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Substack Subdomain Obfuscating Text

  1. Investigating(current)
  2. Trending(upcoming)
  3. Workaround available(upcoming)
  4. Resolved(upcoming)

Executive summary

A hackernews post reports that enabling Chrome reading mode on an article from the Substack subdomain results in unspaced text. The original page source shows obfuscated HTML entities like <span>Will</span><span></span><span>crypto</span><span></span><span>crash</span><span></span>. This issue affects all users who use reading mode on Substack articles.

No verified workaround yet

None of the linked reports describe a mitigation. Follow this incident to hear when one appears.

Technical root cause

Under active investigation. No report has identified a root cause yet.

Evidence

1 report · 1 HNShow
  1. [1]
    HN First report
    Tell HN: Substack obfuscating text to break reading mode(opens Hacker News thread in a new tab)

    I enabled Chrome reading mode for an article (https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/will-crypto-crash-the-blue-wave fwiw) on Substack and was confronted with an unspaced mess of text. Inspecting the original page revealed source like :<span>Will</span><span> </span><span>crypto</span><span> </span><span>crash</span><span> </span><span>the</span><span> </span>

    by xnx 20upvotes 4comments

Timeline

  1. First report on Hacker News thread

    Tell HN: Substack obfuscating text to break reading mode

    Source