4 ms·

I'm surprised Reddit isn't higher on the list. Either I'm on a desktop and Reddit's website is a bit clunky to use - or I'm on mobile and I have to click past

by munk-a 3y ago

I'm surprised Reddit isn't higher on the list. Either I'm on a desktop and Reddit's website is a bit clunky to use - or I'm on mobile and I have to click past several attempts at them to funnel me into their app. It is a true shame that so much useful information gets trapped within their ecosystem.

lolinder 3y ago
A lot of people actually disagree with you—Reddit is number four on the Raise list and on the Pin list, and every few months there's a thread on HN talking about how the only way to get useful information out of Google is to add "reddit" at the end of the search.
- fyrn_ 3y ago
  I think they were talking about the raise list, not the block or lower list
  - OJFord 3y ago
    Clearly not, they think it's clunky and desktop and too annoying on mobile, (I agree but put up with it often) they're not saying they want more of it.
  - munk-a 3y ago
    I was indeed talking about the lower list - simply because of the information presentation is so poor. The information itself is usually quite high quality.
WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
> I'm surprised Reddit isn't higher on the list. It's on two lists. > Either I'm on a desktop and Reddit's website is a bit clunky to use - or I'm on mobile and I have to click past several attempts at them to funnel me into their app. I have the old-reddit extension on every device I use. It's my 3rd most essential extension, after uBlock Origin and Kill Sticky.
- barclay 3y ago
  Following the API blocking earlier this year, my fear is that the half-life of old.reddit's existence is getting ever so small...
  - munk-a 3y ago
    I strongly suspect that if they kill it off at some point we'll have solutions like archive to work around being forced into their UI - even if those solutions are forced to scrap the information out of their web presentation rather than via API calls.
- infinityio 3y ago
  Incidentally, Kagi has a URL rewrite feature that integrates this natively!
black_puppydog 3y ago
As siblings have pointed out, reddit is actually popular for raising. For me, what distinguishes it from a stereotypical "block this please" site like Pinterest is that, clunky as the UI may be, content on reddit is often relevant and well linked up with other pages on the Web. Compare that with Pinterest which I've taken to describe as "the universal sink of the Web" because it seems to get linked to from everywhere but then it's a dead end with zero non-repost content 100% of the time. Well actually, come to think of it, Pinterest hasn't figured much in my search results ever since I started using kagi a year or so back, and really it didn't get linked to very much from anywhere but the Google results page... Guess I'm getting my money's worth in one more way then I realized. :D Kagi is so worth the money!
- munk-a 3y ago
  I certainly agree about Pinterest being where data goes to die - and for Reddit I agree that it has an extremely high quality of information, it's just held back by presentation. If I can find the information I'm looking for on a blog I'll usually prefer that but Reddit usually has a good deal of commentary on whatever the topic I'm looking for is.
  - MostlyStable 3y ago
    On reason that Reddit is valuable is that it often contains information that, as far as I can tell, literally doesn't exist anywhere else. This is especially true for product category research. Other than Reddit posts, any product that is even vaguely not mainstream, the only information other than Reddit will be obvious marketing blog spam that doesn't actually help differentiate anything. Generally, I'll check wirecutter, and if Wirecutter doesn't have an article about it, then Reddit is the only other useful option. If it's the only option, the presentation doesn't really matter, although I disagree with you on how bad it is. I still quite like old.reddit on desktop. Although admittedly my mobile experience has been severely degraded since my old preferred app got killed.
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
> ... or I'm on mobile and I have to click past several attempts at them to funnel me into their app. It’s not really less inconvenient in terms of time or screen taps in my experience, but changing the subdomain to “old” will at least skip the app prompts. The day that option dies is a day I put a new 0.0.0.0 entry in my hosts file.
banana_giraffe 3y ago
It won't help the clunky mobile site much, but if you're on iOS there's a Safari plug in called "Sink It for Reddit" that hides the attempts to funnel you into their app.
Nextgrid 3y ago
Kagi has another feature that can rewrite search results' URLs based on regexes: https://help.kagi.com/kagi/features/redirects.html https://help.kagi.com/kagi/features/redirects.html. I successfully use it to automatically link to Old Reddit. I guess it can also be used to rewrite user-hostile websites' URLs such as YouTube/Twitter/etc to less hostile frontends such as Invidious or Nitter.
- unshavedyak 3y ago
  .. holy. I never thought of that, now i'm adding that. Thanks!
- Dah00n 3y ago
  This should be higher up. Now I'm definitely interested!
- _dain_ 3y ago
  This is cool but imo it makes more sense to have URL redirection as a browser extension. That way all twitter links resolve to nitter, not just ones from a search engine. I use this one https://einaregilsson.com/redirector/ https://einaregilsson.com/redirector/

by munk-a 3y ago

lolinder 3y ago

A lot of people actually disagree with you—Reddit is number four on the Raise list and on the Pin list, and every few months there's a thread on HN talking about how the only way to get useful information out of Google is to add "reddit" at the end of the search.

fyrn_ 3y ago
I think they were talking about the raise list, not the block or lower list
- OJFord 3y ago
  Clearly not, they think it's clunky and desktop and too annoying on mobile, (I agree but put up with it often) they're not saying they want more of it.
- munk-a 3y ago
  I was indeed talking about the lower list - simply because of the information presentation is so poor. The information itself is usually quite high quality.

WarOnPrivacy 3y ago

> I'm surprised Reddit isn't higher on the list. It's on two lists. > Either I'm on a desktop and Reddit's website is a bit clunky to use - or I'm on mobile and I have to click past several attempts at them to funnel me into their app. I have the old-reddit extension on every device I use. It's my 3rd most essential extension, after uBlock Origin and Kill Sticky.

barclay 3y ago
Following the API blocking earlier this year, my fear is that the half-life of old.reddit's existence is getting ever so small...
- munk-a 3y ago
  I strongly suspect that if they kill it off at some point we'll have solutions like archive to work around being forced into their UI - even if those solutions are forced to scrap the information out of their web presentation rather than via API calls.
infinityio 3y ago
Incidentally, Kagi has a URL rewrite feature that integrates this natively!

black_puppydog 3y ago

As siblings have pointed out, reddit is actually popular for raising. For me, what distinguishes it from a stereotypical "block this please" site like Pinterest is that, clunky as the UI may be, content on reddit is often relevant and well linked up with other pages on the Web. Compare that with Pinterest which I've taken to describe as "the universal sink of the Web" because it seems to get linked to from everywhere but then it's a dead end with zero non-repost content 100% of the time. Well actually, come to think of it, Pinterest hasn't figured much in my search results ever since I started using kagi a year or so back, and really it didn't get linked to very much from anywhere but the Google results page... Guess I'm getting my money's worth in one more way then I realized. :D Kagi is so worth the money!

munk-a 3y ago
I certainly agree about Pinterest being where data goes to die - and for Reddit I agree that it has an extremely high quality of information, it's just held back by presentation. If I can find the information I'm looking for on a blog I'll usually prefer that but Reddit usually has a good deal of commentary on whatever the topic I'm looking for is.
- MostlyStable 3y ago
  On reason that Reddit is valuable is that it often contains information that, as far as I can tell, literally doesn't exist anywhere else. This is especially true for product category research. Other than Reddit posts, any product that is even vaguely not mainstream, the only information other than Reddit will be obvious marketing blog spam that doesn't actually help differentiate anything. Generally, I'll check wirecutter, and if Wirecutter doesn't have an article about it, then Reddit is the only other useful option. If it's the only option, the presentation doesn't really matter, although I disagree with you on how bad it is. I still quite like old.reddit on desktop. Although admittedly my mobile experience has been severely degraded since my old preferred app got killed.

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago

> ... or I'm on mobile and I have to click past several attempts at them to funnel me into their app. It’s not really less inconvenient in terms of time or screen taps in my experience, but changing the subdomain to “old” will at least skip the app prompts. The day that option dies is a day I put a new 0.0.0.0 entry in my hosts file.

banana_giraffe 3y ago

It won't help the clunky mobile site much, but if you're on iOS there's a Safari plug in called "Sink It for Reddit" that hides the attempts to funnel you into their app.

Nextgrid 3y ago

Kagi has another feature that can rewrite search results' URLs based on regexes: https://help.kagi.com/kagi/features/redirects.html https://help.kagi.com/kagi/features/redirects.html. I successfully use it to automatically link to Old Reddit. I guess it can also be used to rewrite user-hostile websites' URLs such as YouTube/Twitter/etc to less hostile frontends such as Invidious or Nitter.

unshavedyak 3y ago
.. holy. I never thought of that, now i'm adding that. Thanks!
Dah00n 3y ago
This should be higher up. Now I'm definitely interested!
_dain_ 3y ago
This is cool but imo it makes more sense to have URL redirection as a browser extension. That way all twitter links resolve to nitter, not just ones from a search engine. I use this one https://einaregilsson.com/redirector/ https://einaregilsson.com/redirector/