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Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?

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Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?

#121

Post by Timpy »

nokya wrote: post #38

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 website. I hate it so much that it triggers a negative experience everytime I visit the website and I just tend to watch links shared to me. Honestly, I thank them for that and I hope they don't remove it.

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.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?

#122

Post by PoissonVache »

hh3k0 wrote: post #107
nokya wrote: post #38

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 website. I hate it so much that it triggers a negative experience everytime I visit the website and I just tend to watch links shared to me. Honestly, I thank them for that and I hope they don't remove it.

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.

Thanks for the tip bru

Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?

#123

Post by keepingscore »

searchableguy wrote: post #40

Use an RSS reader. You will like the lack of feeling of being forced to comment on things you don't care much about in retrospection. No tracking or ads, only content. You can filter shady sites or posts from appearing. Here are some readers. 0] https://github.com/GetStream/Winds 1] https://github.com/FreshRSS/FreshRSS 2] https://github.com/feedbin/feedbin 3] https://github.com/yang991178/fluent-reader If you like so…

I built a better rss feed for reddit to use with Feedly.

Notable features: * Links to the content rather than the comments * Embeds a summary of the content * Supports images, gifs and videos * Extra query params (nsfw block, up vote limits) * Open source https://github.com/trashhalo/reddit-rss

https://www.reddit.com/r/rss/comments/fvg3ed/i_built_a_bette...

https://www.reddit.com/r/rss/comments/galitc/my_improved_red...

Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?

#125

Post by fullstop »

hh3k0 wrote: post #107
nokya wrote: post #38

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 website. I hate it so much that it triggers a negative experience everytime I visit the website and I just tend to watch links shared to me. Honestly, I thank them for that and I hope they don't remove it.

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.

There are browser extensions which automatically do this.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?

#127

Post by johnyzee »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #85

That and the layout of their "new" redesign where you go to a post and it'll show the post, 2 comments (out of 500), not even the full threads of those comments either and then just some unrelated posts and you have to click on more links just to read the actual comments and you can feel your browser choke under the weight of whatever framework they use trying to render a few bits of text. Noticed Twitter switching t…

It seems web developers these days have forgotten the virtue of keeping things simple. Everything has to be smothered in javascript, and asynchronous requests, and fluid UI that changes on the slightest interaction. I'm guessing it is a case of having a hammer, in the form of the heavy javascript frameworks, a la mode, and using it to treat every simple implementation task as a nail.

HN is a great example of how playing to the strengths of web results in a great user experience (possibly the best of any forum type site). Unfortunately it might also be damn near the only example.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?

#128

Post by bhupy »

nokya wrote: post #38

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 website. I hate it so much that it triggers a negative experience everytime I visit the website and I just tend to watch links shared to me. Honestly, I thank them for that and I hope they don't remove it.

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.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?

#130

Post by m0guz »

jamil7 wrote: post #5

Yeah ads. If you're on iOS check out Apollo, made by a solo developer and does not display ads. I'm not sure what the equivalent on Android would be (someone chime in if you know).

Ads only one of the reasons. Reddit also updated Reddit Coins [0] with their new design. With this new "in-app" economy, you can use real money to buy reddit coins and give an award to post. Another revenue stream for reddit.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/coins

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