The “ad” itself wouldn’t be so frustrating if it actually worked! For the last year or so, clicking open in reddit opens the app store even though i have the app. i also prefer the apollo client, so either way this ad should be something i can remove.
Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?
231–240 of 657 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?
#232Quora is even worse for this. For years they’ve had an extremely hostile user experience on their mobile site — you scroll half way through a long answer, and get interrupted with a modal prompting you to finish reading it in the app. But the modal cannot be dismissed — there is no way to close it. You can’t scroll the page, it persists on reload... rendering the site utterly unusable.
It’s interesting to compare Quora and Stack Overflow. They both are about questions and answers, and they both set out to use interaction design and aggressive curation to create a high-quality Q&A resource. But despite having similar goals and a willingness to experiment with behavioural patterns, they ended up with incredibly different experiences.
I used to really enjoy reading responses on Quora, but at some point, it seems to have devolved into pretty low quality spam and self-promotion.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?
#233Other people are saying "ads," but the story is probably more expansive. Mobile apps have better hooks for pulling people back into the app, like popup notifications. Reddit has natural lifecycle points where they can do this: when people respond to your comments or comment on your posts. They could also notify users of events like their yearly Secret Santa. I wouldn't be surprised if their engagement numbers were mu…
They also keep adding new stupid in-app notifications (I have OS notifications blocked for them) which ironically you have to use the website to disable. "Trending" stuff in subreddits you're not even in and suggested subreddits and garbage like that. I assume that rubbish does become an OS notification if you let them.
Those kind of “nagifications” are among my biggest pet peeves on the modern internet. Almost every social platform these days abuses the notifications icon to show you a bunch of not-actually-a-notification garbage to boost your engagement. LinkedIn is especially egregious in this regard.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?
#234Reddit'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.
That and the fact that they somehow make video playback continually less reliable somehow.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually forcing the whole thing in 1 minute will get you piles, afaik?
Both true! Don't force it, but also don't spend more than 10 minutes there. (Source: med school, personal experience :\ )
If one isn’t actively forcing, what’s the difference between sitting on the loo and sitting on a chair?
Is there evidence that lingering on the loo in a relaxed state causes problems?
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?
#236I think you should just use old.reddit.com
There are annoying quirks like some links in comments and wiki/sidebar can take you to new reddit site and it is harder to solve this on FF mobile. But I strongly prefer that over whatever abomination their new design is.
Even leaving aside the UI aspects, the annoying thing about their new site is, it progressively keeps turning bad, earlier it was just that ugly banner for app install or the collapsed comments, or the new page redirection. But now for some reason a lot of communities fail to open in the new design. I don't know why Reddit hates the web so much, they can very well show the ads there as well.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?
#237Are you on iOS?
I was on Android until a few months ago. If I was sent a Reddit link it would open in the Reddit app I liked, no need to ever even look at the mobile site. I was shocked that that seemingly basic feature ISN'T available on iOS. Instead my options are view the Reddit link in browser or on the official Reddit app.
Most of the time I just choose not to click the link because of that.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?
#238Reddit = China
So they can track you more covertly with their app.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?
#239Reddit'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 wonder if it’s partly due to business / product people taking control and trying to aggressively push for more user engagement rather than let the engineers keep the site enjoyable to use. Either way, it’s turned me off as well, and I thank them for it because I got a lot of free time back.
Maybe, but from experience I can assure you that engineers are just as capable of ruining user experiences all on their own.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?
#240Reddit'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.
> Their redesign is insidious
I must somehow be immune to the charms. I find it intentionally, aggressively irritating.
I used to lose hours there, but now don't browse around at all anymore. Follow a link in, find what I'm looking for, and dismiss the junk-pit.