No observation photos loading on iNat pages since iNat power outage

Please fill out the following sections to the best of your ability, it will help us investigate bugs if we have this information at the outset. Screenshots are especially helpful, so please provide those if you can.

Platform (Android, iOS, Website): Mac 12.3.1

App version number, if a mobile app issue (shown under Settings or About):

Browser, if a website issue (Firefox, Chrome, etc) : Safari

URLs (aka web addresses) of any relevant observations or pages: https://www.inaturalist.org/home, https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&user_id=annwf&verifiable=any, https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/fig-buttercup-in-the-triad

Screenshots of what you are seeing (instructions for taking a screenshot on computers and mobile devices: https://www.take-a-screenshot.org/):




Description of problem (please provide a set of steps we can use to replicate the issue, and make as many as you need.):

Step 1: Open iNat and log in as user AnnWF

Step 2: Click on “Your Observations”

Step 3: No photo observations appear on the login page, my observations page, or the Project page for Fig Buttercup in the Triad, or any other page that I have tried since the iNat power outage.

Step 4: I tried to upload new observations. When I dragged the photo into iNat, the thumbnail was visible. After iNat finished searching for an ID for the photo, the photo disappeared. I opened Java script and took a screenshot of that as well.

I read other bug reports and took a screenshot showing the Java script. I downloaded Firefox to see if the problem occurred with another browser; it did, I had the same problem of no photos loading. I also tried using my iPad and my iPhone to access iNaturalist; they also show the same problem.

Is AT&T your internet service provider? If so, this is likely the issue: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/creative-common-licensed-photos-not-loading-at-t/34760

1 Like

I just went through this. It’s been occurring for me for a few days, but I haven’t kept track exactly. Followed the step by step in the link (the answer is several posts down) with creating an exception for amazon aws, and now all pics are visible the way they should be.

3 Likes

Yes, I have AT&T fiber, and yes, this was the issue. I have the Smart Home Manager app on my iPhone, but I did not get any messages saying that websites had been blocked. I talked to a technician at AT&T and she disabled AT&T ActiveArmor, a free security feature that comes with the account. That solved the problem – I can see the observation photos now that Amazon web services are not blocked. I did alert the technician to the fact that several iNaturalist users who have AT&T fiber are having the same problem She said she would bring the issue to a team meeting and the problem with blocking Amazon web services would be investigated.
It is possible to disable Active Armour with the Smart Home Manager. Once you sign in to the app, and the app has finished checking your internet service, click the settings icon on the bottom right of the screen (the little cog wheel). Here’s a screenshot of what appears:


If you click the little arrow to the right of AT&T ActiveArmor, you can activate or disable this feature. Disabling this feature is what solved the issue for me.

Thank you to everyone who shared their thoughts about resolving this issue.

1 Like

In my previous post (Solved by annwf in post #4), I was responding to your question. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

OK, I’m going to close this. We’re going to investigate this issue a bit more this week and perhaps reach out to Amazon. @annwf if you hear back from AT&T about this can you please email help@inaturalist.org?