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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?

#261

Post by hh3k0 »

soylentcola wrote: post #248
hh3k0 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Really? I just went to /r/gonewild on my phone (browser) to test it out. It gave me the usual "are you 18+?" message and let me proceed to all of the amateur nudity you'd expect. (Firefox mobile, not in desktop mode if it matters).

It happens ever so often but not always -- maybe they're still phasing it in?

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

#262

Post by RankingMember »

teekert wrote: post #161
camillomiller wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do NOT have your phone with you on the dunny and don’t spend 15 minutes on it! Make it a one minute job. You’ll thank me when you won’t get piles ;)

Actually forcing the whole thing in 1 minute will get you piles, afaik?

Give a Squatty Potty a try and you'll only need that 1 minute with no forcing.

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

#263

Post by Y_Y »

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'm still waiting for Google Reader to come back.

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

#264

Post by tennineeight »

jabl wrote: post #80
moksly wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still use old.reddit.com. Such an improved experience, even on mobile where the format doesn’t fit. So maybe that’s why they want you in the app? They know their website is terrible?

At least for firefox, there's an old reddit redirect extension that automatically rewrites any reddit urls to old.reddit. I warmly recommend that one. Except that since the latest firefox mobile release it hasn't yet been ported. But given that it does exist on the desktop version, I guess it's only a matter of time until it reappears for mobile firefox as well.

I have a tiny script added to TamperMonkey that redirects every reddit URL old.reddit.com equivalent. Funnily, the redirect ends up loading more comments faster than the redesigned "new" site with 2 comments

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

#265

Post by bromuro »

msoad wrote: post #246

Media consumption is all about retention. Websites are not good for retention. Apps are super efficient. I finally gave up and installed the iOS app. Even my conscious self couldn't resist the icon on my home screen and I visit the app almost every day.

Trying to avoid these psychological tricks became a constant in my experience with my iPhone. Notifications were just the begin for the retention sociologists. Now Is like... much more subtle and well thought, as the modern stupid shows in television.

(I am addicted to a game from apple app store that is slowly becoming a gambling game. I realized how well thought is this kind of brainwashing and i feel cheated)

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

#266

Post by laylomo2 »

tootie wrote: post #223
ObsoleteNerd wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their redesign combined with the incessant harassing app crap turned me from an hours-a-day-and-modding-some-decently-big-subs redditor to visiting for 15 minutes a couple times a week when on the dunny. Their entire site is so user hostile now it’s actually bordering on funny. They’ve become a parody of everything they set out to defeat.

Not to ruin you but try https://i.reddit.com

When I click on that link, there's an obnoxiously large button that says TRY REDDIT'S MOBILE WEBSITE at the top of the page.

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

#267

Post by marcosdumay »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #55
nevf1 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, I think ads is just another way of saying monetization. The app has lots of annoying notifications like "You might like...", "You got 100 upvotes", etc which, when you engage with more, they make more money through ads, coins etc. Your attention, retention and engagement is a lot easier to manage and increase through an app than it is through website.

Instead of direct monetization, they probably measure by engagement. If a service has a permanent presence on your device, you get a LOT more engagement and recurring visits than a web version. Websites on mobile are one-time, visit-and-forget/move on things. I'd love to be proven wrong though; what websites see daily, recurring, long time active usage? Also not to be underestimated is that a mobile app will always h…

> what websites see daily, recurring, long time active usage?

Reddit

Do you really think that people would stop going to reddit if they used the site instead of the app on their mobile? (But, of course, the people more prone to recurring visits are more likely to install an app.)

> mobile app will always have better UX than a website

And again, it's reddit we are talking about here. The app experience is just horrible.

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

#268

Post by PakG1 »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #144
allerhellsten wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this. To give you a datapoint from our properties: Our web site attracts 90% of the users, but only 60% of the actual traffic. In all metrics like retention, frequency and time on site, mobile leads by factors of 2-5. Part of that is definitely self-selection, but as some people already said, other notable effects are push notifications, mindshare, loss aversion (you're on somebody's device already, so they c…

I understand, but they're also pushing many users away with this behaviour. It's what I like about HN.. It feels like they don't even care how much users 'engage'. I bet they don't even run a report on it. They just let us do our thing here and not worry about it. As a user this is a much nicer experience.

Easy for HN to do that. HN is not incentivized to make money. The people who run HN do not care if HN does not make any money. In fact, they have zero monetization strategies for HN.

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

#269

Post by jhardy54 »

keepingscore wrote: post #123
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…

Yes! Bonus points for using software made by a Scuttlebutt friend.

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

#270

Post by ashtonkem »

jampekka wrote: post #250
ashtonkem wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That and the fact that they somehow make video playback continually less reliable somehow.

This. The reddit's video player is a total mess, in both functionality and usability. For the majority of time it simply doesn't load the video, and when it does, the play/pause/seeking is extremely laggy, and often any interaction causes the video to just not play. I'm having hard time understanding how someone manages to write such horrid piece of software, and how it keeps on being used on one of the most popular…

Or how they expect to remain one of the most popular sites in the world if the core functionality doesn’t work right.
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