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It appears that Reddit is forcing me to use their app to see deep linked content
- finiteseries 5y agoThe phrase “deep linked content” might lead some people to ignore this as comments have been blocked for a while now, I wouldn’t have realized this specifically meant post content & toplevel comments from the title without coming from the Windows 11 design conventions thread.
- stevenhubertron 5y agoThanks for the suggestion, I updated the title.
- TimSchumann 5y agoFor those who don't know, for _most_ content if you just prepend the old subdomain, you can bypass this behavior. https://old.reddit.com/ https://old.reddit.com/
- 48309248302 5y agohttps://i.reddit.com/ https://i.reddit.com/
- snowwrestler 5y agohttps://www.reddit.com/.compact https://www.reddit.com/.compact
- toxik 5y agoInfinite scroll is a very dangerous thing. Seriously should be regulated.
- alternatetwo 5y agoReddit Enhancement Suite has had this for years btw. It's on by default but you can turn it off.
- turminal 5y agoIt's a dark pattern that was successfully imposed on us.
- taurath 5y agoAlso there are browser add ons to always redirect to the old (non broken) style. When they drop old style they should be prepared for a huge migration of users away like what happened to Digg. Hoping someone has a viable competitor spinning up for when they decide to make their next decision that is terrible for the users.
- jordigh 5y agoI doubt there will be a huge migration. I think it's already a small minority of users holding on to "old". I've seen people on social media asking, "why would anyone use the old and broken Reddit design?"
- worldeva 5y agoI'm a moderator of a fairly large, nontechnical subreddit- Reddit allows you to see your subreddit's statstistics, and the last time I checked, around 1/3 of our traffic is from old reddit. So definitely not just a small minority. (Then again, it has been around a year since I checked, so perhaps the numbers have shifted.)
- CamelCaseName 5y agoI mod a top 50 sub and less than 15% of our pageviews are on old reddit. The number used to be falling much faster, but seems to be falling in a somewhat stable fashion around the 15% mark over the past year.
- gruez 5y agoIs this based off the subdomain? If so the numbers might be flawed because logged in users that have the legacy design option selected in their user options would still possibly show up as www.
- CamelCaseName 5y agoIt's directly from the Reddit traffic page. I'm not sure how they categorize pageviews.
- sschueller 5y agoOnce they kill that I'm gone. 13 years...
- PenguinCoder 5y agoSame. Also, moderator of a few large subs. They keep shitting on mod feature and abilities, still wanting us to mod 'efficiently'. One more major "fuck you" and I can promise I'm gone from all that. Get more value and less hate from here, as it is.
- Dracophoenix 5y agoAny good alternatives? I know of tildes.net and lobsters.rs from others.
- throwawaysea 5y agoThere's a big list here: https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/km9468/list_of_active_reddit_alternatives_v6/ https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/km9468/...
- ncann 5y agoIt used to work great but over time more and more threads are broken and cannot be viewed in old reddit, for example the poll threads, or the prediction threads, or threads with inline images mixed with texts.
- diveanon 5y agoTeddit.net is an even better privacy focused frontend
- moistly 5y agoI browse in iOS Safari private mode. Reddit has now started to entirely block many subreddits from my view. It pops up “Continue in app/ go back to r/popular”. I do not know how it determines which to block; newer and less-popular seems to a pattern. I have been finding ways to bypass their blocks, so my apologies if they decide to make it an entirely private site. Edit: using the www prefix, not old or i.
- gruez 5y agoI reverse engineered it and it seems to be based on the "community_reviewed" flag in the https://www.reddit.com/r/:subreddit/about.json https://www.reddit.com/r/:subreddit/about.json endpoint. >I have been finding ways to bypass their blocks, so my apologies if they decide to make it an entirely private site. using the i.reddit.com subdomain should work.
- LegitShady 5y agoJust prepend old. Or I. Instead of www to the URL. Once you’re in old reddit it won’t switch you back to new reddit until your next session. It’s not as convenient on mobile but reddit now is hostile to lurkers so it is what it is.
- rubatuga 5y agoYou have to create an account and login, even a throwaway is fine
- throwaway2048 5y agoa while back the new reddit site was popping up a questionare about stuff like "does this subreddit contain sexual or violent content" I guess this is what they did with the results.
- ThePowerOfFuet 5y agoWhy not use Apollo instead?
- arvidkahl 5y agoSo THAT's what they mean when they claim to be "the front page of the internet." JUST the front page, it appears. For a website that has been around so long and has been a fundamental building block of what most of us understand to be a diverse, open, and highly interconnected internet, this is quite close-minded.
- scotuswroteus 5y agothey don't force that at all. they have an annoying pop up. so do many other high profile information-conveying websites on the internet.
- emsy 5y agoSimilar to how quora forces you to sign up if you click a link coming from a Google search. I just avoid these sites altogether. Unfortunately, I’m but a drop in the ocean.
- theturtletalks 5y agoI remember reading Google would start penalizing these sites for using these dark patterns. Would losing traffic from Google search force them to change their ways?
- toxik 5y agoA site like reddit? Very doubtful.
- rchaud 5y agoQuora is at that point in its lifecycle where it's barely any better than Yahoo Answers. The nice, knowledgeable people that used to provide detailed answers are long gone. Like Medium, it's full of content marketers and clout-chasers who've figured out that getting their answers on Quora is free SEO for their brand.
- xtracto 5y agoQuora reminds me of the experts exchange times. They are "improving" themselves into irrelevancy.
- herjazz 5y agoTruly the worst app I have used on my phone
- azalemeth 5y agoThey don't actually remove the content, just hide it with an obnoxious scroll-down-to-trigger-login-spam JS and a blur content blocker. It's dismissed with one right-click -> inspect element -> delete div
- duckfruit 5y agoEven worse, when I clicked on "Continue in App" it didn't actually open the relevant page in the app, instead taking me to the product page for Reddit on the iOS app store. I already have the app installed. Native apps and URLs are like peanut butter and mayonnaise, they just don't go well together.
- rchaud 5y agoMight be an issue with how Safari renders links, or maybe the app itself is not a default for opening Reddit links. When I get the mobile page on Reddit, clicking "Open in App" on the popup works fine for a third party Android app (Now for Reddit).
- cryptoz 5y agoIt's not an issue with safari or the app. It's an issue with the website blocking you from seeing content that it advertises is on the web. And it is on the web for others, but not for you!
- epse 5y agoOn android, it doesn't open official or unofficial reddit app for me. Anecdotes not data, but still. It launched the ios app større page for me too, ironically
- gabetax 5y agoThis is a tangent on your metaphor, but PB&M has actually been a popular combination in the past. https://www.atlasobscura.com/foods/peanut-butter-mayonnaise-sandwich https://www.atlasobscura.com/foods/peanut-butter-mayonnaise-...
- nescioquid 5y agoOh wow. I never knew that was a thing. When I was 6 or 7, I decided to make the most disgusting sandwich I could think to make. I ended up "inventing" a PB&M on white bread. I was pretty disappointed as it wasn't too bad.
- 5y ago
- andrewmcwatters 5y agoI noticed the other day when I wanted to watch a video in PiP and I went to go edit the DOM to do it, Reddit refreshed the page on me. Must have been some MutationObserver hook to prevent people from fiddling. I was pretty turned off after that. Anyway, that being said, browser perf is so bad with the new Reddit, you basically have to use the app.
- 34679 5y agoI stopped frequenting a while ago, but I do have the Firefox "Old Reddit" plugin for when I click on a reddit link. It works as you'd expect.
- wreath 5y agoI know this is offtopic and will probably be downvoted to hell (and so what?!), but I really dont get how adults can complain about such a thing in a public online space with phrasing that makes it sound like something terrible happened to the person tweeting. I really dont get the appeal of this. Is it another way to generate conversation?
- wtetzner 5y agoI decided to just stop using Reddit a while ago. I can’t be bothered to use a website that is so hostile to being used.
- pg_bot 5y agoReddit is one of a few websites (Twitter, LinkedIn) whose design has gotten progressively worse for as long as I can remember. I really wish someone would come along and execute on a clear design vision for the company. It's insane to me that it is this poorly built.
- rchaud 5y agoThe design is fine, but you can't make money by showing ads to a bunch of anonymous users and non-logged in visitors. Hence the dickbar for mobile users. Reddit have big investors now, and they are under pressure to monetize. Unfortunately their ad product is garbage, and the Reddit audience is notoriously ad-unfriendly.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Judgmentality 5y agoI could be wrong, but doesn't reddit make most of its money (which probably isn't that much) selling awards? It seems dumb to me, but people buy them.
- SkyPuncher 5y agoThat's like the concession stand for a sports team. It makes them some money, but nothing close to what they'd expect to bring in through a proper ad service.
- Judgmentality 5y agoSure, I realize they want to make money on ads like facebook, but the reality is (admittedly I could be wrong) they make more on those trophy awards. It seems to have a lot to do with why they struggle to make a profit and go public.
- Razengan 5y agodickbar is my new favorite word.
- southerntofu 5y agoFunny-not-funny to complain about that on Twitter, which in the past years became unusable without JavaScript and more times than not doesn't work in Tor Browser's "Safer" mode (1st party JS enabled).
- diveanon 5y agoold.reddit.com or even better teddit.net for an alternative privacy friendly front end. Personally though I think you would be better off just avoid reddit, that place is horrible for people.
- Darvokis 5y agoI'm not aware of any better site to find information on special interests. Just avoid the toxic subreddits. Reddit is way too useful a resource to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
- swiley 5y ago>Reddit is way too useful a resource I never open it at work and get along just fine.
- Darvokis 5y agoUh, okay? I'm not sure I need tips on improving my running mileage while I'm at work either. Doesn't make Reddit useless.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- diveanon 5y agoThats like saying there are some nice berries growing in that minefield you can pick, you just need to avoid the mines.
- Darvokis 5y agoYou can say the same thing about the internet. Avoid the toxic sites. Go to the good sites. But you'd have a hard time arguing that the internet isn't a useful tool.
- scambier 5y agowhy not use a 3rd party app?
- stevenhubertron 5y agoWhen I clicked on the link sent to me, it defaulted to the browser not Apollo which I prefer.
- iblaine 5y agoReddit seems destined to follow in Digg's footsteps. The negative feedback on the reddit redesign and the reddit app has been building for years, and they continue to push it. The motivation is puzzling. Are executives knowingly pushing the need for advertising at the expense of users? Do Product managers have too much free time? For anyone else annoying by the reddit redesign, you can use the Redirector chrome extension to fix it w/the following... redirect: https://www.reddit.com(.*) to: https://old.reddit.com$1
- colinmhayes 5y agoThe mobile design isn't puzzling at all. It's infuriating, but easy to see why they're doing it. They want to force everyone onto the app because it's easier for them to advertise on.
- TX0098812 5y agoAlso people are easier to track if they use the app.
- Trias11 5y agoAnd easier to monitor and track all aspects of a person privacy such as precise location, altitude, Wifi ID, device type and characteristics, screen size, and so on.
- allarm 5y agoNot arguing with that, but why they still allow 3rd party clients then?
- BelenusMordred 5y agoI don't see them closing down their public api. It's pretty hard to police such things when you have one.
- danieljacksonno 5y agoTo keep the power users happy, I guess!
- brightball 5y agoRequest Desktop Site
- qalmakka 5y agoThankfully BaconReader still works. It might be ugly, but it's still a thousand times more functional than that Reddit official crap.
- Lev1a 5y agoBaconReader in stark contrast to the official Reddit app also features a UI not plastered over and over with irrelevant shit (so-called "advertisements").
- holler 5y agoIf you're looking for an alternative to Reddit, check out https://sqwok.im https://sqwok.im - realtime: every post has built-in slack quality chat w/markdown support. - open: the site is completely open for anyone, if you want to chat, creating an account is a breeze w/no email required - minimal: focus is on conversations w/low friction, designed so both tech and non-tech people can post, share, and easily join in a conversation. - clean design: mobile/desktop web friendly - new features dropping regularly Most importantly, you don't need to download anything to view a post!
- andrewzah 5y agoThis is not really an alternative to reddit. I don't care about online users, and part of the point of using reddit is comment chains. Having a linear chat breaks that. There have been numerous reddit clones. But the main issue is the lack of a community. People who like reddit... still use reddit for the most part. It'll take something like reddit killing the old ux to finally force enough people to move to an alternative such that a good, sizable community is formed.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- no_time 5y agoNo offense but this feels like nu-reddit but not fully realized yet. -Javascript ridden mess to display text. Loading spinners left right and center. I bet you can display text in rows without executing more than 2 megabytes of javascript. -Dark patterns like infinite scrolling -Chat style discussions are a fertile ground for low quality messages I'm jaded enough not to expect better by now but I think these are still worth mentioning if you are comparing yourself against nu-reddit.
- thih9 5y agoIt’s weird. I guess as long as it “works”, i.e. as long as dirty tricks continue to increase certain metrics, we’ll see apps that use them. Still, I’m surprised, because good UX seemed to be part of the core offering of this particular website. Are they betting that the community won’t go anywhere? Do they want to attract so many new users that they don’t care about existing ones?
- spiderfarmer 5y agoApollo is the app that lets Reddit shine. The difference in polish and UX is night and day. One man vs. an entire team. Talent and passion vs. boring dayjobs.
- schnebbau 5y agoWhat is going to be the successor to Reddit? Maybe some type of federated Mastodon-like thing?
- bee_rider 5y agoIt is hard because unfortunately, lots of these federated websites seem to attract the sort of person who was banned from Reddit... and not being banned from Reddit is a pretty low bar. Lemmy seems OK, though (and IIRC is actively trying to avoid that fate somehow).
- ggreer 5y agoScott Alexander talked about this six years ago[1]: > HL Mencken once said that “the trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.” > There’s an unfortunate corollary to this, which is that if you try to create a libertarian paradise, you will attract three deeply virtuous people with a strong commitment to the principle of universal freedom, plus millions of scoundrels. Declare that you’re going to stop holding witch hunts, and your coalition is certain to include more than its share of witches. 1. https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/07/22/freedom-on-the-centralized-web/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/07/22/freedom-on-the-central...
- Dracophoenix 5y agoIf that's the case then what makes rest if the internet as whole any different? Who gets to define what constitutes a scoundrel?
- gruez 5y ago>If that's the case then what makes rest if the internet as whole any different? Because it doesn't have the adverse selection problem since it appeals to mainstream audiences. That could be bad as well if your prior userbase was above average, ie. "eternal September" >Who gets to define what constitutes a scoundrel? I don't think thats worth discussing. You don't need an exact definition of a "scoundrel" to see why free speech reddit clones tend to attract a certain kind of user base.
- ChrisArchitect 5y agowhat are you even trying to do? Can't seem to duplicate this. Android/Chrome it offers up on first load the 'open in app' or continue in browser option, select continue in browser and life goes on fine. For both logged in and logged out. It's a sketchy annoyance but hardly a problem. Or use old.reddit like everyone else suggests.
- gruez 5y ago>Can't seem to duplicate this. Android/Chrome it offers up on first load the 'open in app' or continue in browser option Are you visiting the exact subreddit? I can reproduce it just fine. As I mentioned in another comment, the behavior is subreddit specific. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27554337 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27554337
- ChrisArchitect 5y agoah ok, that exact thread then? Fairplay. Yeah, can duplicate. Weird/annoying. (logs in, continues on merry way, in browser, all working)
- vagrantJin 5y agoYes. I have the app but theres 30-40% of URLs that send me to the browser which then asks me to download the app. I dunno.
- skunkworker 5y agoOn my iPhone I just use a shortcut to take the current page and go to Narwhal, it's a little cumbersome but much better than using it on the web on a mobile device.
- cuddlybacon 5y agoI find it a bit funny that this is posted to twitter which won't load on my phone unless I use their app.
- spankalee 5y agoWhat phone? The Twitter mobile site / PWA is regarded as one of the better ones.
- Dma54rhs 5y agoTwitter pwa often simply doesn't load the cintent, this has been discussed to death on HN. When it dies load I suppose it's decent and much faster than reddit indeed.
- cuddlybacon 5y agoiPhone. In the area where the Tweet would show, it instead says "Something went wrong" EDIT: it has been like this for several years so I assumed it was a dark pattern.
- bombcar 5y agoIt’s some sort of spam/rate limiter - try reloading 3x. It seems to be triggered by IPv6 combined with Apple telling cookies to go duck themselves.
- Havoc 5y agoYes, it's become increasingly user hostile boiling a frog style.
- afandian 5y agoQuite aside from the scummy behaviour, the assumptions behind it are a real bugbear. Just because I'm on a mobile browser it doesn't mean I'm able, or want to, install apps on my phone. What if it's a friend's phone, or I don't use Google Play, or it's an out of date version of Android, or any number of reasons.
- twirlock 5y agoReddit, and its system for letting "powermods" dictate the acceptible boundaries for discourse, was the bait and switch that destroyed freedom of speech on the internet. They effectively drained all the content from traditional forums and then deleted the parts of that were deemed problematic by the intelligentsia. If you condone this, you are an authoritarian.
- redwood 5y agoOne of my favorite subreddits, longreads, doesn't even load anymore
- filmgirlcw 5y agoI noticed this the other day and wanted to scream. I pay for Apollo, the very good iOS Reddit client and love it, but the official app is just terrible. And being forced to use the app when trying to quickly browse things (or to want to maybe browse things without logging in) is just the worst sort of UX decision to try to game app usage I can think of.
- dangus 5y agoThis is how you actually use Reddit: - It's unusable on mobile and always has been. Don't bother trying. Use unofficial apps, not the Reddit app. For example, Apollo on iOS is excellent. It's an indie app with a really great, responsive developer. Pay real money for an ad-free app like Apollo. - For desktop, set your user settings to always visit old.reddit.com. Yes, this is an official setting that's part of the user profile settings. If you want to stay logged out, there are lots of Old Reddit redirect extensions. - Always use Reddit Enhancement Suite on desktop, you're missing out if you don't. I believe Reddit's leadership knows that a decent subset of their longer tenured audience values old.reddit.com, but at the same time I wouldn't want to necessarily blame them for wanting to get new users on the app and using the newer website. For everyone that thinks they're "yet another Digg," I don't think so. They have deliberately made it so that their existing users are allowed to use Reddit in the old way that they want to. We can get upset about the dark patterns, but it's also true that social media customers are categorically not willing to pay for that kind of product. If Reddit charged even a small fee like $10 a year they'd have probably 1/10th of the visitors they do now. It just doesn't make business sense not to run off of the "data vacuum" model. Sorry, the MBAs are right in this case. As an example, there's a common Internet meme where people joke about how nobody in their right mind would pay for YouTube Premium, even though it's on many levels an excellent product and a fair business model to pay for the service without seeing personalized ads.
- joshenders 5y agoReddit siphoned Pinterest’s growth team. It’s no surprise.
- gruez 5y agoWait, actually? As in they hired the same people? Is there a source for this?
- jds375 5y agoOn top of that their deeplinking doesn’t even work. It’s completely broken. It takes me to the App Store when I already have the app installed and it’s literally impossible to go from a google search to a reddit post in the app smoothly. It absolutely blows my mind that an app where deeplinking is particularly important (google search results) is so broken. If you don’t want to build your own deeplink framework, then there’s plenty out there you can get to integrate like branch.io
- cutler 5y agoThe dream of the WWW is fading. Welcome to the new consumer network of siloed phone apps stewarded by Apple and Google. For a moment there was hope with PWAs but Apple snuffed that one out.
- mycall 5y agoI wrote a line of business app that is similar to Fulcrum but with asset and work management integration. All PWA, works great on iOS and Android. PWAs are definitely not dead.
- Shorel 5y agoAnd you are forcing me to use Twitter! Oh! The irony.
- hypnoscripto 5y agoI went cold turkey from Reddit recently after realizing my frequent usage was impacting my life and relationships. Was harder and easier than I expected. I kept catching myself opening it in a new tab unconsciously. I learned to stop myself before I’d read a single link, or I’d get sucked in. Deleted my 10+ year accounts a few weeks ago. Hardly use it now, and have been able to use it more responsibly.
- deepsun 5y agoI don't understand how can you complain to public that some private website (like reddit, facebook, twitter) are not convenient. It's like you came to someone's private garden, whose owner benevolently let you visit for free (and you agree they sell your, say, photos), and you complain to everyone that its entrance is not convenient. I'd rather let the owner know, or I can always build my own garden. Thankfully there are couple of free, ready-to-use DIY gardens, aka Federated social networks.
- rightbyte 5y agoIt is more like your neighbour the old lady with a nice garden moves and the person that moves in cuts down the nice flowers and bushes and fills the garden with adds. Why not complain? Reddit got their users by word of mouth so surely it is just fair to warn users and sow dissent too.
- deepsun 5y agoHe's the owner, he has right to burn it. Anyway, it would be more useful to complain to him, not to other neighbors.
- diveanon 5y agoReddit is the perfect storm of technical clown shoes, investor greed, and executive sociopathy and hypocrisy. It’s a horrible platform that does more harm than good and is a major contributor to the extremely polarized society we are building for ourselves. And spare me the whole “but some communities are good” hand waving. I’m sure you can find a flower growing in a minefield too.
- mastrsushi 5y agoNot only are they forcing users to use their app, it's also a pretty low quality app. A website that advertises itself as "the front page of the internet" should allow it's users to stay in their internet browsers. I personally don't care for local dedicated apps for every little site or resturant I eat at. There's a large group of people that don't want load up their phone with Cheesecake Factory, Bestbuy, Sonos, and Reddit apps. Browsers are really cool.