Problems with Facebook on public RSS-Bridge instances #2047

em92 · 2021-04-04T09:57:26Z

Due to many recent You must be logged in to view this page. This is not supported by RSS-Bridge issues coming from Facebook users (#2041, comments from #2014, #2037) I investigated those issues more clearly.

If I open "https://www.facebook.com/facebook/posts" from my home laptop, everything is fine posts are returned.
If I open "https://www.facebook.com/facebook/posts" from my public instance (https://feed.eugenemolotov.ru), it will return redirect to login page.

Looks like FacebookBridge has the same problems as InstagramBridge (#1891), which breaks using FacebookBridge on public RSS-Bridge instances.

Possible solutions for users (same as in metioned InstagramBridge):

Deploy RSS-Bridge on your personal PC or laptop and use FacebookBridge from there.
Deploy RSS-Bridge on your VPS, make sure that only certain people use it and use FacebookBridge from there.

The text was updated successfully, but these errors were encountered:

grivanov · 2021-04-04T12:53:05Z

Thank you very much for investigating. I'm using shared hosting for mine and it's folder protected so only I have access, but it probably just checks the IP and since it's shared hosting, it's heavily used. May have to pay for a private IP in that case.

mrtpcet · 2021-04-04T18:10:10Z

I installed it on my vps (Infomaniak, Switzerland) and I am the only one using it. Unfortunately it doesn't work either.
I tried to visit a Facebook page with Firefox and it automatically redirects me to the login page.

arcctgx · 2021-04-05T14:17:42Z

I'm running my single-user RSS Bridge instance on Digital Ocean, and feeds which were giving me error 500 since April 1st just started working again. Let's see for how long...

Edit: stopped working two hours later.

Noutladeesse · 2021-04-06T13:36:33Z

I am having exactly this problem for 1 week. Over 100 feeds created through Facebook main site bridge result in errors. I am using my personal laptop, so this cannot be the reason.
Yesterday, 3 feeds (out of the 100+) delivered lots of previous missed articles ; today, only 1 out of 100+ is working. Looks like it is random and erratic.
I am using them to deliver a daily news digest, it's been 1 week I cannot do it properly and need to check all sources 1 by 1. It is not efficient and time-consuming. What should I do?

tstanbur · 2021-04-06T15:38:40Z

If I open "https://www.facebook.com/facebook/posts" from my home laptop, everything is fine posts are returned.
If I open "https://www.facebook.com/facebook/posts" from my public instance (https://feed.eugenemolotov.ru), it will return redirect to login page.

Hi @em92 ,

If you remove the /posts part of the url then you don't get the login page show, even on a public instance.

eg

https://www.facebook.com/facebook/posts (redirect to login page)

https://www.facebook.com/facebook (no redirect, page content shown).

Did you try that?

ghost · 2021-04-07T11:58:22Z

@tstanbur I have the same problem than @Noutladeesse I dont understand how I can modify https://www.facebook.com/facebook/posts to https://www.facebook.com/facebook, I have an rss feed without facebook inside.

tstanbur · 2021-04-07T12:05:52Z

@tstanbur I have the same problem than @Noutladeesse I dont understand how I can modify https://www.facebook.com/facebook/posts to https://www.facebook.com/facebook, I have an rss feed without facebook inside.

I have the same issue too!

I was just trying to help fix it, hopefully @em92 can (I think he's the author?)

ghost · 2021-04-07T12:10:19Z

@tstanbur understand, my english is too poor. :)

Noutladeesse · 2021-04-07T14:50:27Z

@tstanbur understand, my english is too poor. :)

@cborne : @tstanbur a le même problème que nous bien que ses RSS feeds ne soient pas de feeds de Facebook, il demande si @em92 est l'auteur et s'il peut nous aider à résoudre le problème (je traduis !)

ghost · 2021-04-07T14:52:57Z

@Noutladeesse merci j'ai fini par comprendre par la suite, au départ je ne comprenais pas ce que faisaient les urls en facebook au milieu mais il s'agit d'une proposition de correction pour @em92. L'anglais c'est pas vraiment comme le vélo, quand tu le pratiques pas ça revient pas tout seul. :)

Noutladeesse · 2021-04-07T15:01:14Z

@Noutladeesse merci j'ai fini par comprendre par la suite, au départ je ne comprenais pas ce que faisaient les urls en facebook au milieu mais il s'agit d'une proposition de correction pour @em92. L'anglais c'est pas vraiment comme le vélo, quand tu le pratiques pas ça revient pas tout seul. :)

:-D
Oui c'est une proposition de correction, mais ça ne marche pas pour les feeds déjà créés.

woj-tek · 2021-04-08T05:32:00Z

Just another small "me too". I'm running RSS-Bridge on my personal VPS (only user) since a long while (~2 years) and I'm also affected by the issue. It started about 1-2 weeks ago, then it started working on Monday and was ok for about 2 days and now it stopped again.

It does seem like an Facebook action to block RSS-Bridge (probably with their silly reasoning that this would somehow make the people go back to using their awful service…)

RealDutchie · 2021-04-08T18:01:06Z

Here just one more ''me too''. I specifically signed up here on Github to ask a few things about the Facebook bridge. Until last week, I had been using a public host from Eugene Molotov to my full satisfaction for about a year (thanks a lot). I don't have any technical background, so it is sometimes difficult for me to be able to keep up with all the terms that come up with this topic here.

I wonder if the above and below option mentioned by em92 still works and how I could get it running on my own PC:

Deploy RSS-Bridge on your personal PC or laptop and use FacebookBridge from there.

I would be very happy if I could still use the Facebook Bridge in this way, but I am not sure if this still works and how to install it on my own PC. I have looked through github quite a bit, but unfortunately I can't figure it out myself, which is why I decided to sign up.

If users could confirm or deny that this feature still works, I would be happy with that. Then my next question would be how I can best put the bridge on my own PC or who I can ask for help or get information how to do so. I also think it would be a very good idea to start a donation fund to get a developer to maintain the facebook bridge and make also the instagram bridge work again. That way, we can all contribute to get our beloved feeds going again. Greetings from the Netherlands and thanks for your great work over the years!

hellmachine2000 · 2021-04-08T22:11:12Z

Same here. Since April I got different errors in the same Feeds, like:

"Facebook Bridge | Main Site was unable to receive or process the remote website's content!
Error message: `You must be logged in to view this page. This is not supported by RSS-Bridge."

"Facebook Bridge | Main Site was unable to receive or process the remote website's content!
Error message: `The requested resource cannot be found!"

"Facebook Bridge | Main Site was unable to receive or process the remote website's content!
Error message: Call to a member function children() on null
Query string: action=display&bridge=Facebook&u=hyperlitemountaingear&media_type=all&limit=1000&format=Atom
Version: dev.2020-11-10"
Latest version of RSS-Bridge…

ghost · 2021-04-09T02:08:36Z

I've been having these errors as well and I found that changing the cache_timeout parameter in FacebookBridge seems to reset the bridge, but it only works for a little while. I've tried 86400, 43200, 21600, 1, 0, and even eliminating the parameter. Somehow resetting the cache every time the bridge is called might be the solution to this problem?

Noutladeesse · 2021-04-09T07:26:50Z

I've been having these errors as well and I found that changing the cache_timeout parameter in FacebookBridge seems to reset the bridge, but it only works for a little while. I've tried 86400, 43200, 21600, 1, 0, and even eliminating the parameter. Somehow resetting the cache every time the bridge is called might be the solution to this problem?

Thank you for suggesting @Mthmgcn05
How do you reset the cache? (I am not an IT professional, only a user)

ghost · 2021-04-09T12:00:26Z

After more testing and thought, it may be every time I redeployed, it worked for five minutes, so that could have been resetting it.

miwcz · 2021-04-09T21:40:29Z

It's seems that adding cookie "c_user=XXXX" where XXXX is my ID from Facebook cookie helped. I don't know how to add this only via Bridge, so I did it via contents.php for all requests, which is really bad, but... maybe it's the way for better solution :-)

EDIT: False alarm, not working again...

em92 · 2021-04-10T08:21:44Z

@miwcz on my public instance I used c_user and xs values. Quick and dirty patch looks like this:

diff --git a/bridges/FacebookBridge.php b/bridges/FacebookBridge.php
index c03de4e..fafeabd 100644
--- a/bridges/FacebookBridge.php
+++ b/bridges/FacebookBridge.php
@@ -174,6 +174,8 @@ class FacebookBridge extends BridgeAbstract {
 		} else {
 			$header = array();
 		}
+		$header[] = 'Cookie: c_user=xxxx; xs=yyyy;';
+
 
 		$touchURI = str_replace(
 			'https://www.facebook',
@@ -560,11 +562,15 @@ EOD;
 				$header = array();
 			}
 
+			$header[] = 'Cookie: c_user=xxxx; xs=yyyy;';
+
+
 			$html = getSimpleHTMLDOM($this->getURI(), $header)
 				or returnServerError('No results for this query.');
 
 		}
 
 		// Handle captcha form?
 		$captcha = $html->find('div.captcha_interstitial', 0);

So far, so good.

em92 · 2021-04-10T08:23:44Z

So far, so good.

I meant it is working on my instance at the moment.

em92 · 2021-04-10T08:45:12Z

@tstanbur

hopefully @em92 can (I think he's the author?)

I am not author of this bridge. I maintain RSS-Bridge in general (reviewing pull requests, pinging bridge maintainers in issues) and bridges for Pikabu and Vk.

Usually maintainer of the bridge does fix bugs, but we don't have maintainer for Facebook bridge. I have little time to fix bugs in bridges, that I don't maintain.

miwcz · 2021-04-10T11:25:17Z

I have 20+ facebook feeds and this is working only for 4-5 first requests. It seems that facebook is blocking mutliple requests after short while.

Noutladeesse · 2021-04-10T19:58:02Z

@tstanbur

hopefully @em92 can (I think he's the author?)

I am not author of this bridge. I maintain RSS-Bridge in general (reviewing pull requests, pinging bridge maintainers in issues) and bridges for Pikabu and Vk.

Usually maintainer of the bridge does fix bugs, but we don't have maintainer for Facebook bridge. I have little time to fix bugs in bridges, that I don't maintain.

Is there anyone who maintains Facebook bridge? @em92

em92 · 2021-04-11T01:39:26Z

I meant it is working on my instance at the moment.

Now it does not. Facebook disabled my account 'cos my account violates it's community standards. It pursuaded me to upload my photo (I did it, the real photo of me) and now I am waiting for reviewing.

em92 · 2021-04-11T01:43:04Z

@Noutladeesse

Is there anyone who maintains Facebook bridge?

No.

pin-grid-array · 2021-04-11T17:32:48Z

I don't have any new information to add that other users haven't already discussed. I'm only here to say that it is happening to me too. I am running FB Bridge on Heroku and using Feedly to save the feeds. I started getting Bridge returned error 500! around the beginning of April.

Some feeds only get the error occasionally. Other feeds keep getting the error constantly, which makes those feeds useless.

Example error message:

Facebook Bridge | Main Site was unable to receive or process the remote website's content!
Error message: `You must be logged in to view this page. This is not supported by RSS-Bridge.`
Query string: `action=display&bridge=Facebook&context=User&u=[REDACTED]&media_type=all&limit=-1&format=Atom`
Version: `dev.2020-02-26`

    Press Return to check your input parameters
    Press F5 to retry
    Check if this issue was already reported on GitHub (give it a thumbs-up)
    Open a GitHub Issue if this error persists

teromene, logmanoriginal

INPoppoRTUNE · 2022-04-06T10:52:25Z

@dvikan Is the Facebook bridge still broken? Is it still without a maintainer? I cannot find the maintainers list anymore here on GitHub.

triatic · 2022-04-06T11:26:00Z

It was totally broken for me as soon as Facebook instigated an IP address block on cloud computing providers.

INPoppoRTUNE · 2022-04-06T11:31:50Z

It was totally broken for me as soon as Facebook instigated an IP address block on cloud computing providers.

For me too.
I'd like to know if any maintainer has worked on this problem since then (due to the issue management done 10 days ago) and if it makes sense to re-test the bridge or will I face the same issues?

mwalbeck · 2022-04-06T11:55:05Z

Same here, I initially solved it by hosting the bridge at home. Though a few months after that Facebook migrated the pages I was monitoring to the new design which requires javascript to load, which of course completely broke the bridge. So as the new Facebook site is being rolled out, fewer pages will function and at some point the bridge will be completely borked.

Bockiii · 2022-04-06T19:01:59Z

Facebook is one of the hardest to maintain and it also has a few key limiters, even if it's maintained. Public instances almost always run into some form of facebook detection, so it's barely possible to keep it working for the people who run it at home.

Also, because facebook is constantly evolving and doing rolling releases, one feed might work while the other is broken, because fb changed the site underneath.

mdemoss · 2022-09-13T04:06:28Z

Is there currently a way to rate-limit locally? That is, prevent my self-hosted bridge from making too many requests to a given site too quickly? I'd probably also need my feed reader to refresh feeds in a random order.

triatic · 2022-09-13T12:20:20Z

@mdemoss you can increase CACHE_TIMEOUT in the bridge code.

mdemoss · 2022-09-15T17:05:49Z

@mdemoss you can increase CACHE_TIMEOUT in the bridge code.

That would be a timeout per URL, right? I'm thinking a timeout per domain might be necessary since some of these sites are pretty aggressive about rate-limiting.

triatic · 2022-09-15T18:04:00Z

@mdemoss you can increase CACHE_TIMEOUT in the bridge code.

That would be a timeout per URL, right? I'm thinking a timeout per domain might be necessary since some of these sites are pretty aggressive about rate-limiting.

CACHE_TIMEOUT is per domain since it applies to every URL on that bridge.

dvikan · 2022-10-06T19:42:44Z

As far as I can tell the facebook posts tab is forever gone. E.g.

https://www.facebook.com/eminem/posts

https://www.facebook.com/ladygaga/posts

https://www.facebook.com/Starbucks/posts

They all redirect to the main page which is an unscrapable SPA

triatic · 2022-10-06T21:03:19Z

Data is fetched via a POST request to https://www.facebook.com/api/graphql/

Finding the correct request payload could be a challenge.

dvikan · 2022-10-06T21:23:09Z

We need someone with very much perseverance and patience to scrape the graphql api.

juanjosepablos · 2022-10-14T06:41:15Z

Maybe get some ideas from other projects:
https://github.com/kevinzg/facebook-scraper

somini · 2023-07-06T22:02:25Z

Maybe get some ideas from other projects: https://github.com/kevinzg/facebook-scraper

That doesn't seem to work for me, from a normal residential IP.

em92 pinned this issue Apr 4, 2021

This was referenced Apr 4, 2021

Facebook Bridge | error 500 #2041

Closed

Facebook new design broke bridge #2014

Closed

Facebook Bridge | Main Site failed with error 500 #2043

Closed

dvikan mentioned this issue Jul 31, 2022

Facebook Bridge | Main Site failed with error 404 #2937

Closed

dvikan mentioned this issue Oct 5, 2022

Facebook Bridge | Main Site failed with error 0 #3026

Closed

dvikan mentioned this issue Jul 21, 2023

BretzSelle-259650114048517 | Facebook failed with error 400 #3320

Closed

Problems with Facebook on public RSS-Bridge instances #2047

Problems with Facebook on public RSS-Bridge instances #2047

Comments

em92 commented Apr 4, 2021

grivanov commented Apr 4, 2021

mrtpcet commented Apr 4, 2021 • edited

arcctgx commented Apr 5, 2021 • edited

Noutladeesse commented Apr 6, 2021

tstanbur commented Apr 6, 2021 • edited

ghost commented Apr 7, 2021

tstanbur commented Apr 7, 2021

ghost commented Apr 7, 2021

Noutladeesse commented Apr 7, 2021

ghost commented Apr 7, 2021

Noutladeesse commented Apr 7, 2021

woj-tek commented Apr 8, 2021

RealDutchie commented Apr 8, 2021 • edited

hellmachine2000 commented Apr 8, 2021 • edited

ghost commented Apr 9, 2021

Noutladeesse commented Apr 9, 2021

ghost commented Apr 9, 2021

miwcz commented Apr 9, 2021 • edited

em92 commented Apr 10, 2021

em92 commented Apr 10, 2021 • edited

em92 commented Apr 10, 2021

miwcz commented Apr 10, 2021

Noutladeesse commented Apr 10, 2021

em92 commented Apr 11, 2021

em92 commented Apr 11, 2021

pin-grid-array commented Apr 11, 2021

INPoppoRTUNE commented Apr 6, 2022

triatic commented Apr 6, 2022

INPoppoRTUNE commented Apr 6, 2022

mwalbeck commented Apr 6, 2022

Bockiii commented Apr 6, 2022

mdemoss commented Sep 13, 2022

triatic commented Sep 13, 2022

mdemoss commented Sep 15, 2022

triatic commented Sep 15, 2022 • edited

dvikan commented Oct 6, 2022 • edited

triatic commented Oct 6, 2022

dvikan commented Oct 6, 2022

juanjosepablos commented Oct 14, 2022

somini commented Jul 6, 2023

mrtpcet commented Apr 4, 2021 •

edited

arcctgx commented Apr 5, 2021 •

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tstanbur commented Apr 6, 2021 •

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RealDutchie commented Apr 8, 2021 •

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hellmachine2000 commented Apr 8, 2021 •

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miwcz commented Apr 9, 2021 •

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em92 commented Apr 10, 2021 •

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triatic commented Sep 15, 2022 •

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dvikan commented Oct 6, 2022 •

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