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Dear Reddit, for the love of Mike .. PLEASE treat reddit as a web-first platform. You are killing the golden goose by trying to force people toward the app - b

Dear Reddit, for the love of Mike .. PLEASE treat reddit as a web-first platform. You are killing the golden goose by trying to force people toward the app - by gradually removing features and usability from the mobile web site and constantly reminding people they "should" use the app. I don't want reddit as an 'app', I want reddit to be readable/scrollable on mobile and web without any form of coercion.

ori_b 6y ago
That goose already got killed with the new UI. It's only usable via old.reddit.com now.
- brownkonas 6y ago
  Maybe in the minority , but I think the UX of the mobile app is fantastic: * attractive card view * good actions from the list * good actions from the comments view * great performance
  - mellow2020 6y ago
    Yet old.reddit with RES runs circles around it. Maybe not on mobile though.
    - gxon 6y ago
      Never had any problems with RIF on mobile.
  - guug 6y ago
    > great performance Not for me. old.reddit.com flies while the new ui is a stuttery broken mess that requires more clicks for the same actions.
  - rubyron 6y ago
    Agree. Love the iOS app.
  - sebastos 6y ago
    >great performance Compared to what?!?
- iphone_elegance 6y ago
  The new UI works well for folks interested in image content and memes (which are the fuel of reddit now)
- george_kaplan 6y ago
  It's been only usable with RES and lots of filters for a long time.
sushid 6y ago
Moreover, if I relent and click "View on app" while on mobile, it directs me to the App Store instead of opening the app to the thread I was attempting to read. At least handoff correctly if you're going to force me to use your stupid app.
- Aloha 6y ago
  This!! This is the single most annoying thing
- rubyron 6y ago
  Interesting. It opens on the deep link in my app every time with iPhone XS Max.
  - AmericanChopper 6y ago
    Any time I’ve worked with somebody who had to implement deep links, I’ve always heard them continuously complain about how ridiculous it is to get working.
    - Benjammer 6y ago
      Deep links are only hard because the base concept is semantic organization of your content, so you can deep link to one thing in an organized way. If your app isn't structured to present content like this, if it has many deep workflows or ordered stages of screens/states, then yeah it's gonna be hard to deep link into page 5 of the 11 page workflow you built, that also requires authentication and a bunch of data loading.
      - stevula 6y ago
        I think we can safely say that Reddit content is organized in a way that should be conducive to deep linking (each post and comment thread has a unique and permanent URL). Their deep links generally work well for me though, unlike some other apps. I once had to implement deep links for a React Native app and, while I’m by no means a great mobile dev there were plenty of thorny bits. For example, I think iOS doesn’t open a deep link in app if you type the url directly into the address bar. It will only open in the app if the user taps a link. Another complexity is making sure a deep link opens in the app for app users and opens the App Store for other users. iOS also has two different systems for deep linking, custom protocols (eg myapp://) and universal links (a server side manifest that you register with Apple). These each have their pros and cons. To be sure, those should be solvable problems for a company with even a fraction of Reddit’s resources.
hazz99 6y ago
I don't think they're killing it. Anecdotally, all my friends prefer the app and the redesign to the old web client. I suspect this anecdata is supported by Reddit's metrics, otherwise they wouldn't be pushing so hard for it (barring some other long term goal) Not that I like the changes. I much prefer the old version.
- fossuser 6y ago
  They're so hostile to their own users I'm not sure they get accurate results from their metrics. - They change you back to the new design every few days. - They constantly tell you to use the app (thankfully you can disable this at least). - The old reddit design has a sidebar with helpful content, but this is not automatically present in the redesign. If you're a mod you have to manually copy that content over to the redesign and keep both updated separately. A lot of mods don't seem to know this so some communities just don't have their community information in the redesign. - The new redesign on mobile web is so bad that those that don't know about how to get the old design will probably use the app to get something that works. I'm glad old.reddit still exists, but I think if they just scrapped the entire new site it would be a better product. Probably worse for 'engagement' though because without infinite scroll, gifs loading everywhere, and other addictive hacks, people would just read what they wanted to and leave. The horror. (Also r/hnblogs traffic has most people using the old design, but there's an obvious selection bias in that community.)
  - toomim 6y ago
    > - They change you back to the new design every few days. This is so annoying that I have to use this chrome extension to force it back to old.reddit.com: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/old-reddit-redirect/dneaehbmnbhcippjikoajpoabadpodje https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/old-reddit-redirec...
    - nzgrover 6y ago
      Likewise for Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-reddit-redirect/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-reddit-re...
austenallred 6y ago
The app is much, much better than the site. I think you might be in the minority.
- OGWhales 6y ago
  Than the old site? Ehhhh. Than the new site? Yes, much better. The new site looks like someone was told to design a generic social media app for mobile. It doesn’t make any sense. The old site was pretty ugly, but at least used screen real estate effectively and allowed for quick browsing. Depending on what exactly I’m looking at, I will prefer mobile or web. That said, I am not a fan of the official app and prefer third party ones.
cmdshiftf4 6y ago
>constantly reminding people they "should" use the app. It's not merely suggestions though. They have one button - stay in your mobile browser - greyed out and one bright and active - open the mobile app. It also uses a native-ish looking UI that pops up as the sharing UI does. It feels like they're trying to trick people into using the app, over merely reminding people that they "should".
- ryandrake 6y ago
  It feels as though there is a poor product manager or someone over there whose bonus depends on getting as many users off the mobile web and into the app as possible--whether the users actually want to or not. In a past life as a product manager, I've had the "make users do this thing they don't want to do" job and it truly sucks.
dntbnmpls 6y ago
> PLEASE treat reddit as a web-first platform. Agreed. But I think they've made up their minds already. In the meantime, you can use "old.reddit.com" until they decide to take that away.
- gxon 6y ago
  Killing old.reddit.com would probably be their final Digg moment for me. Maybe they'll manage to keep the bulk of their users and keep some husk of it's former self going for a long time, but I'm gone. I suspect many others will join. The quality of content has been plummeting for years anyway. Too bad there's no clear successor this time.
  - trophycase 6y ago
    Yes the discourse and content quality is quite poor, so much so that I quit using the site completely in the last few months. To be honest I don't miss it at all, so...
paulcole 6y ago
If you’re using Reddit on iOS or iPadOS and you’re not using Apollo, you’re doing yourself a disservice. https://apolloapp.io/ https://apolloapp.io/ As an added bonus if you subscribe to the subreddit, /r/ApolloApp it’s like /r/ChoosingBeggarsLite with the complaints and feature requests for a free app.
- codq 6y ago
  I find Narwhal for Reddit a superior experience on iOS, ESPECIALLY on iPadOS, FWIW. http://getnarwhal.com/ http://getnarwhal.com/
  - balladeer 6y ago
    I've tried narwhal and few other apps, but none comes close to reddit (mobile) site when it was usable and light. I specially dislike narwhal's fixed gesture options. The app forces you to get used to something you don't want/like in the first place.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  I prefer Beam to Apollo, to be honest, even though it's largely unmaintained. I think the UI is much nicer. > As an added bonus if you subscribe to the subreddit, /r/ApolloApp it’s like /r/ChoosingBeggarsLite with the complaints and feature requests for a free app. Apollo isn't really free, is it? And I don't see what's wrong with asking for things for an app in the subreddit which seems designed for exactly that?
  - paulcole 6y ago
    There’s asking for something and then there’s being a Choosing Beggar(tm).
- shbooms 6y ago
  > complaints and feature requests for a free app. eh, except for those who paid the 2.99 for the Pro upgrade.
- berberous 6y ago
bjarneh 6y ago
i.reddit.com
gsich 6y ago
It's asshole behaviour, plain and simple.
krelian 6y ago
>You are killing the golden goose by trying to force people toward the app I think this is the the type of requests that shows the disconnect between the HN crowd and real users. The majority of users will use the app. It's entirely in reddit's benefit to push the app, that's where they have complete control and can add more tracking and ads without the hindrance of ad/tracking blockers. old.reddit.com is all I use but some new features (like polls) are already a second class citizen and I don't see it surviving long down the line.
- buzzkillington 6y ago
  >The majority of users will use the app. In the same way that the majority of users use pintrest. Until you train them to close the site out of reflex.
  - iknowstuff 6y ago
    You bring up a good point. There is certainly a line, which, when crossed, will nudge more users to download the app, but also make the site unappealing to the point of avoiding it or clicking away. This might be a long-term, difficult to track&diagnose consequence of the dark pattern.
- DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
  Reddit is smarter than digg though - they know they need to keep their legacy and leader users happy - because once influencers (real ones, not Instagram users) leave the site will stop being culturally relevant. The fact they’ve kept the old site still running for so long (4 years now?) I think it evidence they’ll keep it around. I don’t think it’s costing them anything.
  - samplatt 6y ago
    >I don’t think it’s costing them anything. It's almost certainly costing them LESS, since there'd be less of a focus on development AND it'll use less bandwidth due to smaller preview thumbnails and no preview video... that's probably outsourced to a different cdn but whatever.
Hackerlite 6y ago
In all fairness, at this point they’re using data to guide their decisions on official platform support and features. But agreed that the mobile web experience and native app experience should be closer tied, and users shouldn’t be pushed so aggressively to the app. I can only imagine the amount of work it would take to refactor that codebase...
AndrewKemendo 6y ago
I'm not a reddit fanboy anymore (I was a decade ago) and there are a few annoying pop-ups/dark patterns here and there, but reddit.com in firefox on iPhone 11 works seamlessly for me - logged in and not.
kgin 6y ago
All those "it's better on the app" pop ups make me sad for the web team that had to implement an interstitial trashing their own work.
janesvilleseo 6y ago
I absolutely hate being forced into using the app. The screen real estate that it takes up, the constant nagging, the deprecation of features in favor of an app. It’s anti-user.
Lazare 6y ago
On desktop I either use the old.reddit.com link, or I use the Reddit Enhancement Suite browser addon that forces the same look. If that UI ever goes away, I'll honestly stop using Reddit; the new UI is aggressively horrible. Similarly, on my phone I use Reddit is Fun which again, gives a good UI where their first party app and mobile web view are both aggressively horrible. Reddit is a valuable resource and full of some great communities, but it's been in steady, gentle, decline for years as the company focused development on bizarre distractions.
Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
Also, there seems to be A/B testing w.r.t email id requirement when signing up on web i.e. it's not optional all the time. Doesn't seem to be the case with mobile app, last time I checked. Seems like another way to push App adoption.
gandutraveler 6y ago
I would be happy to switch over to app only if it actually worked. The UX is so horrible for expanding collapsing threads. If I click on a deep link I have to press back n times to reach the landing post for the deep link.
baby 6y ago
I gave up and got the app, but f* them seriously for all the shady ux forcing you to get the app, never experienced something that extreme
marcinzm 6y ago
>You are killing the golden goose There was never a golden goose, Reddit revenue numbers are not good and have never been good.
TheRealDunkirk 6y ago
This is precisely the sort of strategic, business-wide direction that is decided and set by boards of directors.
taneq 6y ago
Amen to that! They're so incredibly pushy about the app that it's a red flag in and of itself.

ori_b 6y ago

That goose already got killed with the new UI. It's only usable via old.reddit.com now.

brownkonas 6y ago
Maybe in the minority , but I think the UX of the mobile app is fantastic: * attractive card view * good actions from the list * good actions from the comments view * great performance
- mellow2020 6y ago
  Yet old.reddit with RES runs circles around it. Maybe not on mobile though.
  - gxon 6y ago
    Never had any problems with RIF on mobile.
- guug 6y ago
  > great performance Not for me. old.reddit.com flies while the new ui is a stuttery broken mess that requires more clicks for the same actions.
- rubyron 6y ago
  Agree. Love the iOS app.
- sebastos 6y ago
  >great performance Compared to what?!?
iphone_elegance 6y ago
The new UI works well for folks interested in image content and memes (which are the fuel of reddit now)
george_kaplan 6y ago
It's been only usable with RES and lots of filters for a long time.

sushid 6y ago

Moreover, if I relent and click "View on app" while on mobile, it directs me to the App Store instead of opening the app to the thread I was attempting to read. At least handoff correctly if you're going to force me to use your stupid app.

Aloha 6y ago
This!! This is the single most annoying thing
rubyron 6y ago
Interesting. It opens on the deep link in my app every time with iPhone XS Max.
- AmericanChopper 6y ago
  Any time I’ve worked with somebody who had to implement deep links, I’ve always heard them continuously complain about how ridiculous it is to get working.
  - Benjammer 6y ago
    Deep links are only hard because the base concept is semantic organization of your content, so you can deep link to one thing in an organized way. If your app isn't structured to present content like this, if it has many deep workflows or ordered stages of screens/states, then yeah it's gonna be hard to deep link into page 5 of the 11 page workflow you built, that also requires authentication and a bunch of data loading.
    - stevula 6y ago
      I think we can safely say that Reddit content is organized in a way that should be conducive to deep linking (each post and comment thread has a unique and permanent URL). Their deep links generally work well for me though, unlike some other apps. I once had to implement deep links for a React Native app and, while I’m by no means a great mobile dev there were plenty of thorny bits. For example, I think iOS doesn’t open a deep link in app if you type the url directly into the address bar. It will only open in the app if the user taps a link. Another complexity is making sure a deep link opens in the app for app users and opens the App Store for other users. iOS also has two different systems for deep linking, custom protocols (eg myapp://) and universal links (a server side manifest that you register with Apple). These each have their pros and cons. To be sure, those should be solvable problems for a company with even a fraction of Reddit’s resources.

hazz99 6y ago

I don't think they're killing it. Anecdotally, all my friends prefer the app and the redesign to the old web client. I suspect this anecdata is supported by Reddit's metrics, otherwise they wouldn't be pushing so hard for it (barring some other long term goal) Not that I like the changes. I much prefer the old version.

fossuser 6y ago
They're so hostile to their own users I'm not sure they get accurate results from their metrics. - They change you back to the new design every few days. - They constantly tell you to use the app (thankfully you can disable this at least). - The old reddit design has a sidebar with helpful content, but this is not automatically present in the redesign. If you're a mod you have to manually copy that content over to the redesign and keep both updated separately. A lot of mods don't seem to know this so some communities just don't have their community information in the redesign. - The new redesign on mobile web is so bad that those that don't know about how to get the old design will probably use the app to get something that works. I'm glad old.reddit still exists, but I think if they just scrapped the entire new site it would be a better product. Probably worse for 'engagement' though because without infinite scroll, gifs loading everywhere, and other addictive hacks, people would just read what they wanted to and leave. The horror. (Also r/hnblogs traffic has most people using the old design, but there's an obvious selection bias in that community.)
- toomim 6y ago
  > - They change you back to the new design every few days. This is so annoying that I have to use this chrome extension to force it back to old.reddit.com: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/old-reddit-redirect/dneaehbmnbhcippjikoajpoabadpodje https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/old-reddit-redirec...
  - nzgrover 6y ago
    Likewise for Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-reddit-redirect/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-reddit-re...

austenallred 6y ago

The app is much, much better than the site. I think you might be in the minority.

OGWhales 6y ago
Than the old site? Ehhhh. Than the new site? Yes, much better. The new site looks like someone was told to design a generic social media app for mobile. It doesn’t make any sense. The old site was pretty ugly, but at least used screen real estate effectively and allowed for quick browsing. Depending on what exactly I’m looking at, I will prefer mobile or web. That said, I am not a fan of the official app and prefer third party ones.

cmdshiftf4 6y ago

>constantly reminding people they "should" use the app. It's not merely suggestions though. They have one button - stay in your mobile browser - greyed out and one bright and active - open the mobile app. It also uses a native-ish looking UI that pops up as the sharing UI does. It feels like they're trying to trick people into using the app, over merely reminding people that they "should".

ryandrake 6y ago
It feels as though there is a poor product manager or someone over there whose bonus depends on getting as many users off the mobile web and into the app as possible--whether the users actually want to or not. In a past life as a product manager, I've had the "make users do this thing they don't want to do" job and it truly sucks.

dntbnmpls 6y ago

> PLEASE treat reddit as a web-first platform. Agreed. But I think they've made up their minds already. In the meantime, you can use "old.reddit.com" until they decide to take that away.

gxon 6y ago
Killing old.reddit.com would probably be their final Digg moment for me. Maybe they'll manage to keep the bulk of their users and keep some husk of it's former self going for a long time, but I'm gone. I suspect many others will join. The quality of content has been plummeting for years anyway. Too bad there's no clear successor this time.
- trophycase 6y ago
  Yes the discourse and content quality is quite poor, so much so that I quit using the site completely in the last few months. To be honest I don't miss it at all, so...

paulcole 6y ago

If you’re using Reddit on iOS or iPadOS and you’re not using Apollo, you’re doing yourself a disservice. https://apolloapp.io/ https://apolloapp.io/ As an added bonus if you subscribe to the subreddit, /r/ApolloApp it’s like /r/ChoosingBeggarsLite with the complaints and feature requests for a free app.

codq 6y ago
I find Narwhal for Reddit a superior experience on iOS, ESPECIALLY on iPadOS, FWIW. http://getnarwhal.com/ http://getnarwhal.com/
- balladeer 6y ago
  I've tried narwhal and few other apps, but none comes close to reddit (mobile) site when it was usable and light. I specially dislike narwhal's fixed gesture options. The app forces you to get used to something you don't want/like in the first place.
saagarjha 6y ago
I prefer Beam to Apollo, to be honest, even though it's largely unmaintained. I think the UI is much nicer. > As an added bonus if you subscribe to the subreddit, /r/ApolloApp it’s like /r/ChoosingBeggarsLite with the complaints and feature requests for a free app. Apollo isn't really free, is it? And I don't see what's wrong with asking for things for an app in the subreddit which seems designed for exactly that?
- paulcole 6y ago
  There’s asking for something and then there’s being a Choosing Beggar(tm).
shbooms 6y ago
> complaints and feature requests for a free app. eh, except for those who paid the 2.99 for the Pro upgrade.
berberous 6y ago

bjarneh 6y ago

i.reddit.com

gsich 6y ago

It's asshole behaviour, plain and simple.

krelian 6y ago

>You are killing the golden goose by trying to force people toward the app I think this is the the type of requests that shows the disconnect between the HN crowd and real users. The majority of users will use the app. It's entirely in reddit's benefit to push the app, that's where they have complete control and can add more tracking and ads without the hindrance of ad/tracking blockers. old.reddit.com is all I use but some new features (like polls) are already a second class citizen and I don't see it surviving long down the line.

buzzkillington 6y ago
>The majority of users will use the app. In the same way that the majority of users use pintrest. Until you train them to close the site out of reflex.
- iknowstuff 6y ago
  You bring up a good point. There is certainly a line, which, when crossed, will nudge more users to download the app, but also make the site unappealing to the point of avoiding it or clicking away. This might be a long-term, difficult to track&diagnose consequence of the dark pattern.
DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
Reddit is smarter than digg though - they know they need to keep their legacy and leader users happy - because once influencers (real ones, not Instagram users) leave the site will stop being culturally relevant. The fact they’ve kept the old site still running for so long (4 years now?) I think it evidence they’ll keep it around. I don’t think it’s costing them anything.
- samplatt 6y ago
  >I don’t think it’s costing them anything. It's almost certainly costing them LESS, since there'd be less of a focus on development AND it'll use less bandwidth due to smaller preview thumbnails and no preview video... that's probably outsourced to a different cdn but whatever.

Hackerlite 6y ago

In all fairness, at this point they’re using data to guide their decisions on official platform support and features. But agreed that the mobile web experience and native app experience should be closer tied, and users shouldn’t be pushed so aggressively to the app. I can only imagine the amount of work it would take to refactor that codebase...

AndrewKemendo 6y ago

I'm not a reddit fanboy anymore (I was a decade ago) and there are a few annoying pop-ups/dark patterns here and there, but reddit.com in firefox on iPhone 11 works seamlessly for me - logged in and not.

kgin 6y ago

All those "it's better on the app" pop ups make me sad for the web team that had to implement an interstitial trashing their own work.

janesvilleseo 6y ago

I absolutely hate being forced into using the app. The screen real estate that it takes up, the constant nagging, the deprecation of features in favor of an app. It’s anti-user.

Lazare 6y ago

On desktop I either use the old.reddit.com link, or I use the Reddit Enhancement Suite browser addon that forces the same look. If that UI ever goes away, I'll honestly stop using Reddit; the new UI is aggressively horrible. Similarly, on my phone I use Reddit is Fun which again, gives a good UI where their first party app and mobile web view are both aggressively horrible. Reddit is a valuable resource and full of some great communities, but it's been in steady, gentle, decline for years as the company focused development on bizarre distractions.

Abishek_Muthian 6y ago

Also, there seems to be A/B testing w.r.t email id requirement when signing up on web i.e. it's not optional all the time. Doesn't seem to be the case with mobile app, last time I checked. Seems like another way to push App adoption.

gandutraveler 6y ago

I would be happy to switch over to app only if it actually worked. The UX is so horrible for expanding collapsing threads. If I click on a deep link I have to press back n times to reach the landing post for the deep link.

baby 6y ago

I gave up and got the app, but f* them seriously for all the shady ux forcing you to get the app, never experienced something that extreme

marcinzm 6y ago

>You are killing the golden goose There was never a golden goose, Reddit revenue numbers are not good and have never been good.

TheRealDunkirk 6y ago

This is precisely the sort of strategic, business-wide direction that is decided and set by boards of directors.

taneq 6y ago

Amen to that! They're so incredibly pushy about the app that it's a red flag in and of itself.