Profile Website Links Simply Reload Profile When Openned in a new tab in Safari Only

[macmanx]

First, visit any profile, like ​https://profiles.wordpress.org/macmanx/ or ​https://profiles.wordpress.org/otto42/ in Safari desktop or mobile (reproduced with 17.1.2 under macOS 14.1.2 and iOS 17.1.2).

If you click the profile's website link, it will load the linked website. But, if you open it in a new tab, it will simply reload the profile in the new tab.

I am not able to reproduce the problem with Firefox 120.0.1 or Vivaldi 6.4.3160.47 (Chromium 118), I can only reproduce this under Safari.

Screen recording attached.

[macmanx]

screen recording of the issue

[dd32]

There's a referer check in the /website-redirect/ endpoint, requiring that the referer be set to profiles.wordpress.org, otherwise it redirects back to the user profile. That was added IIRC for safety / security / SEO purposes (one of them).

In the case of Safari, it doesn't send a referer when you open-in-new-tab, so it can't pass that check.

​https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/18023

I've tried adding Referrer-Policy: unsafe-url (the most unsafe policy) and that didn't help either, so it's just Safari treating open-in-new-tab as a full new request rather than one that was referred from the current tab.

Chrome had this issue 10+ years ago too. ​https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1935