Go to your settings and ask them to stop prompting you to use their app.
Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?
401–410 of 657 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?
#402It is pretty offensive that they say "reddit works better on the app" when the only reason for that is that they broke everything on mobile (on purpose?) in a series of badly-implemented redesigns. I'm never going to install it, and I have all but stopped reading it because these prompts are so obnoxious. That's probably +$ for Reddit though. I don't understand why companies constantly do stuff that serves only _them…
The most enraging thing is Reddit took over video hosting themselves, but simply declined to have a mobile/text share option. Links from any 3rd party service show up in the phone as the content i want to share. Reddit? You try to send someone a Reddit video link and they get affronted by a pop up banner to download the mobile app when they click through. WTF! I sent a reddit link to a video to my dad, once. He repli…
I have a greasemonkey script to filter out such posts. There is enough content without them.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?
#403It is pretty offensive that they say "reddit works better on the app" when the only reason for that is that they broke everything on mobile (on purpose?) in a series of badly-implemented redesigns. I'm never going to install it, and I have all but stopped reading it because these prompts are so obnoxious. That's probably +$ for Reddit though. I don't understand why companies constantly do stuff that serves only _them…
I use Redreader on android. The experience is magnitudes better than the "real" app It's free and opensource, available on f-droid or if you are so inclined google playstore. https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.quantumbadger.redreader/
I use Alien Blue, but that doesn't stop the popup from showing when you browse to a Reddit page on Safari.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?
#404That 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…
This design is just so damn weird. I only rarely find myself at reddit e.g. when some obscure search query lands me there and I am always extremely confused trying to find the actual content of posts and relevant comments. I still don’t even understand how it works and half the time I just give up and leave because I can’t figure out what to do to get at whatever I’m searching for.
Anyone else feel like Reddit is like AOL circa 2002?
It's horribly designed, continues to be so despite numerous changes, yet we put up with it because of the user content that we can't find anywhere else.
And they get lucky with people continuing to contribute to their horrible platform for the same reason.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?
#405It is pretty offensive that they say "reddit works better on the app" when the only reason for that is that they broke everything on mobile (on purpose?) in a series of badly-implemented redesigns. I'm never going to install it, and I have all but stopped reading it because these prompts are so obnoxious. That's probably +$ for Reddit though. I don't understand why companies constantly do stuff that serves only _them…
MIT economists Acemoglu and Robinson wrote a book "Why Nations Fail" that analyzes why countries at similar starting points can have extremely divergent paths in terms of economic development. One example is South and North Korea. Their conclusion is that some countries have established extractive institutions, while others inclusive. The extractive ones exclude the population from the decision making process and seek to divvy up and redistribute the scarce available resources, while the inclusive ones seek to involve the broadest possible strata of the population in the decision making and wealth-producing activities. Looks like Reddit is turning into the North Korea of social websites.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?
#406I still use the "redditisfun" third-party app on mobile. It hasn't changed in the years that I've used it.
It has changed its name, now it's "rif is fun"
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?
#407Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is correct. It's about retention more than monetization. With the app, you can not only send notifications, but you also have the app icon which reminds people of the apps existence. Even little things like "badging" (when the app icon shows a dot or number to indicate new notifications) and even that can have a noticeable impact on retention (we're all programmed to click into anything with a notification). Als…
I believe Apple is going to be allowing push notifications from the web soon, and you can also "Add to Homescreen" a webpage, and it acts like an app, so we might finally be seeing a needed shift away from the app store.
Apple added push notifications to safari, but only on desktop. That tells you that they deliberately do not support this because they know a lot of apps could be pwa’s otherwise.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?
#408Do you actually want to use their godawful mobile website, or do you just want to not use their proprietary app?
Because there are multiple third party apps that are actually good, and at least one that is fully free under the GPL (search for Slide on F-droid).
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?
#409As a conversion optimization question, I suspect Reddit would get better conversion on their "do you want the mobile app" banner if they only showed it randomly about 10-15% of the time. By showing it every time, they cause viewers to remember their "why would I want that - I don't" decision from the previous time they saw the question. Reducing the frequency would likely result in more people considering the questio…
What you describe has been the case for years if you use "old reddit" on a mobile device. There's a big "GET REDDIT MOBILE" banner at the top of every page that disappears when dismissed, only to reappear randomly a few days or weeks later.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?
#410My second most useful decision to leave social media was to stop using Reddit (except browsing r/ groups occasionally). No points for guessing the first one.