This is a great idea for a project, the 'users who also posted' metric seems to have worked really well.

The site seems to fail to load the 'hot' items for the subreddits when I click on them but that's not a big deal for me. On closer inspection, it doesn't seem to be making any requests. Just says `Failed to download https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/hot.json` etc

hmmm... I don't see the error on my end. What browser do you use? Can you try in "incognito" mode? Are there any extensions that might be blocking this?

I'm getting the same error on Firefox Quantum.

Hm... I'm at lost.

https://jsbin.com/fuyijan/2/edit?js,console - this works in Chrome, and non-private mode of Firefox Quantum (64.0.2 (64-bit)). However when I open private browsing in Firefox Quantum request fails.

Anyone might know why?

That sounds like Content Blocking kicking in - that's only active in Private Browsing by default: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/content-blocking

I note that page says "By default, content blocking uses the Disconnect.me basic protection list" - and reddit.com is on that list: https://github.com/disconnectme/disconnect-tracking-protecti...

(I'm guessing reddit's "social button" is considered a tracker.)

[edit] confirmed, it's definitely Content Blocking: I just loaded that jsbin in an FF private window, and there's a message in the console to that effect.