Relevant xkcdsw (the first link in the comment): https://www.reddit.com/r/xkcd/comments/2wx9ws/today_i_discovered_xkcdsw/covb60y/

Now, why the hell would I link to a reddit comment instead of directly to the comic? Because for some reason, xkcdsw links on lemmy turn into links to a dodgy crypto site: http://xkcdsw.com/687

No idea why this happens - I remember this happening a few months back and I assumed that somehow xkcdsw had gotten hacked in between me fetching the link and other people replying, but just now I discovered that it works fine as long as you’re not following the link from my lemmy comment. Also, judging by replies the last time it happened, the direct link from lemmy does still work for some people. I assumed those people on the previous thread got in before the site got hacked, but now I wonder if it’s instance-specific. Is my instance just redirecting certain links to a crypto site for some reason? Or my app (jerboa)?

For those not seeing the redirect, the address bar claims it’s still xkcdsw, but the content appears to be from dogecoinaverage

The actual xkcdsw is just a shitpost, barely worth the two words and one link in my original comment, but the redirect is weird.

Edit: the fact that the link in the reddit comment works even via jerboa’s internal browser makes me think it’s the instance.

Edit 2: previous occurrence of this: https://lemmy.ml/comment/5379893 - it doesn’t seem to be instance-based, as someone on Feddit.de saw the redirect, but someone else on my instance did not

Edit 3: mystery solved(ish) - lemmy is silently changing the http to https (for some reason), which results in a different site (for some reason). I’ve alerted the xkcdsw owner to the problem via mastodon.