6 ms·

I don't buy the “scraping” protection when appending .json to any reddit URL still gives you the data. Example: https://www.reddit.com/r/whatisit/comments/1v3m

I don't buy the “scraping” protection when appending .json to any reddit URL still gives you the data. Example: https://www.reddit.com/r/whatisit/comments/1v3mzl6/what_is_this_at_a_concert.json https://www.reddit.com/r/whatisit/comments/1v3mzl6/what_is_t...

20k 2mo ago
They're just trying to manufacture a reason to kill off old reddit. Someone internally clearly hates the fact that its still quite popular, despite all the efforts to make it unusable so far
- SV_BubbleTime 2mo ago
  New Reddit for my phone has decided to put a bottom popup forcing me to the app. The second old goes away I’ll never go that site again except for search results. I ADORE that a publicly traded tech giant is so fucking stupid.
  - garciasn 2mo ago
    Their users and those users data are the product; you are insignificant in the eyes of their shareholders.
    - SV_BubbleTime 2mo ago
      You don’t seem to understand. It isn’t about me. Or even people like me. Slowly they kill themselves. It might not even be obvious to people, but they’ll slowly turn away at this or the next thing or the next one after that. I’ll be here long after Reddit at this rate. MySpace seemed like the shit until you put Facebook next to it. Does anyone think Reddit is the shit in 2026? And that is without anything put next to it.
      - rmunn 2mo ago
        The word "the" is doing a lot of work in your last paragraph. I initially missed seeing the word "the", and that changed the meaning entirely for me. Observe: > MySpace seemed like shit until you put Facebook next to it. This sentence would be claiming that MySpace was a lousy experience, but Facebook was even worse. Which would make it hard to explain why people jumped ship. > MySpace seemed like the shit until you put Facebook next to it. What you actually wrote claimed that MySpace seemed great, but then Facebook was even better. Which makes it easy to explain why people jumped ship. I don't have an actual point to make about MySpace or Facebook. (I never used MySpace, and only used Facebook once, two decades ago, because the social group I was in at the time was using Facebook as their only means of announcing events — once I moved to a different town I dropped Facebook and closed my account). I just wanted to comment about the grammatical structure of that sentence, because I thought it was fascinating. The word "the" is so often mere filler, which could be omitted and the sentence would still be perfectly understandable. (Hence why many languages, such as Russian, don't have the word "the" at all). But here's a counterexample to that general rule, a sentence where omitting one since instance of the word "the" inverted the meaning.
        chrisweekly 2mo ago
        Yes! You're gonna love Ismo (the Finnish standup who pokes fun at quirks of the English language). This bit^1 on the word "shit" was the first I saw of him online. I've since seen him live and, I guess if you know, you know. Genius. 1. https://youtu.be/ifNEgwGACEQ?is=cJHqXIkZVqgmt4iO https://youtu.be/ifNEgwGACEQ?is=cJHqXIkZVqgmt4iO
        prmoustache 2mo ago
        > This sentence would be claiming that MySpace was a lousy experience, but Facebook was even worse. Which would make it hard to explain why people jumped ship. I think original[1] Facebook UX was probably fine and clear enough for anyone but I would say that most people didn't jump ship: their first social media use started with facebook. And that was because FB grew bigger and faster, not because people were migrating from Myspace. Myspace has only been mostly limited to teenagers and a small fraction of music artists. Growth just slowed earlier because it never attracted many adults. It grew when people didn't have a smartphone and were not terminally online yet. It was a niche. The main difference was the paradigm/mental imagery. Myspace was about opening the door to your teenager bedroom with all the posters on the wall and stickers on the workbooks. Facebook was about publishing and reading personal diaries. [1]no idea how is the current one as I have been without account for 5 years now
    - numpad0 2mo ago
      Management wanting a thing to be the core value and what the core value is are different. Tumblr didn't hold its shape long enough to hit the ground physically when its new owner did what seemed perfectly reasonable to them.
  - victor9000 2mo ago
    UBlock Origin can clear those on FF mobile with one of the Annoyances lists
    - jonathanlb 2mo ago
      If you're on iOS, you're out of luck. FF extensions aren't supported.
      - Twistyfiasco 2mo ago
        You can hide distracting items in safari to remove the popup.
        SV_BubbleTime 2mo ago
        True. But for me, I hide the “fuck you asshole, use our app!” bottom overlay, and it does go away, but then scroll stops working!
        foco_tubi 2mo ago
        For a while the overlay blocked touch events AND spanned the entire viewport so you couldn’t swipe to go back, trigger the address bar and toolbar to display, etc. I would have to swipe to minimize the app and then go back to trigger the toolbar to hit the back button.
        Twistyfiasco 2mo ago
        Yeah I had that too but then it stopped blocking my scroll. I think if you keep your finger on the page after hiding the item you keep control. But holy moly yes how user hostile.
      - layer8 2mo ago
        Take a look at https://apps.apple.com/app/sink-it-for-reddit/id6449873635 https://apps.apple.com/app/sink-it-for-reddit/id6449873635.
  - jaredhallen 2mo ago
    Requesting the desktop version of the site has solved that for me. For now.
  - rimworld 2mo ago
    this
  - BoxwoodSeed 2mo ago
    I won't even go there for search results, as new reddit is unusable to me. Too many clicks to get anywhere. It's quite surprising that so many people seem to have no issue with it.
  - MSFT_Edging 2mo ago
    For years, reddit admins would lie to the faces of users saying those app redirects weren't supposed to prevent browsing the site in a mobile browser. They'd say "weird! looking into it, that shouldn't happen!". The owners of the site are hostile to the userbase. The new reddit where it doesn't let you read more than 3 comments before redirecting you to other posts is a cancer. Not to mention the ads that are somehow even more finely woven into posts than the old reddit.
- mrandish 2mo ago
  The day they kill off old.reddit.com is the last time I'll visit Reddit (after >15 years, >7,000 comments & >70,000 karma). Old.reddit, the Reddit Enhancement Suite (RES), custom userstyle CSS and uBlock make Reddit tolerable. Admittedly, Reddit might be fine with losing me because I only ever see the small niche subs I'm subscribed to, most have less than 100K subs and none have more than a million. I haven't seen the Reddit default home page or any content from the big reddit subs in over a decade.
  - duxup 2mo ago
    Same, old makes Reddit useable.
  - chrismarlow9 2mo ago
    Ditto
  - dieselgate 2mo ago
    Literally yesterday I started getting a login wall for old.reddit. Not sure the targeting rules on this (it’s been sporadic across sessions/devices) but definitely on a mobile browser while on cellular data.
    - scruple 2mo ago
      I've seen some weird behavior with it, as well. But I'm fine with it. I visit a single subreddit now and if they destroy the UX I'll only be happier for leaving.
      - hparadiz 2mo ago
        They blocked old.reddit.com unless you are logged in on Monday. I don't have an account on there anymore so that effectively blocks me from the entire platform. Oh well.
        ssl-3 2mo ago
        I was using old.reddit.com on my pocket supercomputer (not logged in) on Tuesday.
- monksy 2mo ago
  > Someone internally clearly hates its spez. It's always spez.
  - marysol5 2mo ago
    He's sat in his bunker, wanking himself to death thinking about the end of the world.
    - mrguyorama 2mo ago
      I bet he's super jealous that Epstein talked moot into bringing back /pol
  - MagicMoonlight 2mo ago
    [dead]
  - alex1138 2mo ago
    I don't know his entire life history so this is maybe unfair but internet companies are full of people like this. They fail upward and extract value from content the users make spez/anyone else could very directly not do what they're doing. Step back and say 'this is wrong'. But they're going to alienate everyone because they can These people should be preemptively fired/never hired from any job ever. If you can't show basic respect gtfo
    - cindyllm 2mo ago
      [dead]
- boredpudding 2mo ago
  I'm not sure how statistics track it, but when you're moderator on a subreddit you can see how many visitors use old reddit. Last month for mine it was 1%. Now. This could be more due to their tracking not working for most old reddit users (I assume most have adblock), but it's unlikely to be a lot more. The large majority of Reddit users are on the app. I'm honestly surprised they haven't killed old reddit off yet, and yes, I've used it myself for the longest time until I started missing some features.
  - PUSH_AX 2mo ago
    I see similar stats too, it really seems like old reddit has died off, I remember when the redesign was newer looking at these stats and old was dominating, so I'm inclined to trust them relatively.
  - TFNA 2mo ago
    I used Old Reddit for a long time, but I could tell the vast majority of users were on the app now, just because the comment culture had changed completely. For example, posts now draw most of their comments within 30-60 minutes of posting, and then almost no comments thereafter. This is surely due to the app emphasizing continual novelty for the sake of engagement, and anything old is no longer shown. A big difference from before, when posts would draw discussion all day long. The use of a phone app as a default interface also means comments have become reduced to 140-character quips. If you post a solid paragraph or two on many hobby subreddits, you'll just come across as a weirdo.
  - 20k 2mo ago
    As far as I'm aware the big problem they have is that while most of the visitors use new reddit, a very significant chunk of commenters and mods still use old reddit which they can't really afford to lose
    - deleted 2mo ago
      [deleted]
SilverElfin 2mo ago
Didn’t they just say they’re removing this? https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/1tq9vxo/protecting_communities_from_scrapers_and_platform/ https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/1tq9vxo/protecting...
- argee 2mo ago
  They did remove it. Note that it says unauthenticated JSON access. You can't get the data if you didn't authenticate. On that note, X.com seems to be doing the opposite — you can only see this page if you DIDN'T log in... https://x.com/coinbureau/status/2071330294452666695/mediaviewer https://x.com/coinbureau/status/2071330294452666695/mediavie...
  - skissane 2mo ago
    > They did remove it. Note that it says unauthenticated JSON access. You can't get the data if you didn't authenticate. I’m not logged in yet I can access below JSON? https://www.reddit.com/r/whatisit/comments/1v3mzl6/what_is_this_at_a_concert.json https://www.reddit.com/r/whatisit/comments/1v3mzl6/what_is_t... Oh, private browsing window, it is blocked. Until I load new Reddit (even unauthenticated), then it starts working. Presumably you need a cookie
dewey 2mo ago
It only works if you are authenticated, and if you are authenticated there's a heavy rate limit on it. The unauthenticated one that scrapers used is gone. They also detect if you are using a headless browser vs a regular one in many cases.
mitkebes 2mo ago
They officially started blocking json access awhile ago, it broke all the apps for viewing reddit without an account (RDX, Stealth, Geddit). I'm not sure on the exact details of what is and isn't still accessible, I just know it broke a lot.

20k 2mo ago

They're just trying to manufacture a reason to kill off old reddit. Someone internally clearly hates the fact that its still quite popular, despite all the efforts to make it unusable so far

SV_BubbleTime 2mo ago
New Reddit for my phone has decided to put a bottom popup forcing me to the app. The second old goes away I’ll never go that site again except for search results. I ADORE that a publicly traded tech giant is so fucking stupid.
- garciasn 2mo ago
  Their users and those users data are the product; you are insignificant in the eyes of their shareholders.
  - SV_BubbleTime 2mo ago
    You don’t seem to understand. It isn’t about me. Or even people like me. Slowly they kill themselves. It might not even be obvious to people, but they’ll slowly turn away at this or the next thing or the next one after that. I’ll be here long after Reddit at this rate. MySpace seemed like the shit until you put Facebook next to it. Does anyone think Reddit is the shit in 2026? And that is without anything put next to it.
    - rmunn 2mo ago
      The word "the" is doing a lot of work in your last paragraph. I initially missed seeing the word "the", and that changed the meaning entirely for me. Observe: > MySpace seemed like shit until you put Facebook next to it. This sentence would be claiming that MySpace was a lousy experience, but Facebook was even worse. Which would make it hard to explain why people jumped ship. > MySpace seemed like the shit until you put Facebook next to it. What you actually wrote claimed that MySpace seemed great, but then Facebook was even better. Which makes it easy to explain why people jumped ship. I don't have an actual point to make about MySpace or Facebook. (I never used MySpace, and only used Facebook once, two decades ago, because the social group I was in at the time was using Facebook as their only means of announcing events — once I moved to a different town I dropped Facebook and closed my account). I just wanted to comment about the grammatical structure of that sentence, because I thought it was fascinating. The word "the" is so often mere filler, which could be omitted and the sentence would still be perfectly understandable. (Hence why many languages, such as Russian, don't have the word "the" at all). But here's a counterexample to that general rule, a sentence where omitting one since instance of the word "the" inverted the meaning.
      - chrisweekly 2mo ago
        Yes! You're gonna love Ismo (the Finnish standup who pokes fun at quirks of the English language). This bit^1 on the word "shit" was the first I saw of him online. I've since seen him live and, I guess if you know, you know. Genius. 1. https://youtu.be/ifNEgwGACEQ?is=cJHqXIkZVqgmt4iO https://youtu.be/ifNEgwGACEQ?is=cJHqXIkZVqgmt4iO
      - prmoustache 2mo ago
        > This sentence would be claiming that MySpace was a lousy experience, but Facebook was even worse. Which would make it hard to explain why people jumped ship. I think original[1] Facebook UX was probably fine and clear enough for anyone but I would say that most people didn't jump ship: their first social media use started with facebook. And that was because FB grew bigger and faster, not because people were migrating from Myspace. Myspace has only been mostly limited to teenagers and a small fraction of music artists. Growth just slowed earlier because it never attracted many adults. It grew when people didn't have a smartphone and were not terminally online yet. It was a niche. The main difference was the paradigm/mental imagery. Myspace was about opening the door to your teenager bedroom with all the posters on the wall and stickers on the workbooks. Facebook was about publishing and reading personal diaries. [1]no idea how is the current one as I have been without account for 5 years now
  - numpad0 2mo ago
    Management wanting a thing to be the core value and what the core value is are different. Tumblr didn't hold its shape long enough to hit the ground physically when its new owner did what seemed perfectly reasonable to them.
- victor9000 2mo ago
  UBlock Origin can clear those on FF mobile with one of the Annoyances lists
  - jonathanlb 2mo ago
    If you're on iOS, you're out of luck. FF extensions aren't supported.
    - Twistyfiasco 2mo ago
      You can hide distracting items in safari to remove the popup.
      - SV_BubbleTime 2mo ago
        True. But for me, I hide the “fuck you asshole, use our app!” bottom overlay, and it does go away, but then scroll stops working!
        foco_tubi 2mo ago
        For a while the overlay blocked touch events AND spanned the entire viewport so you couldn’t swipe to go back, trigger the address bar and toolbar to display, etc. I would have to swipe to minimize the app and then go back to trigger the toolbar to hit the back button.
        Twistyfiasco 2mo ago
        Yeah I had that too but then it stopped blocking my scroll. I think if you keep your finger on the page after hiding the item you keep control. But holy moly yes how user hostile.
    - layer8 2mo ago
      Take a look at https://apps.apple.com/app/sink-it-for-reddit/id6449873635 https://apps.apple.com/app/sink-it-for-reddit/id6449873635.
- jaredhallen 2mo ago
  Requesting the desktop version of the site has solved that for me. For now.
- rimworld 2mo ago
  this
- BoxwoodSeed 2mo ago
  I won't even go there for search results, as new reddit is unusable to me. Too many clicks to get anywhere. It's quite surprising that so many people seem to have no issue with it.
- MSFT_Edging 2mo ago
  For years, reddit admins would lie to the faces of users saying those app redirects weren't supposed to prevent browsing the site in a mobile browser. They'd say "weird! looking into it, that shouldn't happen!". The owners of the site are hostile to the userbase. The new reddit where it doesn't let you read more than 3 comments before redirecting you to other posts is a cancer. Not to mention the ads that are somehow even more finely woven into posts than the old reddit.
mrandish 2mo ago
The day they kill off old.reddit.com is the last time I'll visit Reddit (after >15 years, >7,000 comments & >70,000 karma). Old.reddit, the Reddit Enhancement Suite (RES), custom userstyle CSS and uBlock make Reddit tolerable. Admittedly, Reddit might be fine with losing me because I only ever see the small niche subs I'm subscribed to, most have less than 100K subs and none have more than a million. I haven't seen the Reddit default home page or any content from the big reddit subs in over a decade.
- duxup 2mo ago
  Same, old makes Reddit useable.
- chrismarlow9 2mo ago
  Ditto
- dieselgate 2mo ago
  Literally yesterday I started getting a login wall for old.reddit. Not sure the targeting rules on this (it’s been sporadic across sessions/devices) but definitely on a mobile browser while on cellular data.
  - scruple 2mo ago
    I've seen some weird behavior with it, as well. But I'm fine with it. I visit a single subreddit now and if they destroy the UX I'll only be happier for leaving.
    - hparadiz 2mo ago
      They blocked old.reddit.com unless you are logged in on Monday. I don't have an account on there anymore so that effectively blocks me from the entire platform. Oh well.
      - ssl-3 2mo ago
        I was using old.reddit.com on my pocket supercomputer (not logged in) on Tuesday.
monksy 2mo ago
> Someone internally clearly hates its spez. It's always spez.
- marysol5 2mo ago
  He's sat in his bunker, wanking himself to death thinking about the end of the world.
  - mrguyorama 2mo ago
    I bet he's super jealous that Epstein talked moot into bringing back /pol
- MagicMoonlight 2mo ago
  [dead]
- alex1138 2mo ago
  I don't know his entire life history so this is maybe unfair but internet companies are full of people like this. They fail upward and extract value from content the users make spez/anyone else could very directly not do what they're doing. Step back and say 'this is wrong'. But they're going to alienate everyone because they can These people should be preemptively fired/never hired from any job ever. If you can't show basic respect gtfo
  - cindyllm 2mo ago
    [dead]
boredpudding 2mo ago
I'm not sure how statistics track it, but when you're moderator on a subreddit you can see how many visitors use old reddit. Last month for mine it was 1%. Now. This could be more due to their tracking not working for most old reddit users (I assume most have adblock), but it's unlikely to be a lot more. The large majority of Reddit users are on the app. I'm honestly surprised they haven't killed old reddit off yet, and yes, I've used it myself for the longest time until I started missing some features.
- PUSH_AX 2mo ago
  I see similar stats too, it really seems like old reddit has died off, I remember when the redesign was newer looking at these stats and old was dominating, so I'm inclined to trust them relatively.
- TFNA 2mo ago
  I used Old Reddit for a long time, but I could tell the vast majority of users were on the app now, just because the comment culture had changed completely. For example, posts now draw most of their comments within 30-60 minutes of posting, and then almost no comments thereafter. This is surely due to the app emphasizing continual novelty for the sake of engagement, and anything old is no longer shown. A big difference from before, when posts would draw discussion all day long. The use of a phone app as a default interface also means comments have become reduced to 140-character quips. If you post a solid paragraph or two on many hobby subreddits, you'll just come across as a weirdo.
- 20k 2mo ago
  As far as I'm aware the big problem they have is that while most of the visitors use new reddit, a very significant chunk of commenters and mods still use old reddit which they can't really afford to lose
  - deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]

SilverElfin 2mo ago

Didn’t they just say they’re removing this? https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/1tq9vxo/protecting_communities_from_scrapers_and_platform/ https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/1tq9vxo/protecting...

argee 2mo ago
They did remove it. Note that it says unauthenticated JSON access. You can't get the data if you didn't authenticate. On that note, X.com seems to be doing the opposite — you can only see this page if you DIDN'T log in... https://x.com/coinbureau/status/2071330294452666695/mediaviewer https://x.com/coinbureau/status/2071330294452666695/mediavie...
- skissane 2mo ago
  > They did remove it. Note that it says unauthenticated JSON access. You can't get the data if you didn't authenticate. I’m not logged in yet I can access below JSON? https://www.reddit.com/r/whatisit/comments/1v3mzl6/what_is_this_at_a_concert.json https://www.reddit.com/r/whatisit/comments/1v3mzl6/what_is_t... Oh, private browsing window, it is blocked. Until I load new Reddit (even unauthenticated), then it starts working. Presumably you need a cookie

dewey 2mo ago

It only works if you are authenticated, and if you are authenticated there's a heavy rate limit on it. The unauthenticated one that scrapers used is gone. They also detect if you are using a headless browser vs a regular one in many cases.

mitkebes 2mo ago

They officially started blocking json access awhile ago, it broke all the apps for viewing reddit without an account (RDX, Stealth, Geddit). I'm not sure on the exact details of what is and isn't still accessible, I just know it broke a lot.