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I switched to using PWAs for social media apps for similar reasons the author outlines. A pleasant, but somewhat unintended consequence is that I just use them
by mmcclure 11mo ago
I switched to using PWAs for social media apps for similar reasons the author outlines. A pleasant, but somewhat unintended consequence is that I just use them a lot less because the experience is pretty bad. It makes me a little sad because I’ve always believed in the PWA dream, but the reality is that they’re bad because companies certainly don’t want to make an experience that rivals the app they really want you to download.
Expected, but just leads to reinforcing the idea that PWAs won’t ever be as good when every one people try from someone with a popular app is so awful.
- georgefrowny 11mo agoI'm convinced many companies purposely gimp their web sites to drive people to apps. Uber for example doesn't seem to work from my phone browser. What surprises me is how many engineers must be involved in this kind of scummy shit and keep it tightly under wraps.
- jsheard 11mo ago> I'm convinced many companies purposely gimp their web sites to drive people to apps. And then their app is just a webview wrapper. But that still gives them more access to your device.
- raw_anon_1111 11mo agoExactly what access do you think they have that you don’t specifically allow that they don’t have from a web browser - running on the same device?
- chasing0entropy 11mo agoThat's an easy one, hold my beer: Pwa with permissions granted gives access to: Location, create notification, phone state, phone #, IMEI, motion data Mobile app with permissions gives access to EVERYTHING a pwa gets PLUS, Contacts, sms, notification content, biometrics data, web browsing data, phone activity history, location history, camera access, microphone access, NFC access, near device history, nearby wifi listing, saved wifi networks, Bluetooth device ID, Bluetooth beacons nearby, some device settings, personal data access(photos/music)
- raw_anon_1111 11mo agoSo you mean if I give an app permission to do something it has permissions to do that thing? How is that a security issue to be worried about? And iOS doesn’t allow third party apps to intercept SMS messages.
- dwedge 11mo agoIt's rare for me to see this sarcastic attitude in replies on Hacker News. It's common on Reddit, but not here.
- raw_anon_1111 11mo agoI mean it wasn’t a great argument that apps can do stuff after you give it permission to do stuff.
- senordevnyc 11mo agoMaybe on Android. Literally half of that shit isn’t accessible by iOS apps even with full permissions. This feels like you’re just throwing shit against the wall.
- vachina 11mo agoApps can leverage system APIs, gain always-on persistence. Not long ago Facebook (Meta) was caught spinning up localhost server on Android devices to gather activities outside of the app.
- raw_anon_1111 11mo agoOn iOS devices you can turn off the ability to allow apps to wake up on a one by one basis “background refresh”. And if you are concerned with your privacy, it’s nonsensical to buy a phone run by an adtech company that only made the operating system in the first place to sell ads and collect your data
- grvdrm 11mo agoInstagram - major offender.
- tifik 11mo agoI was wondering if it's just me. I am using Brave on iOS with all the possible blockers enabled, so I'm not surprised when some website doesn't work well. Instagram literally freezes solid after 5-15s of being on the website, so I usually only quickly scan the top 2-3 posts in the feed. I only follow people I know personally, so this is usually enough to do once or twice a day and stay up to date. If I see a close friend posted a story I kinda want to see then it usually takes two or three hard closes of the browser to actually see it. Sucks, but sucks less than being mental gamed into doomscrolling every time I get an app notification.
- chipheat 11mo agoOddly effectively because I end up using it less in general
- grvdrm 11mo agoExactly - me too. But infuriating when I try.
- wffurr 11mo agoWhen someone sends me an Instagram link I edit to imginn.com instead.
- 6c696e7578 11mo agoI would say use flickr, but that's shitified now.
- PaulHoule 11mo agoBy the stopwatch it takes 3x longer for me to upload a photo to the Instagram web app than it does to Mastodon. Facebook's blue website works pretty well but the Instagram site comes across like something that was vibe coded in a weekend or maybe a straw man that was made to prove SPAs are bad. Contrast that to the Mastodon application produced by a basically unfunded application that's fast and reliable.
- hdjrudni 11mo agoI don't know if big companies even know how to make web apps. Honestly. Which is extra insane to me because there's so much investment in web technologies. On my team at $BigTech there's like 1 or 2 people out of 30 people on our team that knows web, the rest are mobile. I'm a web guy but I refuse to touch our web-app because they butchered the tech stack and I don't have the energy to deal with that BS. We still have an mobile-web version distinct from the 'desktop' version because.... I don't know why, whoever wrote it never learned about responsive web design and we never bothered to move out of the stone ages because if people want to use the app on their phone, they should download the native app of course! And by "native" I mean we built our own half-baked framework so that we could cross-compile for Android and iOS. Also I don't think these people know how capable PWAs are. There's very little you can't do in a web-app that you can do with a native app.
- pavel_lishin 11mo agoYou can't use Facebook Messenger on the web at all, unless you go to Facebook and switch to the desktop version. Then it's a simple matter of zooming in without accidentally clicking anything, using their fiddly interface to load up the conversation you're interested in, and get bounced around the screen as the input focus changes around.
- petepete 11mo agoThey've gone an admirably long way to fuck up a text input.
- tim333 11mo agoPuzzled because I use Messenger web version all the time on the laptop. Works pretty normally. I don't use Facebook usually. Maybe if they detect a phone they refuse?
- georgefrowny 11mo agoUsually they only break the mobile websites. They know they won't get people to install programs on their computers for "online things". Not least lots of people don't have admin rights in their computers, but also people are used to accessing "online things" via browsers on computers rather than an app per website. But, they've managed to make "phones use apps, not browsers" a social norm that enough people accept tacitly, perhaps because near enough everyone has the ability to install apps on their own phones.
- pavel_lishin 11mo agoRight, exactly - the mobile version just shows a page prompting you to download and install the Messenger app.
- m463 11mo ago> Uber for example doesn't seem to work from my phone browser. Remember when uber wouldn't work for regulators either? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_surrounding_Uber#Greyball https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_surrounding_Uber...
- jeroenhd 11mo agoPWAs can be good, but for a lot of social media, they're only as good as their website experience. Many (most) companies seem to make their website intentionally slow and buggy, probably with the idea that users only need to use their web UI for a short while because they lost access to their apps or something. For instance, I've installed Mastodon as a PWA and it performs great. Photoprism also works so well I haven't even bothered to look for an app.
- array_key_first 11mo agoThe absolutely batshit insane part is that the 'native apps' are almost certainly created using web technologies which call the exact same APIs as the web app. There's zero reason the web apps should be so slow.
- severine 11mo agoTry Phanpy for the fediverse: https://phanpy.social/ https://phanpy.social/ Maybe the best web app I've used.
- qWoodpecker 11mo agoWhat's funny is that desktop versions of websites in a lot of cases are responsive, and work fine on small screen. BUT at the same time the mobile version is crappy and lacks some features (or just shows "download our app"). Recently I've set up Firefox on Android so that it always run in desktop mode. I needed to also change screen width in about:config, because otherwise everything is too small. But after this websites seem to work better.
- cubefox 11mo agoWhat is the relevant setting in about:config?
- tmseidman 11mo agoIt seems to be browser.viewport.desktopWidth; I found 500 to be a decent starting point on my phone.
- cubefox 11mo agoThanks, it works! (I had to access about:config via chrome://geckoview/content/config.xhtml)
- moho 11mo agoWhile you're there flip general.aboutConfig.enabled to true so you won't have to use the silly config.xhtml URL again.
- henriquemaia 11mo agoWhat a great thread! Thank you and previous poster for sharing how to get that working.
- cubefox 11mo agoThat setting unfortunately resets after restarting the browser. But the width setting stays.
- lanfeust6 11mo agoPersonally my experience with PWAs has been solid, on Firefox w control over JS. I still use them a lot less because I don't stay signed in.
- ruralfam 11mo agoI have had a FOSS web app for learning arithmetic for quite a few years. I occasionally review it, and make changes. Each year Chrome and Safari both nip at the edges of what allows a PWA to be OK. No one really cares until one has to write documentation helping folks install the PWA and avoid issues that did not affect the PWA a few years ago. I mean really, are Tim and Sundar really that afraid ?? I guess so. They have dozens of millions on the line. Capitalism... gotta luv it.
- boppo1 11mo agoHmm, I'm making a site and I planned on using a PWA for the app experience instead of a native app. Am I setting up for a bad time? I'm not too worried about the installation hurdle, my potential early adopters are motivated and smart.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- raw_anon_1111 11mo agoAnd you don’t realize that social media apps put cookies on other websites so they know you have been to another website and then start showing you ads based on your interests? Apps can’t tell what you do in other unaffiliated apps nearly as easily at least now on iOS that there is no globally unique identifier that apps can use to track you.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- socalgal2 11mo agoApps require you to sign in so they've got you immediately. They can share all your activity with whoever they want. Websites (many) do not require you to login (youtube, reddit, hacker news, etc....) Apps also try to open all links into their own webview, a webview in which they can track all activity.
- raw_anon_1111 11mo agoEven if you don’t log in, Facebook can tell that you were looking for something on a third party site. And that was something that apps on iOS tried to do - see what other apps you were using by opening a url - Apple started restricting that years ago.
- dahrkael 11mo agoreddit in mobile forces you to use the app
- matt-attack 11mo agoNot old.Reddit.con
- GJim 11mo ago> They can share all your activity with whoever they want. Ummmm.... You are aware of the GDPR? Your data cannot be shared with anybody without your explicit opt-in consent. If you choose to give this consent, then more fool you.
- DANmode 11mo agoNormies just see everything as “apps”, and don’t mentally differentiate how they’ve put it on their homescreen once it’s there. Plenty of great crossplatform webapps, if you’re not exclusively using social media or spyware. Often even if you are!
- boppo1 11mo agoI'm making an app and I plan to go the PWA route to save myself on managing native apps. Any tips on making my experience first-class?
- bstasse 11mo agoIf you're using React, I'd recommend using Silk (silkhq.com) to create native-like bottom sheets, pages, sidebar, etc. Most animations, including the swipe, are hardware-accelerated, and it deals with a lot of common issues you encounter on the mobile web (body scrolling, on-screen keyboard, etc). Disclaimer: I'm the creator of Silk.