a public static blog anyway.

Three Mastodon issues because of Cloudflare Bot protection