Live data from Hacker News

The 'Fuck You' Pattern

cedwards.xyz

71–80 of 619 posts

Re: The 'Fuck You' Pattern

#71
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…

Reddit is diverse, there still are some good corners here and there. You need to know where to look.

Re: The 'Fuck You' Pattern

#72
Where are the developers implementing this stuff on large social media, especially Reddit who had such a user friendly founding? Surely they're here on HN. I'd love to hear their thinking in going along with this, assuming it's something better than "fuck the users I want to get paid." How do you join the dev team for a service you like and use, and then knowingly destroy it?

Re: The 'Fuck You' Pattern

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

old.reddit.com is still around, for now, and does not have any of this garbage.

It'll eventually be removed with the reasoning that its hardly used and most traffic uses the new Reddit and now they can focus on improvements without having to support this legacy code.

Yeah, it's really infuriating.. Reddit consumed most of the cool niche forums on the internet, and now it's slowly mashing them all up into a bland Facebook clone

Re: The 'Fuck You' Pattern

#74
post #9
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.

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?

It’s like the Nigerian Prince email scam but the other way around : 99% of the people who receive such an email will identify the scam and ignore it. This is totally fine for the scammers. Working as expected.

Now, in the Reddit scenario 99% of the Reddit users don’t mind downloading an app. It’s just us, techies, that 1% who cares. This is totally fine for Reddit. Working as expected.

Re: The 'Fuck You' Pattern

#75
post #61

Another fuck you pattern from Instagram is hiding the keyboard when you go to search for a user to encourage you to get distracted and tap on a suggestion rather than what you were searching for. You have to tap search three times to actually see the keyboard. It has to be intentional because it's been happening for years.

Wait wha? What’s the flow here to produce this? I open IG, tap into the search tab, tap the search bar, keyboard appears, type in user, tap result. Do you want tapping into the search tab to autofocus the search bar and open the keyboard. I can totally understand that but IG’s search tab is more a discovery thing now. Which like evil’s of social media aside was a sorely needed feature since finding people to follow h…

Are you on Android? You have to tap search icon, then the search bar, after which the keyboard pops up then disappears, then tap the search bar again.

Re: The 'Fuck You' Pattern

#76
I just tried in a private browsing window: Without refreshing the page (to trigger the "forced HTTP redirect to login") I could delete the modal and disable the overflow:hidden on body and keep scrolling down quite a bit until I hit a post from January 18, 2019. So if you're prepared to try hard you can view a lot of cat pics without creating an account...

Re: The 'Fuck You' Pattern

#77
post #11

Yeah - this is why I stay out of Instagram. They're repeatedly, blatantly hostile to any non-user use. At least they're not as bad as Pinterest, which has done this for years, plus their million alternate domains polluting search results.

I was actually under the impression that what Pinterest does was against the ToS of Google. I can't find the link or reference, but I believe it was along the lines of 'You can't post images just to farm user account creation on your services' which is exactly what Pinterest does.

I would love if we could do away with these sites and those websites that insist I use their 'app' to view simple text data.

Re: The 'Fuck You' Pattern

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

old.reddit.com is still around, for now, and does not have any of this garbage.

It'll eventually be removed with the reasoning that its hardly used and most traffic uses the new Reddit and now they can focus on improvements without having to support this legacy code.

And then something else will replace it. They'll digg themselves their own grave.

Re: The 'Fuck You' Pattern

#79
I used to be able to see photos that friends and family publish to Instagram, but then one day I was inexplicably cut off—no more access via open standard protocols.

I’m sad about that.

Re: The 'Fuck You' Pattern

#80
Fuck you patterns are everywhere on the web nowaday.

Some of the most annoying to me:

Twitch trying to discourage the use of the embedded player/non official players (like VLC) by replacing the content by a fullscreen purple picture asking you to watch on twitch.tv.

Reddit trying to force mobile user to use the reddit app as soon as the content is marked NSFW.

Instagram forcing me to login to view pictures.

Twitter asking me to see who someone is following.

Post reply on HN