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Whenever Reddit, or any other website, tells me to install their app, I make sure that I never install their app. In fact other than maybe 5 or less apps, I on

• fireattack 7y ago
  Reddit is one of a few websites that I feel dedicated app works much better than browser, but I use 3rd party one(s).
  • cheeze 7y ago
    Agree on both fronts. Reddit is way improved with an app, but the official app is trash. I prefer relay, but I know that there are many other quality apps out there that folks recommend. Feel free to comment with your favorite.
    • J_cst 7y ago
      Boost (see my comment above)
  • isatty 7y ago
    The old design works well on a browser (now old.reddit). I make it a point to never use the new social network themed reddit, or it’s chat (god, why?) or the default app due to the popup when you access reddit on a mobile browser. Apollo is much better anyhow (iOS only though iirc).
    • adtac 7y ago
      On a desktop, auto redirecting to old.reddit.com, with all custom subreddit CSS disabled, chat turned off, RES enabled and uBlock Origin installed is the only usable way to browse Reddit. For a website that I spend ungodly amounts of time in, I hate that it's this way.
  • doubleunplussed 7y ago
    Is there any app that can essentially open threads in a new tab like in a browser? This is the one thing keeping me in the mobile browser. Well, that and my girlfriends reddit app seems to fail to load GIFs a decent fraction of the time.
    • nabakin 7y ago
      I'm not sure what you mean. So you can switch back and forth between threads with ease?
      • doubleunplussed 7y ago
        Yes, or more like, queue them up for reading later. That's how I use reddit: scroll through the front page or whatever subreddit, middle click everything of interest, then eventually get around to reading or closing said tabs.
    • J_cst 7y ago
      I use boost for Android and I find it enjoyable and flawless. I have no business with boost, I'm just an happy user.
      • doubleunplussed 7y ago
        Doesn't have tabs :(
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  • bad_user 7y ago
    I don't agree, for one b/c Reddit is a links aggregator and opening links works best in a full browser instead of a shitty in-app web view, plus it's the little things like ability to copy/paste or go back to a previous page, that are sometimes emulated in native apps, but never work well. But even if you think Reddit works better in a native app for you, that's by design. Reddit is making the web experience shitty on purpose, to drive users to their app.
    • fireattack 7y ago
      You can simply configure web pages to open directly in browser. And a dedicated app is able to handle certain links better than native browsers, like RES on desktop. One example would be to directly open the image instead of Imgur page. Also if we're talking about Android, I don't feel webview is too much different from a native browser now; all the histories, auto-fills are shared with my main browser (Chrome). Of course, it is just my PERSONAL use case.
    • deanclatworthy 7y ago
      There are many many hugely active communicates which are far more than link aggregators on reddit. Communities with 100s of 1000s or subscribers.
    • RuleOfBirds 7y ago
      "Reddit is a links aggregator" feels pretty inaccurate. Some subreddits, especially the big and lowest common denominator ones may be mostly link sharing, but most of the ones I'm on are communities sharing questions, opinions, jokes, images, and stories.
      • tialaramex 7y ago
        Yup. Playing a difficult Minecraft pack the first stop is r/feedthebeast to look at other people's advice. Later I'd return with questions most of which will be FAQs. Example, last week I made Project Ozone 3's fluid container that has an infinite amount of any liquid you put inside it. First question I had was, how do I empty this to put something else in? Because if the answer is "You can't" I need to pick very carefully what to use it for. The trouble with the correct answer "Shift left click a Gauge Dropper in the UI" is that I thought I'd tried that. So did lots of people, but Reddit has a comment thread patiently walking us through each step and yup, it works.
  • thaumaturgy 7y ago
    But that largely reflects management's decision to discourage mobile web use in favor of app usage. There's nothing intrinsic about Reddit that makes it worthy of a dedicated mobile app.
  • deanclatworthy 7y ago
    I also use a third party app. AlienBlue is superb and more feature rich and user friendly than the official app. Let’s enjoy it while it lasts. I suspect one day the API will be monetised (forced to display ads inline in the feed) or paid for (pricing out third parties) or entirely removed.
    • Lammy 7y ago
      AlienBlue is the official app, just frozen in time in 2014.
  • retube 7y ago
    pretty sure a legacy interface that is gonna get killed at some point, but https://www.reddit.com/.compact https://www.reddit.com/.compact is absolutely the best view on mobile.
  • choward 7y ago
    That's because they deliberately make it terrible to convince you to install the app. They ruin the experience even more with all the nagging they do even if you have the option to be based about the app disabled. There is no reason their mobile site needs to be as terrible as it is.
• sneak 7y ago
  The problem is that you and I are in the minority on this. Most people install the app, and all the tracking and data collection and geolocation that comes with it. Soon, almost all mass media will be consumed this way. This is just the latest installment of the mounting assault on the free and open web. Mark my words: the web is in danger.
  • uep 7y ago
    I share your belief, I think the web is in danger too. Even more than the terrible state of these walled garden social networks and terrible app permissions, is the threat of Google AMP. There has been an uncoordinated but pervasive attempt to capture networks of users, but for profit motives. I also fear that with the increase in nationalism around the world, and cyber warfare becoming more serious, that even traditionally liberal governments will start exerting more control on their networks. Specifically, not just to protect strategic interests, but to restrict ideas. Particularly since foreign governments have begun to use social networks for propaganda purposes.
  • MrPatan 7y ago
    > The web is in danger. In a way yes. In another way you can always trust people to be stupid and greedy and poison the commons: Every day you'll see more and more stories about apps that get taken over by/sold to malicious actors that then infect your device with the latest virus/ads/ransomware. People don't care if their private data is sold all over the world, that's clear by now, but people will care, cry and shout really loudly when they get infected by ransomware that holds their grandkids pictures hostage. It will happen, and the vector will always be a rogue app. Welcome back to the web!
  • CaptArmchair 7y ago
    > Mark my words: the web is in danger. Is it? The protocols and the technologies are open and standardized. You're perfectly capable of registering a DNS name, hooking up a server to the network and starting a HTTP daemon. Big companies can't stop you from doing that. "But nobody is doing that today! Too much hassle!", I hear you saying. Ah! You have a point... but that's based on a bias. You're switching cause and effect. Why are billions able to post content on the Web? Because that's what big platforms allow them to do. There implementation simply has lowered the bar for a huge influx of non-technical people to start publishing content. The trade-off these millions are making is giving up on their privacy, or having to endure the rules and weird quirks, towards those that own and operate the platforms that they are using. Publishing content on the Web never was easy to begin with. Tim Berners-Lee originally invented HTTP because he simply wanted to connect researchers and share scientific knowledge. Most of the tools that power the Web were never designed for end users. They are designed for robustness, performance, security and so on. The only merit of Zuckerberg and Jack is that they used to tools in such a way to abstract that complexity away for end users. Exactly like what Bill Gates and Steve Jobs did by providing windowing systems with a visual language that was easy to understand for end users. Yelling "the Web is in danger" would be like yelling "computers are in danger" because billions of users never learned to use command line tools, don't know what a kernel is, let alone understand what a file system is. The free and open Web was and always will be an affair of people who have an understanding of open, standardized technologies such as HTML, CSS, HTTP, URL's, TCP/IP and so on. You can't have one without the other, really. Freedom and openness are a function of the distribution of knowledge to implement and enforce them. Now, the real problem, at this point, isn't technological. It's regulatory. The real problem is that these platforms don't have a proper paid offering for users who want to share and publish content. Because end users, like you and me, aren't the customer, they are the product for advertisers. And so consumer and - at this point - civil rights don't seem to apply to them. That's what really matters here. But that problem is only a problem caused because those very same platforms allowed millions to enter this virtual world. Equally, expecting that anyone - including your grandparents - learns HTML and how to set up an Apache webserver, well, that might equally a bridge too far, no? If ISP's decided to stop supporting open standards and switched to proprietary protocols to link computers, that's when you need to ask questions. And this has been tried... and failed already in a different form some 30 to 40 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel