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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

• 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?
• ObsoleteNerd 6y ago
  Their redesign combined with the incessant harassing app crap turned me from an hours-a-day-and-modding-some-decently-big-subs redditor to visiting for 15 minutes a couple times a week when on the dunny. Their entire site is so user hostile now it’s actually bordering on funny. They’ve become a parody of everything they set out to defeat.
  • camillomiller 6y ago
    Do NOT have your phone with you on the dunny and don’t spend 15 minutes on it! Make it a one minute job. You’ll thank me when you won’t get piles ;)
    • teekert 6y ago
      Actually forcing the whole thing in 1 minute will get you piles, afaik?
      • throwaway4220 6y ago
        Both true! Don't force it, but also don't spend more than 10 minutes there. (Source: med school, personal experience :\ )
        • mft_ 6y ago
          If one isn’t actively forcing, what’s the difference between sitting on the loo and sitting on a chair? Is there evidence that lingering on the loo in a relaxed state causes problems?
          • throwaway4220 6y ago
            I can't find a good article, but my (albeit anecdotal) understanding is that the hole pulls down your butt muscles while the ring compresses the veins responsible for blood return.
      • andrew_ 6y ago
• rolls-reus 6y ago
  I felt the same. I've tried to quit reddit several times without success but since these changes the constant annoyances were just too much that I completely stopped using the site.
• hh3k0 6y ago
  It's quite irritating if you browse 18+ subreddits and they stop you from seeing content, stating you need the app to see 18+ content. It's easily circumvented by replacing "www" with "old" in the URL, however, quite irritating nonetheless.
  • PoissonVache 6y ago
    Thanks for the tip bru
  • fullstop 6y ago
    There are browser extensions which automatically do this.
  • taneq 6y ago
    Ugh, imgur does this now too. The one time I don't want to be logged in is if I'm looking at something nsfw...
  • blaser-waffle 6y ago
    Replacing "www" with "np" also works. Functionally I believe it's identical to "old" but without voting/posting
  • soylentcola 6y ago
    Really? I just went to /r/gonewild on my phone (browser) to test it out. It gave me the usual "are you 18+?" message and let me proceed to all of the amateur nudity you'd expect. (Firefox mobile, not in desktop mode if it matters).
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • hh3k0 6y ago
      It happens ever so often but not always -- maybe they're still phasing it in?
      • 6y ago
• Timpy 6y ago
  Unfortunately, for every conscientious person that they push away another user is hooked even deeper. Their redesign is insidious. Their page is now aggressively attempting to manipulate you into browsing longer; infinite scrolling, and the way they put questionably-related links in the middle of comments sections is no better than the chumbox clickbait you find at the bottom of bullshit-web articles.
  • blaser-waffle 6y ago
    Yeah I recall how they used to be different looking -- the ads, I mean. Enough that you could tell they're ads and would only click on them by dumb accident or if they were interesting. Now they just look 100% like regular posts, and it feels more and more shady.
  • shawnz 6y ago
    But I already WANTED to browse Reddit all day... They didn't make it more encouraging for me to do that, they made it more difficult
  • _jal 6y ago
    > Their redesign is insidious I must somehow be immune to the charms. I find it intentionally, aggressively irritating. I used to lose hours there, but now don't browse around at all anymore. Follow a link in, find what I'm looking for, and dismiss the junk-pit.
  • dageshi 6y ago
    People didn't need any encouragement to browse longer on reddit, they actually built user solutions to infinite scrolling (RES) years before reddit incorporated it proper.
• bhupy 6y ago
  I thought I was the only one. For a while I really struggled with a crippling addiction to Reddit, and no amount of Screen Time blockers seemed to help (it’s too easy to override). Simply uninstalling the app did the trick. In the beginning I would open the mobile browser out of compulsion, but the UI was so revolting that it’s essentially cured my addiction.
  • nepthar 6y ago
    This comment is a great answer to the originally posed question :)
  • vcanales 6y ago
    The Apollo app, that everyone seems to love for reasons unbeknownst to me, had that effect on me. I was happily addicted to the official reddit app when I decided to try something else. It ruined my experience so badly that now I barely even go to reddit.
  • cfontes 6y ago
    I have this problem too, uninstalling apollo right now. I also hate the mobile UI, I think this will work.
  • culopatin 6y ago
    That’s the best way to get available time hours up for me. Deleted IG, FB, Reddit and I grab my phone, switch through the home screen pages, I don’t find the apps for those places, and turn the screen off. No more drifting through trash feeds of unnecessary content. It’s been great. Now I only drift through HN and my RSS feed, but at least I choose what I see.
  • jrsdav 6y ago
    I was having a similar problem, so I turned to blocking on the network level (pihole). The work arounds were annoying enough to finally deter me off the platform, circa 2016. It was such a relief to have those wasted hours of my life back, as well as abandon some of the echo chambers. It’s also shocking to see how hostile the design choices have gotten since then, so I’m glad I got out when I did. One handy tip: Reddit I find, is still one of the best sources of user submitted content for niche hobbies, traveling, consumer advice, etc. So I use Google’s cached search results for those instances where I want to take advantage of Reddit’s information, but don’t want to actually go to the site.
• z9e 6y ago
  I wonder if it’s partly due to business / product people taking control and trying to aggressively push for more user engagement rather than let the engineers keep the site enjoyable to use. Either way, it’s turned me off as well, and I thank them for it because I got a lot of free time back.
  • AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
    Maybe, but from experience I can assure you that engineers are just as capable of ruining user experiences all on their own.
• 7thaccount 6y ago
  Agreed. No, I don't want your app. Why can't I just use the browser? I can't even view pictures anymore in some threads without the app. HN is so nice with its simplicity.
• halfFact 6y ago
  I have the issue that I find Reddit extremely useful to become proficient. I knew what problems my tomatoes were having the moment it started. I learned about blueberries needing something stronger than coffee.(and more) I learned what microcontrollers are popular in the enterprise world by lurking. I got some extremely useful information in a table form which was impossible to find in a Google search. I suppose I just need to stop browsing the popular feed and it would always be useful.
  • throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    I completely and totally disagree. Reddit is of no benefit for anything you could just Google. Reddit's commenting dynamics create a false consensus around whatever the first thing that a bunch of people who Googled it can not disagree to. That's bad enough but when you start talking about subjects that have any degree of subjectiveness people's desire to have their world view confirmed abounds and it becomes even worse. Pick a subject you're very familiar with the nuances of and start sorting comments by best, go straight to the bottom and among the low quality junk you'll find that there are tons of valid and well informed opinions that get rejected because they required more nuanced thought to understand than a bunch of amateurs who just googled it could muster or wasn't 100% compatible with the ideology of the group at large. The net effect is that you get "if you just Googled it yourself" quality answers (pretty much every "open to the internet riff raff at large" platform has this problem to an extent) but sent though a filter that removes a substantial fraction of the opinions from people who actually know what they're talking about. Frankly the chans are better in this regard because the only mechanism for disagreement is to reply and the content of replies makes the nature of agreement/disagreement pretty obvious. As bad as HN is about rejecting anything that doesn't fit it's narrow ideology about how the world works it at least usually doesn't reject things if they're technically correct. The same cannot be said for Reddit. If you want professional advice you need to go somewhere with some sort of permanence and a higher bar to entry (i.e. the people who wind up there have actually care enough about the subject that they sought the place out), traditionally forums fill this role.
    • dageshi 6y ago
• mark_l_watson 6y ago
  I forgot about that, probably because I don’t see it anymore on iOS/iPadOS. I go to the www.reddit.com URI, not the mobile one. Perhaps it is because I autopay $5/month to Reddit? It could also be the newer version of Safari in the beta iOS and beta iPadOS?
• ashtonkem 6y ago
  That and the fact that they somehow make video playback continually less reliable somehow.
  • jampekka 6y ago
    This. The reddit's video player is a total mess, in both functionality and usability. For the majority of time it simply doesn't load the video, and when it does, the play/pause/seeking is extremely laggy, and often any interaction causes the video to just not play. I'm having hard time understanding how someone manages to write such horrid piece of software, and how it keeps on being used on one of the most popular websites in the world.
    • ashtonkem 6y ago
      Or how they expect to remain one of the most popular sites in the world if the core functionality doesn’t work right.
      • jampekka 6y ago
        Network effects?
        • ashtonkem 6y ago
          The story of social networks depending on network effects alone is the story of Wile E Coyote going off a cliff; it works and until it suddenly doesn’t. Hey, remember Digg? Reddit’s risk here is that there’s very little value to their back catalogue, since most users use it as a stream of new and novel things. So the only thing protecting reddit is that it’s still the main place people go to post funny videos and similar, which is much easier to move than their back catalog. The fact that video playback basically doesn’t work is a serious problem here.