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Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?

• dcwca 6y ago
  Because the mobile application is a much better, richer and faster experience for daily active users. For a casual user who is following a link from a google search, perhaps the web version is better. Reddit would like to convert users from the latter group to the former, because stickiness on their platform is what drives revenue. It's not a public service that owes you free information at ease, it's a business.
• adrianmonk 6y ago
  Simplest possible explanation: by writing this post, you've put more thought into it than they have. Perhaps someone wanted to increase app install numbers (and/or user engagement), this sounded like it would work, and they did it. Simple as that. They did not ponder whether it might have negative effects. They just did it and moved on to something else. Of course I have no concrete evidence of this, but with the state of product management in our industry, I can't dismiss the possibility.
• rorykoehler 6y ago
  Ads
  • blickentwapft 6y ago
    Explained in three sad letters.
• Daedren 6y ago
  I'd wager it's because the average user only blocks ads in the browser.
• jamil7 6y ago
  Yeah ads. If you're on iOS check out Apollo, made by a solo developer and does not display ads. I'm not sure what the equivalent on Android would be (someone chime in if you know).
  • psibi 6y ago
    I have been using RedReader[1] on Android which doesn't display ads and it's also open source software. [1] https://github.com/QuantumBadger/RedReader https://github.com/QuantumBadger/RedReader
    • ffpip 6y ago
      Infinity is a much better client imo. Best design and has all basic features, plus a few tricks. Open source too
  • josteink 6y ago
    > If you're on iOS check out Apollo Webpage[1] and AppStore[2] link to save you guys time, since AppStore search is horribly broken. [1] https://apolloapp.io/ https://apolloapp.io/ [2] https://apps.apple.com/app/id979274575 https://apps.apple.com/app/id979274575
    • jamil7 6y ago
      Thanks for that! I forgot to add a link.
    • searchableguy 6y ago
      > AppStore search is horribly broken It's working as intended. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-advertising/apple-could-raise-annual-ad-income-to-11-billion-by-2025-jpmorgan-idUSKBN1XP17L https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-advertising/apple-c...
  • zhte415 6y ago
    It's not only ads.. well in the end it is, but that app's largely about stickyness and push vs. pull. By visiting the website, you're the one pulling, wanting to visit and viewing the content or messages on your time. By installing the app, any message or update is pushed to you instantly, pulling you to the website, making it less your decision to visit, but being pulled in. A Medusa-like call that's hard for many to resist. Reddit are not unique in this. Even updated 'XXX sent you a new DM' from Twitter via email for example. Anyway, I'm shot of Reddit. Their recent purge shut down a lot of subs that for many were mutual support groups caught in the cross-fire of admins vs. sophisticated trolls using them as flare-scatter to escape themselves.
• onyva 6y ago
  Install lockdown on iOS. It’ll block ads anywhere i assume. It’s such an hostile approach, like medium, I will never install their app or open an account.
• koolba 6y ago
  Short term: you can’t block the ads like you can in the browser. Long term: to turn it into a chat app and somehow cash out.
• mangatmodi 6y ago
  I worked on user tracking all my life. You can track user activities, interest etc, much better on an app. This data is valuable for in-house use and to sell it to the highest bidder.
  • hutzlibu 6y ago
    Do you think tracking outside the app is done? Meaning collecting data even if the app is not opened? I would suspect so.
    • mangatmodi 6y ago
      yes yes, there are third party DMPs. Phone companies, offline stores etc. all share data with these DMPs. It is quite disgusting. Particularly shady practices done by FB. But nothing can defeat first party tracking you get with the app.
• jakevoytko 6y ago
  Other people are saying "ads," but the story is probably more expansive. Mobile apps have better hooks for pulling people back into the app, like popup notifications. Reddit has natural lifecycle points where they can do this: when people respond to your comments or comment on your posts. They could also notify users of events like their yearly Secret Santa. I wouldn't be surprised if their engagement numbers were much better on mobile: since they can draw users back into the app with notifications, they have better ad views, more people buy Reddit Gold, more people comment (which leads to other people having content to read), etc.
  • nevf1 6y ago
    Yep, I think ads is just another way of saying monetization. The app has lots of annoying notifications like "You might like...", "You got 100 upvotes", etc which, when you engage with more, they make more money through ads, coins etc. Your attention, retention and engagement is a lot easier to manage and increase through an app than it is through website.
    • Cthulhu_ 6y ago
      Instead of direct monetization, they probably measure by engagement. If a service has a permanent presence on your device, you get a LOT more engagement and recurring visits than a web version. Websites on mobile are one-time, visit-and-forget/move on things. I'd love to be proven wrong though; what websites see daily, recurring, long time active usage? Also not to be underestimated is that a mobile app will always have better UX than a website. Think of the subtle things like page transitions. Navigating Reddit still causes full-page reloads, whereas on the app it's a much more organic process. Speed is also an important factor.
      • allerhellsten 6y ago
        Exactly this. To give you a datapoint from our properties: Our web site attracts 90% of the users, but only 60% of the actual traffic. In all metrics like retention, frequency and time on site, mobile leads by factors of 2-5. Part of that is definitely self-selection, but as some people already said, other notable effects are push notifications, mindshare, loss aversion (you're on somebody's device already, so they can just as well use it) and partly better performance. So much about the users, but Monetization is much better as well, mostly due to mobile ad-IDs, which especially on iOS lets you extract double the revenue per user due to targeting. Ad blockers are harder to bypass. In the end, a mobile app will get you anywhere between 2-10x the revenue per user you attracted to your property, so that's why Reddit is pushing so hard. To stay in Reddit's lingo though: `LPT: https://old.reddit.com` https://old.reddit.com`
• loraa 6y ago
  Clipboard data.
• nottorp 6y ago
  Funny, they make me not read reddit on mobile with their insistence on using the app. But the real reason is tracking and spamming you with notifications to get "engagement".
  • moksly 6y ago
    I still use old.reddit.com. Such an improved experience, even on mobile where the format doesn’t fit. So maybe that’s why they want you in the app? They know their website is terrible?
    • ffpip 6y ago
      Use the app 'Infinity for Reddit'. Open source and neat design
    • Thiez 6y ago
      The compact view is even cleaner. Try adding `.compact` at the end of any reddit url.
      • veqz 6y ago
        Awesome! Thanks for the tip.
        • netmare 6y ago
          Alternatively, you can replace the 'www' with 'i'.
    • Cthulhu_ 6y ago
      Their website is fine, but no website works as nice on mobile as a native app does.
      • whywhywhywhy 6y ago
        I'd argue even their old design is better than a native app. Loads lightning fast, can load thousands of comments on a page without loading bars or context switch. Don't even care if I have to pan and zoom it still works better than the mobile app. Starting to feel like the idea of a mobile app being a universally better experience is a software industry mass hallucination. A handful of things apps work way better, modern banking comes to mind but sites styled like reddit and HN are just better in a browser with desktop view and high information density.
• gr2zr4 6y ago
  “We know that Redditors are so privacy-conscious,” says Victoria Taylor, director of Communications at Reddit, referring to the site’s community of registered users. So privacy-conscious, indeed. A number of sub-Reddits, which are user-made discussion and link-sharing forums, are devoted to the practice of online privacy tactics, education, and information. A noble Redditor respects “Reddiquette,” refusing to reveal the personal information of a fellow Redditor. https://geomarketing.com/reddits-safe-play-in-the-game-of-geo-targeting https://geomarketing.com/reddits-safe-play-in-the-game-of-ge...
• avipars 6y ago
  Because the 3rd party clients have their own ads... now reddit wants to get more income and control over their mobile counterparts
• system2 6y ago
  I've been using narwhal for years and had no issues. Highly recommended.
• kaushikt 6y ago
  User retention on mobile is much higher as compared to websites. Now, people are more attention deficit. Everyone I know has a weird habit of opening their phone and checking their "FEED" (could be reddit, could be fb or insta even). All this on mobile. Ads is a good reason too. In my past workspace, we spent a crazy amount of money on facebook ads and got 80% of traffic from their mobile app. Reddit is trying to follow the same too.
  • prepend 6y ago
    Is user retention really higher on mobile? Or is it that web users can’t be tracked so look like they drop off and come back. I think people make too many definitive statements and bad assumptions based on what they can measure. Leaving off understanding gaps where data doesn’t exist or never will.
    • Macha 6y ago
      Mobile gives you way more options (notifications, widgets) to drag users back in which have a nonzero success rate.
    • ninth_ant 6y ago
      Measuring retention is going to be mainly useful for logged-in accounts. And that is is something that could be trivially measured and compared between platforms. My guess based on experience in this area in other companies is that app users will report a better experience, stay much longer, and return more often.
      • prepend 6y ago
        I use reddit a lot through my browser and about half the time I’m not logged in. I’m still retained, but not measured accurately.
• blfr 6y ago
  They need to somehow make up the engagement for all the interesting content they banned over the years.
  • optimalsolver 6y ago
    They've grown to the sixth most visited website in the US (third in the UK), so they're doing something right.
    • mlang23 6y ago
      You mean like when ethernal october hit, the internet was doing something right to attract all these wonderful people? Just because the masses like something doesn't mean it is good.
      • optimalsolver 6y ago
        So what should they use as a standard of success? How many Usenet poseurs give them the thumbs up? That don't pay the bills.
        • amiga_500 6y ago
          What's the point in producing trash if your only reason is to have enough money to pay for the trash?
          • optimalsolver 6y ago
            "Trash" is completely subjective. And Reddit's resounding success demonstrates that most people disagree with you.
        • smolder 6y ago
          IMO, net quality of life is the ultimate measure of success. Is the world a better place for humans as a result of some action? Our economic system does a poor job of rewarding the best behavior in that sense.
• knob 6y ago
  Try this: old.reddit.com/r/$foo A little bit cleaner.
• ant6n 6y ago
  Related, why had the reading experience on everywhere become so useless: only the first 6 posts or so are loaded and you constantly need to wait to load more posts. It’s an annoyingly sluggish experience - even with their anti-user pattern of hiding 90% if each conversation by default, they could at least preload the data and show it instantly.
• znpy 6y ago
  Because Reddit is slowly becoming trash. First their website redesign makes the whole thing slow and unusable, then they start making the app get invasive and abusive. All in the name of "engagement".
• varbhat 6y ago
  On mobile, I use 1) https://i.reddit.com https://i.reddit.com 2) https://github.com/Docile-Alligator/Infinity-For-Reddit https://github.com/Docile-Alligator/Infinity-For-Reddit I don't use neither the official bloated site nor official Android app. They are way much animated, bloated,slow. I think that current focus of reddit is to become social media. Earlier days,reddit was focused on creating better forum,discussion platform. There is gradual change in focus ,i guess.
  • jamil7 6y ago
    > I think that current focus of reddit is to become social media. Earlier days,reddit was focused on creating better forum,discussion platform. There is gradual change in focus ,i guess. Theres a few people talking about the "unbundling of reddit" that's going on at the moment. I forget where I read it but basically some larger communities are starting to break off again into their own platforms.
    • Cthulhu_ 6y ago
      There's a lot of subreddits now that advertise their own Discord server, omitting Reddit's own attempt at hosting a chat service.
      • simias 6y ago
        Trading a centralized proprietary platform for a different centralized proprietary platform. Sounds familiar somehow. Beyond that, Discord is not really the same thing as Reddit. It's true that reddit tried to compete with Discord by offering their own chat service when they realized that many communities also had a Discord server, but they don't really offer the same service. Discord is IRC, reddit is BBS/usenet/PHPBB.
• fareesh 6y ago
  Bacon reader is a pretty good no-frills client app
• gsich 6y ago
  It's called asshole design.
• aphroz 6y ago
  Because they need your data. I don't understand how a website with such bad UX can rank so well when Google is now calculating CLS and other parameters like this. Reddit is a mystery to me.
  • exit 6y ago
    > I don't understand how a website with such bad UX can rank so well when Google is now calculating CLS and other parameters like this. you can still use the old ui via old.reddit.com i have no use for anything they introduced in the current ui
  • thatguyagain 6y ago
    Isn't it one of the most popular sites on the internet? I can't think of where on Reddit the CLS is bad, do you have an example?
    • aphroz 6y ago
      It was probably very popular, but for me it has become like Quora, I don't understand how the information is structured and I find it not relevant most of the time.
  • wilde 6y ago
    Reddit usually has more relevant info for me than a raw Google search. My normal search behavior is something like search for “thing”, browse useless blogspam, search for “thing reddit” and then find a link to the answer through a comment or the like.
  • mlang23 6y ago
    The UX made me quit reddit. I delt with it (with a screen reader) for a few months. Then, I submitted a PR on GitHub to improve the accessibility of the site (just a very small addition). Then my PR got ignored for a few months. So I commented that I will delete my PR since it is obviously not welcome. Then I got some comments asking me to not do so, because accessibility is supposedly important now. A few months later, still no action. So I deleted my reddit account, because there was really no point in continuing to hurt myself with their terrible UX.
• Nursie 6y ago
  There was a way, hidden deep in your user settings, to tell them "No, really, I'm never going to use your app". This has switched off all of those reminders and popups and crap for me on mobile. Last time I went looking for the setting though, it had gone.
  • blickentwapft 6y ago
    They shall hassle you to switch to their app until the end of time.
• nokya 6y ago
  Reddit's obsession to constantly show me an "ad" to install the app has basically cured me from drifting and spending more time than strictly necessary on the website. I hate it so much that it triggers a negative experience everytime I visit the website and I just tend to watch links shared to me. Honestly, I thank them for that and I hope they don't remove it.
  • yomly 6y ago
    Maybe I need that on HN :p
    • akerro 6y ago
      Go to your profile settings and play with maxvisit, minaway and delay.
      • yomly 6y ago
        I am giving this a try - it has been great so far! I like to think of myself as an adult with agency and yet I log into HN on reflex probably over 100 times a day...
    • searchableguy 6y ago
      Use an RSS reader. While HN doesn't force engagement through dark patterns and notifications. There are still things that create FOMO such as the fast pace of the front page. With a good rss reader, you can check back to read what you missed. https://edavis.github.io/hnrss/ https://edavis.github.io/hnrss/ Check no proc option too.
  • maps7 6y ago
    Yeah it's driven my usage down now too. I actively try seek alternatives.
  • optimalsolver 6y ago
    So how many hours do you spend on the site each day?
  • 6y ago
• searchableguy 6y ago
  Use an RSS reader. You will like the lack of feeling of being forced to comment on things you don't care much about in retrospection. No tracking or ads, only content. You can filter shady sites or posts from appearing. Here are some readers. 0] https://github.com/GetStream/Winds https://github.com/GetStream/Winds 1] https://github.com/FreshRSS/FreshRSS https://github.com/FreshRSS/FreshRSS 2] https://github.com/feedbin/feedbin https://github.com/feedbin/feedbin 3] https://github.com/yang991178/fluent-reader https://github.com/yang991178/fluent-reader If you like something closed source, try feedly. Reddit provides rss for now. For sources that don't, you can use rss.app or similar. https://www.reddit.com/wiki/rss https://www.reddit.com/wiki/rss One more useful thing some readers provide is an email address that you can use for subscribing to newsletters.
  • spians 6y ago
    Yup. RSS is the way to go for browsing Reddit without all the dark patterns. Self plug - you can try my app Plenary on Android (no ads/trackers) - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spians.plenary https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spians.ple... that has Reddit as one of the RSS Assistant option. It basically creates RSS feed for subreddits, users, search terms etc for you.
    • robinduckett 6y ago
      A feature of the app that you can't use without buying a monthly subscription or paying £10.49, to whom it may concern.
      • spians 6y ago
        Thank you for trying it out. Plenary has monthly, quarterly and yearly subscription options and even has a lifetime purchase plan. That is the way support the development of the app so that it doesn't have to rely on ads and works without any intrusions to users. That is the point of this post, right?
      • YPCrumble 6y ago
        Interestingly parent’s plug is a dark pattern to avoid dark patterns! It’s also surprising that even on HN, a place where many people write software for a living, people are avoidant of advertising paid features.
• tjpnz 6y ago
  What's sad is that the mobile app is perfectly usable and it's obvious that a lot of thought and care has gone into it. I feel bad for the people maintaining it.
  • tmikaeld 6y ago
    While the UI is fine, I'm concerned about optimization and loading. Is it really required to keep ALL previous scroll history in memory and on-screen? If they only showed what you're currently scrolling, it wouldn't be the most battery sucking app on my phones.
  • dade_ 6y ago
    I tried the app, but it doesn’t work for me at all. As a platform, Reddit is very flexible and can be used in many different ways. Their app has been designed for (or to create) social media crack babies that can’t stop swiping and infinite feed of SMC (Social Media Crack). It isn’t designed to be useful to users, so I assume it is designed to improve engagement metrics with an Instagram effect. In my simple case, I follow specific subreddits, but I check other ones from time to time. The web browser is much easier to work with URLs on my phone. I can go to specific reddit’s very easily by just typing in the URL on my phone browser. Even better, there is still old.reddit.com which is much faster and less glitchy (media not loading, complicated UI frames appearing resulting in unexpected scrolling/zooming issues) than their new website for tablet and desktop usage. Further, the new site constantly loses my place and resets to the beginning of the subreddit losing my place. The constant ads for the mobile app, and the automatic switching back to the new app on browsers are a massive hurdle, so I do seek out alternatives. However, there are some great communities and information on Reddit, so I will keep using it until critical mass moves on.
• optimalsolver 6y ago
  Is there a positive relationship between how much someone complains about Reddit and how much time they actually spend on Reddit? I don't think Reddit cares about how you feel about the platform, just as long as you continue to spend half your day on it.
• perceptronas 6y ago
  My guess: tracking. On web you are limited how much you can track. On apps you are free to exploit your users as much as you want.
• simias 6y ago
  Reddit has been very aggressive over the past few years to increase retention. They're barely a link aggregator anymore, they try to self-host as much content as possible. Images, videos, they even attempted to make user-pages à la Facebook (no idea if this caught on). They're competing with Facebook and Instagram, not Hacker News. On paper that's not necessarily bad, but they don't hesitate to make the user experience worse to achieve this. If you want to link a video hosted on reddit, there's no straightforward way to only link the video and not the full reddit thread. Here's a random example from the frontpage: https://www.reddit.com/r/Whatcouldgowrong/comments/ici161/wcgw_spinning_the_propeller_of_a_remote_control/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Whatcouldgowrong/comments/ici161/wc... No way to share just the video, you have to share the garbage comments as well. Of course many video sharing sites are the same, but Reddit was supposed to be a link aggregator at first, not Youtube-but-worse. They've added a photo gallery feature lately with the same limitation: you can't just link the gallery, you have to link the full comment page. I suspect that they did that specifically because they couldn't really prevent people to share the URL to the image directly since that's a standard feature of the web, so by adding galleries they can "lock in" the content. At least they don't do referrer checks, I suppose... Well, not yet. And yeah, as you point out, the mobile experience on a browser is atrocious. Especially if like me you're only a lurker: if you're not logged in you can't even browse a subreddit, it forces you to install the app (or alternatively, you can go to i.reddit.com that still works and is much faster to boot). Vanilla Reddit is effectively becoming less pleasant to use that those shady streaming websites that change their domain names every month to evade copyright enforcement. At least those website usually manage to stream SD video reliably. Basically Reddit tries to become Instagram for people who think they're too cool for Instagram, and it shows.
  • anoncake 6y ago
    > And yeah, as you point out, the mobile experience on a browser is atrocious. Especially if like me you're only a lurker, if you're not logged in you can't even browse a subreddit, it forces you to install the app (or alternatively, you can go to i.reddit.com that still works, and is much faster to boot). Or a different client (Reddit hasn't gone full Twitter yet), or enable Request Desktop Site.
  • 6y ago
• mottiden 6y ago
  To sell you more targeted ads, sadly
• veqz 6y ago
  Yeah, it's annoying. I've also seen them block entire subreddits for mobile. E.g. this is what I see on my Android phone when trying to read r/Europe: https://veqz.net/reddit_block_europe.jpg https://veqz.net/reddit_block_europe.jpg («This community is available in the app»). My two go-to solutions are: 1. Use old.reddit.com/ 2. Stop using reddit
  • whywhywhywhy 6y ago
    Employees of Reddit must have a very low opinion of their users if they think they're going to fall for "This community is available in the app".
    • nikanj 6y ago
      Their customers i.e. marketers prefer people who fall for things like that
    • uniqueid 6y ago
      Around every twentieth post on the front page of Reddit is a video of someone being punched, kicked, stabbed, or shot. If there are Reddit employees who hold a high opinion of Reddit's users, they should raise their standards.
  • xioxox 6y ago
    There are also alternative much better apps (e.g. redreader from the F-Droid store for Android).
  • gokhan 6y ago
    They block on the subreddit's main page, but individual pages are not blocked. I sometimes request desktop site, click on the discussion I want, than go back requesting mobile site. Works well where there's always a long and daily discussion on the sub. I will never download the app just because they do this.
  • dpedu 6y ago
    > you must continue in Reddit app or log in They're not forcing you to use the app. Did you try logging in?
• SergeAx 6y ago
  Ads (you can't block them in app) and notifications (you can block them, but not that easy, especially on Android).
  • bostonpete 6y ago
    Why isn't it easy on Android? If you long press on any notification it gives you the option to turn off all notifications from that app...
    • hutzlibu 6y ago
      But most users do not know that.
• polote 6y ago
  Reddit as a social network has two goals: - Make more money than last quarter - Having more user engaged than last quarter Having user engaged is much easier when you have the app installed, as they can send you push notification. As a result of that, the number of users on the mobile web version is probably very low, so they don't put a lot of effort on the product and would probably love to deprecate it. They also probably don't make the effort to optimize the monetization of those users, as they are so few, so they push them to use the app. And above all HN users are probably not the ones who click the most on ads, so they don't care if you use reddit or not as you will not bring them any revenue.
• ykevinator 6y ago
  I think it's because they want push notifications
• indigochill 6y ago
  I read somewhere just the other day that the benefit (to the developer) of an app vs a mobile website is that apps can collect more data on the user than mobile websites in their sandboxed browsers can. I haven't looked into this to verify for myself and there are other reasons, like push notifications, but I'm inclined to believe it.
  • criddell 6y ago
    Who wants push notifications from Reddit though?
• krn 6y ago
  The fundamental answer to what changed with Reddit over the last 3-5 years – an IPO became the main goal of the company[1](2017): > Reddit may go public by 2020, said CEO and co-founder Steve Huffman during a keynote conversation at the Internet Association’s Virtuous Circle Summit on Monday. “The time frame is pretty far out,” he admitted. However, he also argued that going public was inevitable for Reddit to both reward employees and investors, calling it “the only responsible choice” for the company. [1] https://variety.com/2017/digital/news/reddit-ipo-1202613811/ https://variety.com/2017/digital/news/reddit-ipo-1202613811/
  • mattacular 6y ago
    What does that have to do with using their web site versus their app
    • krn 6y ago
      It increases engagement metrics, which is the most important thing for an ad company looking to raise more money in the future.
      • jczhang 6y ago
        you put it so simply i almost missed it: they are an ad company
      • mattacular 6y ago
        "Apps increase engagement metrics" seems dubious to me. Maybe for certain companies and products it is true, but the norm is to have a website and app experience. It is not necessarily the norm to have the website aggressively drive people to the app to the extent Reddit.com does. I imagine Reddit's website gets tons of traffic from "non users" coming in on shares and searches who will never consider installing a Reddit app no matter how many modals they put up but nevertheless driving ad impressions.
        • krn 6y ago
          > "Apps increase engagement metrics" seems dubious to me. Maybe for certain companies and products it is true, but the norm is to have a website and app experience. A product that is entirely based on user generated content is exactly the type of thing that requires active rather than passive users. Mobile websites are generally optimized for passive consumption, and mobile apps – for active creation.
• toddmorey 6y ago
  It's horrible. They've made the site itself unusable on mobile. They care so much because as you browse links out to other content, they can keep you in the app using the embedded browser. And when you read that content and share it, you share reddit links, not the source links. I'm sure time in app blows away time on site for mobile users.
  • sharker8 6y ago
    To turn this on its head, maybe the mobile device manufacturing duopoly has made it impossible to develop great experiences on mobile web in order to funnel more development work into their app store ecosystems? Why are we blaming reddit for this trend?
• morrbo 6y ago
  They recently redesigned their mobile site as well and added some major flaws (you can't even see the user who submitted it on /hot unless it is promoted, switching the "vote" and "share" buttons etc.). Its death by a thousand cuts tbh.
• st3fan 6y ago
  Because apps can display apps more easily and can collect (more) data more easily.
• whywhywhywhy 6y ago
  That and the layout of their "new" redesign where you go to a post and it'll show the post, 2 comments (out of 500), not even the full threads of those comments either and then just some unrelated posts and you have to click on more links just to read the actual comments and you can feel your browser choke under the weight of whatever framework they use trying to render a few bits of text. Noticed Twitter switching to the same pattern too, show 1-4 replies then just some random unrelated algorithm posts from elsewhere.
  • cdubzzz 6y ago
    This design is just so damn weird. I only rarely find myself at reddit e.g. when some obscure search query lands me there and I am always extremely confused trying to find the actual content of posts and relevant comments. I still don’t even understand how it works and half the time I just give up and leave because I can’t figure out what to do to get at whatever I’m searching for.
    • dustingetz 6y ago
      KPIs go up – "Sufficiently Powerful Optimization Of Any Known Target Destroys All Value" https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2019/12/31/does-big-business-hate-your-family/ https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2019/12/31/does-big-business-ha...
    • RealStickman_ 6y ago
      Change the www in the url to old. That'll give you a way superior ui.
    • TheKarateKid 6y ago
      Anyone else feel like Reddit is like AOL circa 2002? It's horribly designed, continues to be so despite numerous changes, yet we put up with it because of the user content that we can't find anywhere else. And they get lucky with people continuing to contribute to their horrible platform for the same reason.
  • bschne 6y ago
    I'm starting to despise UI patterns that discourage any sort of meaningful discourse. This includes stuff like hiding comment threads and only showing one or two comments by people you follow on LinkedIn, or features like "canned comments" ("Congratulations, John Doe!"). I don't know why websites stopped respecting their users' agency, but my pet hypothesis is that some product team is being measured on some sort of superficial "user engagement" KPI and ended up optimizing for meaningless reactions instead of actual discussions....
• xvilka 6y ago
  The desktop site version also became unimaginably slow. I didn't even know it's possible to make it so for something simple like the message board.
• abhayhegde 6y ago
  This is most likely to do with the ability to access your storage, and constantly feed you with notifications. Those little annoying reminders to visit the website and instill a fake fear of missing out on something. If at all you wish to have a smoother experience and no notifications though, I suggest Relay for Reddit on Android.
• coronadisaster 6y ago
  Another thing about reddit is that it is one of the only site that reloads everything when I hit the back button instead of using the cache (I'm using Firefox). Do they do this to be able to claim that they get more users then they are actually getting? It's been like this for years, not sure when it started.
  • gruez 6y ago
    It's probably a consequence of them using the history api + lazy programming, rather than anything nefarious.
• JulianWasTaken 6y ago
  This doesn't answer the question, but with Firefox on Android + uBlock, just block the element from being displayed with the element zapper.
• naringas 6y ago
  tiktok is better for memes anyways
• otabdeveloper4 6y ago
  To collect your data and show you ads.
• baxtr 6y ago
  My hunch is that it’s way easier to track people in apps than on websites these days.
• InsomniacL 6y ago
  Reddit believe the engagement they get from the app and aggressively advertising it outweighs the engagement lost from users who prefer to disengage than install it.
• brnt 6y ago
  Apps means it's easier to hook up privacy-violating analytics that can both do a lot more than web-analytics and is harder to block for the user.
• braythwayt 6y ago
  I’ve given up on reddit on mobile. From time to time I drop in on it using Safari on the desktop, but it’s not worth it to me to deal with their engagement-ification in their mobile app, or obvious crippleware of their mobile web experience. I’m not pissed off about this: It’s like dropping in on a bar I used to enjoy a decade ago, to find out it has been redesigned a few times and everyone’s a new face. Sometimes, that’s a really cool experience: “Say, this is neat.” Sometimes, not. But times must change, and we either change with them, or get left behind. I am not going to change and become an engagement addict, clicking on shiny baubles out of boredom. So in reddit’s case, I am a part of its past, not its present, and I must accept being left behind in its wake.
  • crims0n 6y ago
    > It’s like dropping in on a bar I used to enjoy a decade ago, to find out it has been redesigned a few times and everyone’s a new face. That is honestly the best analogy I have heard to describe my feelings towards the site. It's still reddit... sort of, but its not my reddit. I joined during the digg exodus and I don't know if it's because I was younger or what, but for a while reddit seemed like that go-to bar: always warm, inviting, and socially enriching.
    • sinfulprogeny 6y ago
      And today, the once best feature for finding new stuff: the front page / popular, is just misery porn and American politics. If you don't already have a healthy list of subscribed subs with actually good content, I find that it's really difficult to find new stuff.
      • throwaway889900 6y ago
        I just have my bookmark for the front page set to r/all, bypasses their dumb location sorting and provides a bit more variety of content.
      • mitchdoogle 6y ago
        Anytime I see content I don't want, I filter out the subreddit. Allows me to still see /r/all but don't have to see the subs I don't want
• frozenlettuce 6y ago
  The app interface is optimized to serve ads, not content
• phoe-krk 6y ago
  I do not browse Reddit using the web browser; I use the free Slide client, available on F-Droid. [0] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/me.ccrama.redditslide/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/me.ccrama.redditslide/
• SeanBean62 6y ago
  I’m done with Reddit- please somehow keep this thing going
• bdefore 6y ago
  The Reddit Enhancement Suite extension/plugin dramatically improves the desktop experience: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/reddit-enhancement-suite/kbmfpngjjgdllneeigpgjifpgocmfgmb?hl=en-US https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/reddit-enhancement...
• kumarvvr 6y ago
  Data collection. More data, more targeted the ads, more income. I guess at some level, their data costs too go down with an app, when compared to a site. Also, with constant notifications, apps have a better chance to become addictive. At some point, someone saw data of the time spent by users on their site, to that on app and thought, wow ! It allows for better gamification and better avenues for making users buy awards for posts. I have seen more 'gold' posts than ever after the app became popular.
• jw1224 6y ago
  Quora is even worse for this. For years they’ve had an extremely hostile user experience on their mobile site — you scroll half way through a long answer, and get interrupted with a modal prompting you to finish reading it in the app. But the modal cannot be dismissed — there is no way to close it. You can’t scroll the page, it persists on reload... rendering the site utterly unusable.
  • braythwayt 6y ago
    It’s interesting to compare Quora and Stack Overflow. They both are about questions and answers, and they both set out to use interaction design and aggressive curation to create a high-quality Q&A resource. But despite having similar goals and a willingness to experiment with behavioural patterns, they ended up with incredibly different experiences.
    • chiyc 6y ago
      I used to really enjoy reading responses on Quora, but at some point, it seems to have devolved into pretty low quality spam and self-promotion.
      • jw1224 6y ago
        Same here — in the early days, I’d spend hours each week on it. There felt like a turning point, around 2018, when it just sadly became “too mainstream”, for want of a better phrase.
  • kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
    You also can't navigate their site without being logged in. Something Google should crack down on.
  • zentiggr 6y ago
    When I realized I couldn't read anything on Quora without logging in, I deleted my account and I haven't missed a thing. There's probably a core group of users there, but I can only imagine it's a stagnant pool now.
• snwfog 6y ago
  I recently launched an alternative Reddit client, because like you, I am also very annoyed by this behavior [1]. Here is the link if you want to check it out: https://rdddeck.com https://rdddeck.com [1] https://www.producthunt.com/posts/deck-for-reddit#comment-1112359 https://www.producthunt.com/posts/deck-for-reddit#comment-11...
• hankchinaski 6y ago
  some shit PM must have thought that was a good thing to add
• manoj_venkat92 6y ago
  Yep, I'm not on reddit anymore. Ciao, Reddit. Twitter is way better.
• teekert 6y ago
  Because getting ublock origin working in the app is more difficult? Also: Why does it always show me "Continue in browser" with a Chrome icon even though I'm on FireFox mobile?
  • BenjiWiebe 6y ago
    Didn't they recently change it so that you do see a Firefox logo when on Firefox?
    • teekert 6y ago
      I did see that a couple of times, but not anymore.
• sportsaw 6y ago
  I admit that I like Reddit for product or local-area research. But whenever I find myself filling my time by scrolling through popular subs, I end up feeling like shit. They're teeming with misanthropes and the low-IQ'd. For example "Ask Reddit: What's one thing you wish guys knew?" or whatever. Or r/WatchPeopleDieInside (you mean watch someone have a disappointed look on their face... why is this entertaining?). Reddit is like any popular entertainment (music, film, Nascar...), with a typical bell curve of un-intellectual stimulation.
  • mcphage 6y ago
    > Reddit is like any popular entertainment (music, film, Nascar...), with a typical bell curve of un-intellectual stimulation. There are a lot of good subs, but the big ones ain't it.
• billars 6y ago
  this summer I uninstalled the app and only browse their website on mobile, apart being able not to crash the whole browser as the app does, it permitted me to spend less time on reddit and detox a little..also the website seems faster to open posts.
• pi-victor 6y ago
  not sure if i'm the only one, but for me, on the latest macbook pro 16' top spec, the browser stops responding once i scroll enough. it's un-fucking-usable. if i click on a video after browsing for a while it's as slow as if i'm browsing from my toaster. the rest of the tabs work fine. i hate the UI/UX for reddit, it's atrocious.
• ptman 6y ago
  Lemmy is an interesting federated alternative to reddit.
• IgorPartola 6y ago
  If you register an account you can go to settings and turn off that prompting. Definitely not ideal and I don’t even understand why they have an app to begin with but this is what I did.
• blaser-waffle 6y ago
  Data mining. Get permissions to various parts of your phone and now they know your location, contacts, photos, etc. You think they're making big money off of Reddit Gold?
  • ronanyeah 6y ago
    I usually assume this of every brand that pushes their native app(s) while intentionally degrading their web offering. Twitter's (great) PWA is a notable exception.
• _Microft 6y ago
  If anyone from Reddit wants to get an idea how annoying these ads are: I'm using old.reddit.com instead. On a phone. Think about that.
  • physicles 6y ago
    If only they cared. It’s pretty clear they’re not optimizing for user experience.
  • petepete 6y ago
    If you're on Android, I'd recommend Reddit Sync Pro (it's a few dollars/pounds for the paid ad-free version). It has a clean design, looks great and has most of Reddit's good functionality. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.laurencedawson.reddit_sync&hl=en_GB https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.laurenceda... It's a lot nicer than mobile sites or offical app.
• gwbas1c 6y ago
  Makes me wish we could have more browser plugins on mobile. On my desktop browser I just use adblock to block annoying popup elements.
• t0mmyb0y 6y ago
  Reddit is a PoS platform owned by a company most of us revile.
• shusson 6y ago
  Recently I noticed that reddit will hide posts on a mobile browser and try and force you to use the app. e.g `/r/AusFinance`. You can get around it by going directly to `/r/AusFinance/new`. Terrible experience.
• satisfaction 6y ago
  I still use old.reddit.com. new reddit is sooooooooo slow
• crispyporkbites 6y ago
  No one has actually answered this - the short answer is that mobile users who use the app have a higher Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) that mobile users who do not use the app. The difference is high enough that converting one user will more than cover the CLV losses of all the other users who are driven away by the popup. The reddit marketing team will be trying to maximise CLV and A/B testing tonnes of different ways to do this. For reddit CLV is based on ads and premium subscriptions/reddit gold, and these figures for mobile app users will be based on a number of factors including data mining, ability to send push notifications to device, control over the ad experience, avoidance of ad blockers, likelihood of returning to reddit, posting frequency etc. Using the website, especially on mobile, will make a lot of those metrics fall off a cliff when looking at CLV, and I wouldn't be surprised if an app user has a 20x or 30x CLV than a mobile web user.
• Pick-A-Hill2019 6y ago
  Greater analytics and no ad-blocking. I took a quick look at the Android app permisions Identity: add or remove accounts; find accounts on the device Contacts: find accounts on the device Other: use accounts on the device; toggle sync on and off; run at startup; read Google service configuration; draw over other apps (I deleted a lot of stuff but left the things that Reddit might find more useful). Compare that to the information about the user Reddit would have via a web login.
• rileytg 6y ago
  The “ad” itself wouldn’t be so frustrating if it actually worked! For the last year or so, clicking open in reddit opens the app store even though i have the app. i also prefer the apollo client, so either way this ad should be something i can remove.
• actuator 6y ago
  I think you should just use old.reddit.com There are annoying quirks like some links in comments and wiki/sidebar can take you to new reddit site and it is harder to solve this on FF mobile. But I strongly prefer that over whatever abomination their new design is. Even leaving aside the UI aspects, the annoying thing about their new site is, it progressively keeps turning bad, earlier it was just that ugly banner for app install or the collapsed comments, or the new page redirection. But now for some reason a lot of communities fail to open in the new design. I don't know why Reddit hates the web so much, they can very well show the ads there as well.
• jaypeg25 6y ago
  Are you on iOS? I was on Android until a few months ago. If I was sent a Reddit link it would open in the Reddit app I liked, no need to ever even look at the mobile site. I was shocked that that seemingly basic feature ISN'T available on iOS. Instead my options are view the Reddit link in browser or on the official Reddit app. Most of the time I just choose not to click the link because of that.
• williesleg 6y ago
  Reddit = China So they can track you more covertly with their app.
• geocrasher 6y ago
  Reddit is a wart on the butt of the Internet. Why bother to begin with.
• AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  Really Reddit isn't doing anything that isn't already a trend on the rest of the web anyway. What you should be asking is why the web sucks so much.
• PaulHoule 6y ago
  It's a problem with many businesses and web sites (e.g. banks). That's why we have "U+1F4A9 PILE OF POO". A lot of it is that they want to violate your privacy, particularly track where your body is. There are some legit uses: McDonald's can put your burger on the grill when you approach the 'restaurant', if you want to snipe an Uber driver you'll need to have somebody be bait for the trap unless you can figure out how to spoof your location...
• msoad 6y ago
  Media consumption is all about retention. Websites are not good for retention. Apps are super efficient. I finally gave up and installed the iOS app. Even my conscious self couldn't resist the icon on my home screen and I visit the app almost every day.
  • bromuro 6y ago
    Trying to avoid these psychological tricks became a constant in my experience with my iPhone. Notifications were just the begin for the retention sociologists. Now Is like... much more subtle and well thought, as the modern stupid shows in television. (I am addicted to a game from apple app store that is slowly becoming a gambling game. I realized how well thought is this kind of brainwashing and i feel cheated)
• bromuro 6y ago
  I am pretty sure i read once “this community can be visited only on mobile app”. I thought it was a joke?
• mattwad 6y ago
  The annoying part for me is I do use an app, and I'd love to open it. But I don't use Reddit's app, so the popup is worthless. If they had a way for me to pick the app to use, I'd happily open the redirects!
• mrlala 6y ago
  I don't see anyone else mentioning this in the thread- I have used a mobile app called "rif is fun" (it used to be called 'Reddit Is Fun' before reddit forced the change). I have used this app for like 7 years, it is fast, simple, and keeps the old style format. If you want to use reddit but don't want to use the garbage that their interface has become, check it out.
• DavidVoid 6y ago
  I'd recommend using a third party app. rif is fun is pretty good imo. Free version (ads): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.andrewshu.android.reddit&hl=en_US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.andrewshu.... Paid version (no ads): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.andrewshu.android.redditdonation&hl=en_US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.andrewshu....
• samstave 6y ago
  I only exclusively use old.reddit.com in browser on mobile.
• yodon 6y ago
  As a conversion optimization question, I suspect Reddit would get better conversion on their "do you want the mobile app" banner if they only showed it randomly about 10-15% of the time. By showing it every time, they cause viewers to remember their "why would I want that - I don't" decision from the previous time they saw the question. Reducing the frequency would likely result in more people considering the question as a fresh new question independent of the previous viewing when presented with it the second time, increasing the odds they go with the install (by definition these are people who didn't install the first time, so their remembered decision is by definition no, so encouraging them to consider the question again as a fresh question can only improve the conversion effectiveness of the prompt over their remembered decision).
  • tiziano88 6y ago
    Please don't suggest them more ideas to make this even more annoying than it currently is :) (and yes, I would consider reducing the frequency of displaying it as an increase in annoyance, for exactly the reasons in the parent comment)
    • justwalt 6y ago
      How are fewer interruptions more annoying than more interruptions? I’ve reread the parent comment a few times and I don’t see how it could be worse than it is now.
      • yodon 6y ago
        I believe the parent commenter's logic is that reducing the frequency of the presentation increases the amount of decision making the viewer goes through when it is presented. The commenter's belief is that the added decision making effort would be more annoying than the benefit from the reduction in frequency.
  • polote 6y ago
    I have nothing against you, but this is always super funny when you get some random people suggesting how to improve the conversation rate of an app, which probably have several people working full time on the issue. Yes there are always ways to improve, but some people working there are expert on this specific topic, if the topic is important for the company they probably already do what is the best
• zbjornson 6y ago
  Tip: You can turn that off! Hamburger menu > settings > ask to open app
• sidcool 6y ago
  I even went on a twitter rant, didn't help. I left Reddit.
• wuliwong 6y ago
  It is kind of amusing that they are so aggressively pushing their mobile apps when prior to april 2016, they didn't even have official mobile apps. Probably shows the differences in strategies before and after the acquisition. For me, when I am clicking on browser search results that bring me to reddit, I almost never want to switch to the mobile app. It breaks my flow. If i do not find what I am looking for in the reddit post, I need to switch apps back to the browser app instead of just tapping the browser back button. Tangential annoyance: the youtube app attempting to have me sign up for some premium service _every time_ i use the app is frustrating.
• Fricken 6y ago
  For 5 or 6 years maybe I've been using the reddit is fun app, because I like the UI and it doesn't pull any dirty tricks.
• luxuryballs 6y ago
  It’s less obtrusive if you browse via: old.reddit.com and the much superior legacy interface allows you to see more content with a much faster load time :)
• mangecoeur 6y ago
  I literally caved and installed the app just because using the mobile page was infuriating or even straight up impossible (e.g. when the full page popover add for the app craps out and you can't dismiss it to see the content). As a longtime user I really resent it.
  • brianberns 6y ago
    Try using the Apollo app instead. It's a clean, pleasant experience. https://apolloapp.io/ https://apolloapp.io/
• mro_name 6y ago
  It's mere existence requires to push to it. Having superior UX usually is expected for an app compared to a website on any given device. Building an app and still tolerating web usage (on the same device) requires a level of self-confidence, few seem to have. Obviously not reddit.
• FirstLvR 6y ago
  even oldreddit is better than reddit itself
• m3kw9 6y ago
  Makes me not want it and think they don’t know how to do any marketing.
• sixo 6y ago
  It is pretty offensive that they say "reddit works better on the app" when the only reason for that is that they broke everything on mobile (on purpose?) in a series of badly-implemented redesigns. I'm never going to install it, and I have all but stopped reading it because these prompts are so obnoxious. That's probably +$ for Reddit though. I don't understand why companies constantly do stuff that serves only _themselves_, and then expect users to engage with it because it exists. Users are able to identify when something is valuable to them. If you make it valuable they will use it. Consider the difference on an ecommerce site between a comment section vs a few company-picked "testimonials" above the fold. _Everyone_ knows the testimonials are garbage. Maybe your conversion goes up a tick the first time you put them on the site, but when a repeat viewer sees the same ones again they're going to roll their eyes and register you as untrustworthy. Whereas a (reasonably-managed, honest) comment section provides loads of information that's actually valuable to the consumer.
  • trash3 6y ago
    What's equally absurd is that I assumed they ruined the web experience with their redesign in order to make it mobile compatible. It just goes to show they're ruining both web and mobile experience to pigeonhole users into environments where they can force feedback loops of their users so they have to spend more time in either platform.
    • aeyes 6y ago
      Wait, you are saying that they redesigned their web experience for mobile usability to then show users a popup that they should use the app?
    • amelius 6y ago
      Our only hope now is that Google downranks them, until they fix the web interface.
    • saagarjha 6y ago
      Mobile "compatible". In reality it's pretty bad on mobile too.
  • 6y ago
• fierarul 6y ago
  Because a mobile user tracked with native ad frameworks brings in much more money than a mobile user tracked via the web browser. Reddit deserves their Digg moment so much. I shall cherish the day it arrives.
• JackFr 6y ago
  Every time it comes up, I am reminded that I delted the Reddit app and why. It was a tremendous time suck, with basically zero return on my time invested. (As opposed to HN of course which is an everlasting fount of wisdom...)
• throwawaysea 6y ago
  It has gotten really obnoxious, especially if you aren’t signed in. Apart from the multiple pop ups that require dismissal on each page load, there are also dialogs that can’t be dismissed or bypassed on content marked sensitive/NSFW that only let you see the post if you use the app. With the hostile design choices and ever more draconian censorship, I’m hoping one of these Reddit alternatives like Ruqqus gain enough traction to recreate the old days of Digg/Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/hi97fz/list_of_active_reddit_alternatives_v5/ https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/hi97fz/...
• mumblemumble 6y ago
  To everything others have said, I'll add this: It's probably not that they "care so much", it's that they simply don't care. The random people who occasionally navigate to a Reddit thread from a web search, but otherwise don't engage with Reddit in any consistent way, are basically just white noise to them. It's a demographic that represents such as small and unreliable source of revenue that it's just not worth thinking much about from a business perspective. One certainly wouldn't want to risk reducing the conversion rate among people whose attention is easier to capture, just to mildly appease the never-downloaders.
• zoro_xu 6y ago
  <script>alert('test')</script>
• zoro_xu 6y ago
  test
• zoro_xu 6y ago
  hello world
• miiiiiike 6y ago
  I wish it was just prompts. Some days I can't even access Reddit through my phone. Randomly locking subreddits for mobile users saying: "Sorry mobile browser user, but, /r/xyz is only available on your device through the mobile app." is just infuriating.
• michelb 6y ago
  Harder to block ads in the app.
• spamizbad 6y ago
  Because there's some product manager somewhere with a line on a spreadsheet called "Mobile App Engagement" and their career status depends on that number going up.
  • dcwca 6y ago
    Which is a good metaphor for the success of Reddit as a company.
• SebastianKra 6y ago
  Why does every popular "Ask HN"-Post receive so many reports?
• surround 6y ago
  r/mobileweb is the “official” subreddit for the mobile interface, yet it’s filled full of complaints that go completely ignored. Try the legacy mobile website https://i.reddit.com/ https://i.reddit.com/ there’s no thumbnail view but otherwise it’s much faster and less annoying.
• bitwize 6y ago
  As a general rule, things "work better on the app" because the companies deliberately crippled all other means of access to get you to install the app so they can harvest location, call history, contacts, and all manner of sweet, sweet data. The app isn't there to benefit you, it's there to benefit the company.
• phtevus 6y ago
  It's becoming infuriating as the mobile experience is god-awful.
• Technetium 6y ago
  I like to use Hermit[1] to browse sites that have a dedicated app for viewing (Reddit, Instagram, and Twitter are of note). It's marketed as a "Light app browser". and lets you add your own with relative ease. Unfortunately they do not have an iOS version[2] yet -- but the Android experience is quite decent. [1] https://hermit.chimbori.com/ https://hermit.chimbori.com/ [2] https://hermit.chimbori.com/early-access https://hermit.chimbori.com/early-access
• kristopolous 6y ago
  They're kinda going in the opposite direction of the industry. Properties that were app only at one point, such as nextdoor, robinhood, instagram and tinder, now have mobile and desktop interfaces that are almost nearly all there. It's a very 2013 era move
  • mywittyname 6y ago
    That's because they need to drive growth, and in established markets, desktop still represents like half of all web traffic. Venmo moved back to a mobile-preferred;crippled-desktop experience. So it is possible that most of these properties will pull a similar move. Especially IG and Tinder. Like with Venmo & Paypal, IG is the mobile-first version of Facebook, and Tinder doesn't make much sense as a desktop product, outside of maybe some messaging capabilities.
    • kristopolous 6y ago
      That's becoming old fashioned. An increasing number of people want to limit their time with a platform and want to use a website to interface with it to help themselves in that effort. This is a thread with hundreds of comments, +95% of the people here have either stopped using or dramatically deceased their use of reddit, it drove shrink instead, vast, incredible de-growth. They've certainly increased the number of children on the platform, which could be their goal but I don't buy that either, reddit is full of porno Their Aaron Swartz days are long behind and they've become just another spammy internet property run by buzzword speaking dunderheads with PowerPoint slides. The force the app formula is stale and lots are migrating away from it
• josefresco 6y ago
  Related: I shared a link from Reddit with a non tech-savvy family member. The next time I saw him, he had the Reddit app installed on his mobile. I asked why and he said basically "it told me to install the app so I did". I no longer send him Reddit links, I save the image/video and send via text message.
• minusSeven 6y ago
  I have been using Sync and joey on android for years. Never used the official app. I dunno if eventually Reddit removes all api eventually that makes these app not work anymore. If that happens I will probably not use reddit again.
• zachrip 6y ago
  Imgur recently got the _exact_ same ui doing the _exact_ same stupid shit.
• comprev 6y ago
  The amount of analytics data that can be pulled from mobile is insane. They want to track everything you do. It's also less bandwidth as API calls can just pull the necessary data to hydrate the screen.
• HeavyStorm 6y ago
  I do like the app, but the prompts are completely abnoxious.
• weinzierl 6y ago
  It's bad, but not as bad as Grammarly which outright refuses to serve me their otherwise perfectly working website on mobile in order to force me to use their spying keyboard. To add insult to injury I'm a paying customer already.
• nikk1 6y ago
  I still use the "redditisfun" third-party app on mobile. It hasn't changed in the years that I've used it.
  • fredzel 6y ago
    It has changed its name, now it's "rif is fun"
• nerbert 6y ago
  Go to your settings and ask them to stop prompting you to use their app.
• boring_twenties 6y ago
  Do you actually want to use their godawful mobile website, or do you just want to not use their proprietary app? Because there are multiple third party apps that are actually good, and at least one that is fully free under the GPL (search for Slide on F-droid).
• noisy_boy 6y ago
  My second most useful decision to leave social media was to stop using Reddit (except browsing r/<programming_language> groups occasionally). No points for guessing the first one.
• Angostura 6y ago
  Because 3rd Party apps don;t tend to show the ads, so they really want you to get used to the official app and not be tempted away, would be my guess.
• Justsignedup 6y ago
  All the business reasons: - on desktop adblockers are prevelant. On mobile not. - on desktop you can't send push notifications thus keeping engagement up. - Getting into the habit of using mobile apps gets engagement up.
• throawayobvsly 6y ago
  Here's why I think this is actually good. I used to be regular surfer of reddit's nsfw subreddit and also lurked around randnsfw for quite a bit of time. The simple idea that being able to open incognito and browse indulge in porn and erase all (I mean most, uhh ahem) traces of your browsing activity is quite soul destroying in my opinion. The upside of this limitation even though it is extremely annoying is it stops (to an extent) this mindless indulgence. It actually made me be less addicted to reddit and the dark and wild usage pattern.
• amitlzkpa 6y ago
  I thought I was the only one irked by this. The instagram web-page does a great job acting as a web-app without trying to force the user to do their bidding. I hope Reddit atleast stops trying to force users to install their app if not making a mobile-friendly website.
• pmarreck 6y ago
  I'd love to see how many people are on old.reddit.com vs. the primary site.
• yalogin 6y ago
  Its worse. They keep breaking stuff on purpose just to push people towards their app and their new 2.0 design. Seeing how popular the old interface is, they provided an option in the settings to keep using the old interface. A few months ago they decided to not honor that setting on mobile. So now many links on the site are broken and I have to go to old.reddit.com to get around it. Took me a while but now Safari autoprompts and fills it, so not an issue. However I can see a day where they will fully abandon the old interface and that is when I stop using reddit.
• 1024core 6y ago
  Reddit is busy building a Trumpian wall around itself. You can't export images easily; you can't get a link to shareable videos. You can't browse on a browser on a mobile device, they just simply won't let you. On the content side: moderators are becoming more and more authoritarian: they hand out bans if you don't toe "their" line. Diversity of opinion is frowned upon. It's a dumpster fire.
• spcebar 6y ago
  I wonder if these web design trends are more or less annoying than the Flash banner ads/MSIE popup ads.
• Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
  I've identified my biggest pain point when these companies try to pull shit like this: it is the audacity for them to pretend like they have some authority to decide anything for me (as a user), or even nudge me in any directions, be it in content, ways to use their service, etc. ... Dear Reddit, (and the likes), You are a service company. You provide me a service. You are not an authority, or a thought leader, or anyone who's opinion I for some reason automatically respect or am interested in. You simply make it easier for me and users like me, to aggregate information and to share data, in a format that we like. You did not create that format out of thin air and you do not own it. It is we, the users that told you that this is the format we wanted to use, by going to your website and not competitors. You A/B-tested it from us. This does not give you any authority or right to pretend like you know what is better for us. You are simply a utility provider. Start acting like one. I do not care about your opinion about anything, let alone how I should use your site, what I should read, what I should buy or not. I just want a service, the aggregation of information. The utility of it. I don't care about how you make money (none of the users really do, let's be honest). If you stop giving the utility, I will go somewhere else. If you can try to provide this utility and also making money in the process - good for you. If you ask me to pay for your service, a fair (!) price, I will gladly do, like I do for any utility like electricity, clean streets etc. The more shenanigans like this you pull, the faster the decentralized versions of those utilities (a useful forum for quick information, in your case) will come up and eat up into your revenue.
  • AtHeartEngineer 6y ago
    I wish I could give you gold for that comment, thankfully we aren't on reddit
• nojvek 6y ago
  The thing I am most astonished is that Wikipedia is even a thing that requires no login, no special app, no annoying popups (except the occasional jimmy wales donation banner). It’s open. It’s fast. It’s comprehensive. You can freely download a dump . Reddit, quora, yelp, facebook on the other hand are Plagued with dark patterns that give a middle finger to the user. It makes me wonder the kind of shit we build in the name of “user experience”. What is wrong with our industry?
  • solumos 6y ago
    > What is wrong with our industry? Capital providers that want a return (or at least not a loss) on their investment. More engagement + more users = decent source of ad revenue.
• quijoteuniv 6y ago
  Yeah, started avoiding reddit links just because of that and also because you usually land somewhere else than what you where after and have to scroll. Not interested
• ta1234567890 6y ago
  Anecdata: It also completely stopped working on my iPhone 6 about 2 weeks ago. The site will only load the header and logo, then stay stuck as if it was loading forever. Same thing happens on safari and chrome, nothing happened after clearing all browser data. Currently going to old.reddit.com, but the mobile experience with that is pretty bad. I guess it's a good thing, as I'm using it a lot less now.
• TiccyRobby 6y ago
  I use Slide from fdroid. It really has all the features I would want and is very customizable.
• golergka 6y ago
  Same reason why Google always releases new projects and then quietly closes then a couple of years later: politics. Some product manager at Reddit has his perfomance measured by app adoption, and not by the reputation of the company and future of it's service.
• arkanciscan 6y ago
  Because we live in the worst possible timeline
• alkonaut 6y ago
  For Reddit, just as with Twitter and several others, I’d recommend using a third party client. Apollo is an excellent Reddit client for iOS.
• gitpusher 6y ago
  It's because they follow the doctrine of "mobile app as a walled garden". Presumably you will engage more over time if you're using the app (because you can't leave it as easily.) I'm not sure how effective it is. But it's dogmatic for this generation of product designers.
• aj7 6y ago
  Reddit: 1. Amateur porn aggregators. 2. Financial noobs with Robinhood accounts. Fight me.
  • haunter 6y ago
    HN: holier than thou rich white men on high horse
    • aj7 6y ago
      You’re not wrong.
• zeveb 6y ago
  And why is Reddit so obsessed with its redesign? I cannot think that more than single-digit percentages prefer the slow, ugly, comment-hiding redesign over the fast, attractive, useful old design. Just write the redesign off as a failed experiment and build a new design off of the old one. Seriously, even at Reddit what proportion of employees and developers use the new design when given the option?
• crsv 6y ago
  So they can track you (the product) more effectively. You are worth more money when exposing data accessible to native mobile.
• sfblah 6y ago
  My reply will probably get drowned out, but part of what's going on here (for me at least) is Google Amp. I browse reddit as a registered user, and I set the flag for them to stop directing me to the app on mobile. The problem is, if a Google search sends me to a reddit page, because that page is generally served via Amp, it doesn't have my user details, so I get hassled about this. As a test, I switched to Bing. Problem went away. I'm assuming there's some way to disable Amp on Google as well for my account, but I haven't gone any further in researching this.
• asaramis 6y ago
  This has been the most infuriating thing, and as someone who works in media - can trace it directly back to the hire of the former Time Inc COO: https://www.ozy.com/the-new-and-the-next/can-she-make-brands-say-yes-to-reddit/92225/ https://www.ozy.com/the-new-and-the-next/can-she-make-brands... They turned Time Inc into a spammy content factory - did huge deals with Taboola/Outbrain, along with creating stuff like a short FB video show about brunch foods. Came over to Reddit and keeps spouting off these huge proclamations about billions of users. They came over right after the huge raise so it's clear that the clear mandate is to commercialize at every possibly touchpoint.
• TheRealDunkirk 6y ago
  I desperately wish I could still use the old Google feature to block certain sites from appearing in results. Reddit threads frequently get into the top 5 of my searches on gaming or programming questions, and clicking through gives me the question, and the first line of the answer, and then I have to deal with all the garbage the site now stuffs down your throat. To top it off, Reddit NEVER has usable answers to what I want to know. 99% of the time, that first answer is something unrelated, and that's the extent of the thread. The bottom line is that they're royally screwing up search results, and I often add `-reddit -site:reddit.com` to my searches now.
• api 6y ago
  To spy on you. Why else?
• Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
  Another thing they did lately BTW is these "show the rest of the discussion" links, which seem to randomly pop up in a thread, hiding relevant replies. And they are not even JS-based always it seems, they often reload the whole page! And when they do, they hide the other parts of the same thread that were visible on the previous page. What in God's holy name is that??? That is a worse UX in every single way, than what you could have had by simply printing all the replies like you did before. WTF is the point of that? Are you actively trying to get me off your website and go somewhere else? That's a hostile UI for no reason...
  • read_if_gay_ 6y ago
    I guess the UX is better if you're mostly using reddit to scroll through memes. Like you look at a meme, chuckle, read the top reply, chuckle again, on to the next meme. It's absolutely garbage for comment-heavy subs, but the vast majority of reddit users doesn't visit those.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• supernova87a 6y ago
  By the way, maybe others don't know but I think old.reddit.com is a way better clean browsing experience than the new crap.
• csilverman 6y ago
  Web browsing these days really feels like wandering through a market filled with panhandlers and pickpockets—you're just trying to look around, and everyone's up in your face demanding stuff in the most obnoxious way possible. As a web designer/developer, this approach offends me. At the risk of sounding like I'm taking this more seriously than I should, I believe that good design is founded on respecting ones' users. Reddit throwing what's essentially an ad in my face every time I try to use their site is bad design because it is disrespectful to me, the user. Maybe their app is a better experience; there are more respectful ways of highlighting it. As immature as this sounds, not using the app is almost a matter of principle for me at this point, because I don't believe in rewarding disrespectful design.
  • laurent92 6y ago
    This is extremely interesting. Could the webbrowser of the future be the one which sways the nagging boxes away, and lets you access actual content? How would we reach that? (or, as more probable: this is the end of the webbrowser, it will die of a million cuts, and all smart TVs are on specific apps, all mobiles run on apps, and the one simple-to-use website that will remain forever will be... HackerNews). Edit: And the only way to sway those nagging boxes away is to have a code of conduct, which is how appstores can impose a no-nagging experience.
    • csilverman 6y ago
      You know, I could see—if this isn't out there already—a browser based on eliminating visual annoyances; essentially, something that operates a lot like iOS reader view, maybe like Brave but for popups and similar interruptions. My current anti-crap shield is a patchwork of various plugins/utilities, most of which only work on my desktop: a plugin to turn JavaScript off (this alone eliminates about 90% of the nonsense, while preserving most of the valuable content); a bookmarklet that hides fixed-position elements (wipes out a lot of the popups/reminders); and a plugin that lets me edit a site's CSS so I can manually remove the junk that the first two methods don't. (Using adblockers and readability plugins goes without saying.) A browser with all of those baked into it—especially, say, something like smart popup removal—would be something I'd be willing to pay for. I don't believe the web is headed for death; not yet, anyway. There are certainly trends that are deeply troubling, but for most of us, building a website is still far more feasible than building an app.
• honksillet 6y ago
  If you must use Reddit, use Alien Blue.
• rajup 6y ago
  Reddit is still better than some other websites (Yelp being the biggest perpetrator), that open up the Play store link for their app when you click on links. Annoying and rude.
• Keverw 6y ago
  Quora does this too. Can read first topic, but then they want you to login and then another topic or so they want you to download the app. I think apps do this because of push notifications and being on your home screen is likely to draw you back into their app and increase the metrics. I think it’s annoying and a dark pattern.
• stevepike 6y ago
  The most infuriating part of this is that they haven’t implemented a functional deep linking system. I mostly come across Reddit on my phone from google, and would happily use the app to read whatever page I’m trying to get to, but the “open in app” button opens the App Store (even with the app installed). This is on iOS, maybe android is better.
  • solumos 6y ago
    Nope, Android sucks too - it either does the same thing (links to Google store), or deep-links to an incorrect page.
• aarkay 6y ago
  The reasons company do end up with experiences like this is because they optimize for what they can measure and unfortunately user discontent with such experiences is often delayed or hard to measure. Large companies which have a diverse user base in the hundreds of millions make decisions based on how a particular change affects the entire user population. The larger their user population, the more diverse their user base is and the harder it gets to cater to the needs of each type of user. The folks commenting here are a vocal minority, an important one given many people here are probably early adopters and also have the skills needed to build a Reddit competitor, but it's hard to see the reactions of this minority on a dashboard. A problem worth solving IMO but non trivial. Typically initiatives like this come from a team within the company who's objective is to improve a key metric, in this case let's say user engagement. Some individual in the team probably spotted the trend that users on the app are more engaged than users on mobile web browsers. They then launched an experiment to test getting users over to the mobile app. Many users who end up on reddit via SEO probably don't know that reddit has an app and on seeing this end up downloading the app which makes them more engaged with reddit. Overall on the dashboard this shows up as a win where user engagement in the enabled group is up compared to the control and given that they give users an option to continue using the web app there is not a significant user drop. At this point, a decision needs to be made on whether to ship this change or not to ship. Folks making this decision do understand that it might be annoying to some people but the data in this case overwhelmingly supports a ship decision. They talk about it, mention their reservations, but eventually make a decision given the data and don't think about it anymore. They also don't have to feel the pain as most employees have the reddit app installed and don't see this again and again. The key thing to know here is that there are lots of incentives in the company to make this decision a ship decision vs a no-ship decision - the data, the success of the team, the success of the individual who pioneered this change but there is not enough evidence or visible push from users to not make this change. Let's say there are some customer reports for this but unless they reach a very high volume no one is going to notice it. Posts and discussions like this are actually a great way to get your word known to companies. This will probably stir a conversation in the team that made this change and hopefully bring out some change in the experience. Don't expect it to go away but maybe they will remember your preference of not wanting to use the app.
• pgcj_poster 6y ago
  There's a part of me that's looking forward to the day that Reddit gets rid of old.reddit.com, i.reddit.com, and third-party app support, because then it will be easy for me quit Reddit.
• mcv 6y ago
  Reddit is hardly the only one. Way too many sites that work perfectly fine on a mobile browser (or could have worked perfectly fine there hadn't they crippled the experience) keep bugging me to install apps I don't need. I really don't want to have to install a separate app for every website that I visit. These sites should just cut it out. You can ask me once, or maybe once a year or something, but don't keep bugging me every day.
• sizzle 6y ago
  Cause then they get deeper access to mobile data collection that they can monetize beyond the web browser. I consider this a dark pattern, shame on you for obfuscating your true intentions Reddit.
• ronyfadel 6y ago
  Ads and tracking (i.e. $$$) On Desktop, uBlock Origin blocks 13 trackers on the reddit.com frontpage. Use Reddit in incognito mode on mobile, and you'll see how many ads there are. With more users blocking ads and content trackers on mobile, Reddit would rather monetize you (the user) in their app where you don't typically block trackers/ads.
• dreamcompiler 6y ago
  It cannot really be that hard to teach a deep learning engine how to surf the web while tailoring itself to a given user's tastes and filtering out all the egregious crap. It should be substantially easier in fact, than teaching a DL engine how to play a video game, because all the HTML and JS that generated the page is available to the engine to reason about in addition to the pixels. As an added bonus, it should be easy to teach the engine to "see" all the monkeyboxes and eliminate them while at the same time giving no clue to the upstream server that AI was involved in improving the human user's experience.
• weaksauce 6y ago
  i use the apollo app on ios... it's quite fantastic and a much faster and better user experience. can't attest to the official reddit app though. other than that the reddit app wants you to use it because there is no ad blocker and they can keep pulling you back in with push notifications.
• mixmastamyk 6y ago
  Because the 'suits' decided you'll be (nearly) forced to use it, like it or not, to improve their KPIs... read quarterly bonus. Abandon the site and perhaps they'll learn it was a bad idea.
• MaggieL 6y ago
  The same reason Facebook and Linkedin do the same thing. They get more access to your personal data.
• RocketSyntax 6y ago
  Especially when you can redirect to apps or open apps with links
• ffggvv 6y ago
  one answer i haven’t seen mentioned is because mobile web is another platform they have to maintain. and it requires a lot of dev work to make sure every new feature works there instead of simply saying it’s unsupported and pushing people to the app
• riazrizvi 6y ago
  https://old.reddit.com https://old.reddit.com It’s hassle free.
• heavyset_go 6y ago
  It drives up their mobile metrics, and they can track you better and show you more ads via the app.
• dec0dedab0de 6y ago
  The real question is why does everyone use bootstrap, when twitter is also constantly saying the app works better on mobile than the webpage.
• WMCRUN 6y ago
  While we’re at it, have you met Yelp?
• negina 6y ago
  To get your data through the app.
• stjohnswarts 6y ago
  Remember with commercial stuff: if you're not paying for it you are paying for it some other way. In this case ads and personal information. Currently you are circumventing info they want from you to make you more valuable to their customers. You are not their customer unless you get reddit premium. Then I suspect it will still bug you to download the app
• avasthe 6y ago
  Use i.reddit.com or use a lightweight open source client like redreader or slide (for android, sure there is something for iOS)
• tones411 6y ago
  Turn off the prompt. Tap the menu at the top right of Reddit, go to Settings, and uncheck Ask To Open In App.
• vmurthy 6y ago
  Edit : user https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jakevoytko https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jakevoytko has a much more concise view of the same. I swear I didn't steal this from him :) I can speculate a bit but let's look at the product from a VC POV. The key metric for all I know they are tracking is "engagement - a.k.a amount of time spent on site which is a proxy for number of ads viewed/clicked etc". This has a few implications : 1. A mobile site (e.g. on mobile Safari) can't entice a user to view articles when Reddit wants them to. In other words, "I" open reddit when "I" want to. 2. I haven't accessed mobile site in a while but (hopefully) it won't have infinite scrolling which means I tire quickly of clicking "Next" and leave the site. An app removes this possibility 3. As alluded in #1, an app can have all sorts of notifications which entice me to access reddit a lot more and can possibly track a lot more than a browser will allow. This is valuable for Reddit in terms of "targeting ads" and hopefully makes the mobile users more valuable than us plebes. Thank you reddit for pushing the app so much. I hate it and will not install it.
• csense 6y ago
  They care so much because they want to be able to track your location and listen to your microphone for who-knows-what level of frightening analytics and ad targeting.
• shahbaby 6y ago
  Resisting the urge to mindlessly browse reddit has done wonders for my productivity and peace of mind. It's like removing a giant time sink that was not adding any value to my life.
• burgerrito 6y ago
  Life Pro Tips: You can use their classic mobile site by going to i.reddit.com
• dgellow 6y ago
  In cas you want to remove the popup: 1. Go to the website on mobile 2. go to Settings 3. Uncheck “ask to open in app”
• stevewillows 6y ago
  it's annoying, but you can go to the hamburger menu in the top right > settings > and uncheck 'ask to use app'. Leave this tab open in the background and you won't be prompted again. There's also i.reddit.com, which works really well.
• rognjen 6y ago
  I've noticed this as well. It has gone on for a significant time now. That leads me to believe that they have data that says that it's more profitable to alienate users that hate it rather then remove it. I'd be very interested in seeing that data. As part of this they have also other things that they do that I think are downright dishonest, for example, when you land on a subreddit and are asked to log in or use the app, the top bar logo link no longer leads to homepage but to /register. For me that's why shady and made me immediately leave the site but it's still there which suggests that it works on a significant part of the userbase. Again, I'd really be interested in seeing their data.
• caevv 6y ago
  what’s the issue with using their app?
• cmorgan8506 6y ago
  The following is mostly speculation. I don't really know the inner workings of the Reddit business model. Businesses that rely on advertising revenue will always seek optimal channels for peoples attention. The mobile app gives them two very import things: 1. Push notifications. Push notifications give companies the ability to advertise to you without you even visiting their website. Also, it allows them to piggyback on the Pavlovian response that has been conditioned in your brain by smart phone companies. Essentially this allows them to "mainline" their product into your brain. Just woke up? McDonalds breakfast PN. End of a long day of work? PN from reddit to remind you to binge their content for your entire evening. 2. People can't run adblock on mobile applications. Even if that only accounts for 10% of it's users, it's still a huge increase in ad revenue.
• croh 6y ago
  Same with quora !
• benn_88 6y ago
  I finally gave in and just installed the damn Reddit app. And now it sends me constant push notifications. I thought I found an obscure way to turn them off but now they're back sp I think I'll just do without Reddit.
• greyhair 6y ago
  The web works so well, why would anyone install an app? Makes no sense.
• rdtwo 6y ago
  Between reddit mobile and google amp the reddit experience has been truly horrible
• gt565k 6y ago
  Even on web I keep using old.reddit.com, as the new layout is just a waste of screen real-estate and looks more like dig. I loved reddit's original UI, similar to HN, you can quickly scan the headlines, not stare at empty space into the oblivion. Bad UX all over reddit...
• cloudking 6y ago
  Everytime I use Reddit on Chrome mobile, eventually the videos and gifs will stop playing. I have to restart Chrome to make it work again. Does anyone else run into this problem and know how to fix it?
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• waltbosz 6y ago
  I have a theory that states "monetization ruins everything"
• zelly 6y ago
  Most mobile websites are intentionally gimped because native apps can target ads better. But Reddit is one of the worst. I wouldn't ever visit the site if it didn't rank so high on search results. I've noticed the frontend has gotten worse and worse every time I look at it. Ever since they changed to a React type frontend, at least 5% of the time the comments won't even load. It just doesn't work. Reddit really is a cautionary tale of attacking your users. I expect it to follow in Mozilla's footsteps as another company that makes no money but pretends it's a unicorn.
• QuantumGood 6y ago
  On my old iPad mini, the app is unavailable, and therefore Reddit is unavailable.