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The 'Fuck You' Pattern

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Re: The 'Fuck You' Pattern

#41

Post by cdstyh »

klyrs wrote: post #13

I love instagram. It's the best social media site. Last time I checked, I couldn't even make an account from my desktop computer. I'm not gonna even try to install their app on my G-free phone. When a friends sends me a link to Instagram, I know that I don't need to click on it -- the thumbnail contains all the information that I'd ever see without creating an account. When news articles consist of a bunch of embedde…

I had the same experience. I wanted to watch someone's podcast Livestream that was being broadcasted on Instagram (I don't know why they didn't just use YouTube). But I couldn't even create an account. I tried with my desktop and phone on different networks. It wouldn't work.

Re: The 'Fuck You' Pattern

#42

Post by Nition »

u801e wrote: post #28
glennvtx wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The web reddit is just awful. Leave a thread open for some time, and navigation even breaks.

I just use old.reddit.com on my mobile and laptop.

Try i.reddit.com on mobile, it's easier on small screens. Click the cog on the right for options like collapsing comments.

Re: The 'Fuck You' Pattern

#43

Post by ssully »

JoeyBananas wrote: post #10
axbytg wrote: post #5

Reddit is full of these patterns in order to drive users from mobile web to app. Reddit mobile web really sets the bar for user-hostile UI in my opinion.

Microsoft Windows is even worse. Constant disruptive updates, forcing you to make an account during install, ads in the start menu, that creepy "Cortana" process that you can't kill...

I disagree. Reddit is worse because if you don't have an account, you are constantly pushed to make one, or get pop-ups to download the ad. They also seem to limit functionality, like seeing all comments, unless you have an account.

The Windows installation process is annoying for sure, but once you get through it, you are able to disable or rework everything you mentioned. iOS honestly has everything you mentioned as well; in fact, it's installation process pushes even more services than Windows does, but I never see people complain about it. I find both process annoying, but I forget about them once I get everything setup because it goes away. I don't want a reddit account because I basically only visit the site when a friend sends me a link. I am guessing I can also have their stuff go away if I download the app and sign up, but it's not as essential to me as using Windows or iOS.

Re: The 'Fuck You' Pattern

#44

Post by saba2008 »

nkingsy wrote: post #4

Q: But what about the unauthenticated existing users we might alienate? A: There’s no way to gather data on that so it’s not a thing. This is the problem with “data driven” decision making in a nutshell. It has annoyed me to no end at every company I’ve worked for.

Users are not consumers, but product. And untracked users are lower quality, so culling them can be beneficial. So no problem here.

Re: The 'Fuck You' Pattern

#46

Post by turtletontine »

nkingsy wrote: post #4

Q: But what about the unauthenticated existing users we might alienate? A: There’s no way to gather data on that so it’s not a thing. This is the problem with “data driven” decision making in a nutshell. It has annoyed me to no end at every company I’ve worked for.

... but if you can't collect data on them, you can't target ads to them or sell their data elsewhere, and therefore they're worth nothing to you.

At the end of the day every company wants to make money, or will be bought out by cutthroats who think it's all there is, and this kind of thinking will take hold. Users you can't profit from = leeches.

Re: The 'Fuck You' Pattern

#47

Post by mikestew »

axbytg wrote: post #5

Reddit is full of these patterns in order to drive users from mobile web to app. Reddit mobile web really sets the bar for user-hostile UI in my opinion.

I don't have a Reddit account, and every time I use it I am reminded why. Their patterns have taken me from "I should create an account one of these days" to "there is nothing on the Internet that I need to see so badly that I would let Reddit see anymore about me than my IP address." It's almost as if they are taunting users: "give up and create an account, or go home. Oh, and use the fucking mobile app while you're at it, or the suffering will continue."

OTOH, once I get there, a lot of Reddit content makes me wonder why I bothered. :-)

Re: The 'Fuck You' Pattern

#48

Post by tgtweak »

klyrs wrote: post #13

I love instagram. It's the best social media site. Last time I checked, I couldn't even make an account from my desktop computer. I'm not gonna even try to install their app on my G-free phone. When a friends sends me a link to Instagram, I know that I don't need to click on it -- the thumbnail contains all the information that I'd ever see without creating an account. When news articles consist of a bunch of embedde…

Pinterest and Reddit are not better these days. The amount of things you can view on reddit on your phone without creating an account or installing the app is dwindling daily.

Every time my wife sends me a Pinterest link I just ask her to screenshot it as I can't see shit on the default mobile page. I don't even know why Google continues to allow them in the results when there is clear-cut policies around showing something different to the crawler than the user.

Ironically, a good workaround is setting your user agent to the Googlebot and suddenly all those modal/nag screens disappear.

Re: The 'Fuck You' Pattern

#49

Post by pjerem »

avalys wrote: post #21

This seems like an anti-scraping measure to me, they are limiting how much content you can access on the site without an account? Seems like if they did not have protections like this, another group of people would be complaining about easy FB makes it for nefarious actors to violate your privacy, etc. and how careless they are in not locking down access better.

No because the first thing they do is to show you all of the content, ready to be scraped. Then they add their modal and then, after three reloads they store in your browser storage, they stops to show you the content.

So they don’t protect any data, they just leak it all. Then they hide it.

Re: The 'Fuck You' Pattern

#50

Post by throwaway894345 »

ornornor wrote: post #16
mulmen wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I don’t understand is why Reddit wants us to use the app so badly. Is it just for ads? Is it data collection?

I suspect it’s all that and their metrics show that mobile users are the most “engaged” so they want more mobile users to have an even higher count of engaged users. Also, it’s harder to spam notifications without a mobile app.

They deliberately make their mobile web experience awful, so I don’t think that’s why (how can you trust a metric that you’re deliberately sabotaging?). I suspect mobile apps just allow for more data collection than web apps.
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