Reddit: Fails to pull with 403: Blocked

Checklist

• I'm reporting a broken site support
• I've verified that I'm running youtube-dl version 2021.12.17 2025.11.26
• I've checked that all provided URLs are alive and playable in a browser
• I've checked that all URLs and arguments with special characters are properly quoted or escaped
• I've searched the bugtracker for similar issues including closed ones

Verbose log

$ youtube-dl -a pull.txt --verbose
[debug] System config: []
[debug] User config: []
[debug] Custom config: []
[debug] Command-line args: ['-a', 'pull.txt', '--verbose']
[debug] Batch file urls: ['https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/1t4920m/latvian_passport_under_uv_light_good_luck_to/', 'https://www.reddit.com/r/creepy/comments/1sgc7r1/the_sound_of_antipersonnel_drones_hunting_you/', 'https://www.reddit.com/r/fixedbytheduet/comments/1u50s38/the_good_men_are_busy_long_live_gondor/', 'https://www.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/1u4xao2/the_way_this_bird_takes_off/', 'https://www.reddit.com/r/OneOrangeBraincell/comments/1u533wu/are_you_comfortable/', 'https://www.reddit.com/r/memes/comments/1u3pko9/five_minute_crafts/', 'https://www.reddit.com/r/oddlysatisfying/comments/1u3ncal/expert_woodworking/', 'https://www.reddit.com/r/BeAmazed/comments/1tsw2yg/a_dog_herding_sheep/', 'https://www.reddit.com/r/JustGuysBeingDudes/comments/1szri18/asking_important_questions/', 'https://www.reddit.com/r/videogames/comments/1szq6ov/accurate/', 'https://www.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/1t3662r/what_happens_when_you_inflate_a_body_at_depth_and/', 'https://www.reddit.com/r/justgalsbeingchicks/comments/1t3by6z/this_is_so_wholesome/', 'https://www.reddit.com/r/JustGuysBeingDudes/comments/1tijq0u/hes_kinda_genius/']
[debug] Encodings: locale UTF-8, fs utf-8, out utf-8, pref UTF-8
[debug] youtube-dl version 2025.11.26 [956b8c585] (single file build)
[debug] ** This version was built from the latest master code at https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl.
[debug] ** For support, visit the main site.
[debug] Python 3.10.12 (CPython x86_64 64bit) - Linux-6.9.3-76060903-generic-x86_64-with-glibc2.35 - OpenSSL 3.0.2 15 Mar 2022 - glibc 2.35
[debug] exe versions: ffmpeg 4.4.2, ffprobe 4.4.2
[debug] Proxy map: {}
[RedditR] 1t4920m: Downloading JSON metadata
ERROR: Unable to download JSON metadata: HTTP Error 403: Blocked (caused by <HTTPError 403: 'Blocked'>); please report this issue on https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues , using the appropriate issue template. Make sure you are using the latest version; type  youtube-dl -U  to update. Be sure to call youtube-dl with the --verbose option and include the complete output.
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py", line 682, in _request_webpage
    return self._downloader.urlopen(url_or_request)
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 2499, in urlopen
    return self._opener.open(req, timeout=self._socket_timeout)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.10/urllib/request.py", line 525, in open
    response = meth(req, response)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.10/urllib/request.py", line 634, in http_response
    response = self.parent.error(
  File "/usr/lib/python3.10/urllib/request.py", line 563, in error
    return self._call_chain(*args)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.10/urllib/request.py", line 496, in _call_chain
    result = func(*args)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.10/urllib/request.py", line 643, in http_error_default
    raise HTTPError(req.full_url, code, msg, hdrs, fp)

Description

Downloading videos from Reddit errors out with an error 403: Blocked. Reddit has absolutely worked before, but now it's obviously blocking YTDL. I verified every video in the batch file is active and playable in the browser before putting it in there.

Additionally, trying to specify a custom user agent gave the same error. This value was pulled directly from my browser making another request to Reddit:

$ youtube-dl -a pull.txt --verbose --user-agent 'Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:151.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/151.0'