If you want piece-of-mind, don't build sandcastles on a corporation's beach with the waves lapping at your feet.
Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?
11–20 of 658 posts
Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?
#12If you want piece-of-mind, don't build sandcastles on a corporation's beach with the waves lapping at your feet.
What is the sandcastle in this story? Safari?
EDIT: Forgive me, I’m cranky. Of course the communities resting on Reddit’s beach are themselves the castles. I’m so tunnel-visioned on the API aspect that only used that lens.
Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?
#13That's so lame. It's an ass move to have a web app but deny access on certain platforms. But whatever gets the numbers up for an IPO I guess.
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Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?
#14Facebook messenger did this too.
mbasic.Facebook.com still works
Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?
#15It was my experience that Reddit stopped caring about its users a long time ago. I am convinced that Reddit unofficial motto is: "Moderators own the place they operate and are free to do whatever they want with it". So it isn't a surprise that the admins think they can do whatever they want with the entire site.
For a less popular opinion, I don't sympathize at all with the reddit moderators who are up in arms about the API problem. They have had full, unfettered control of their subreddits where their power is near absolute and they enjoy pushing their own views and punishments on anyone they don't like. But now that a higher power is enforcing their rules on them, they cry oppression (see u/awkwardtheturtle and the moderators of r/art). It is pure hypocrisy and almost hilarious to me.
I know not all moderators are the same, but with the way reddit is designed, power is only exercised in one direction and power abuse is unavoidable. The very culture of reddit at its core is flawed now and I think it is funny that only now, when the higher caste of redditors, who are in the minority, started to get affected that we see some calls for action.
Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?
#16There is only one appropriate, effective response to disrespect, and that is to not reward the offending party. I made it a matter of principle to not use the Reddit app. Even if they removed all ads and made it an acceptable user experience, I'll never use the app as long as they are harassing me about it. It's simple. Don't reward bad behavior. Sometimes, denying obnoxious people something they want means denying y…
The issue is for every person like you and me, there are 10 or 100 others who put up with this crap, and reddit attracts people, centralizing communities, giving you little option for alternatives. It drains activities from forums, etc, toward itself as it is presented as a more convenient solution. I for one will try to undo my past contributions to accelerate its decline. The blackout is unlikely to work, but I hop…
I think you're right, partly. But I also think that a lot of the people who put up with it are the passive ones who don't really contribute much to communities anyway; they're just there.
The people who do the real contributing—posting, modding, defining the culture and building the communities that Reddit benefits from—are, as far as I can tell, more likely to get a lot angrier about abusive corporate nonsense, simply because they're more invested.
The more invested you are, the more screwed you feel. That's something that a person like Huffman is incapable of grasping, to his company's detriment.
I don't think the blackout alone will end Reddit. I don't think any one thing will end Reddit. I think, similar to Twitter, that it'll be a series of things: indignities large and small that successively alienate the people who matter most to these companies whether the C-level/marketer types realize it or not.
And at some point, similar to what I expect will happen to Twitter, Reddit will simply no longer be relevant in the way it once was. Whether they understand why is another question, but to me, it's always been clear.
tl;dr: Reddit the company is just a dumb pipe. Reddit as we think of it is a culture and community. That culture and community is defined by a relatively small collection of people who are on there because they care. When enough of them get disgusted enough to go elsewhere, Reddit—both the company and the community—will cease to exist in any meaningful capacity.
Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?
#17People don't complain as much when Apple does stuff like this.
Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?
#18If you want piece-of-mind, don't build sandcastles on a corporation's beach with the waves lapping at your feet.
What is the sandcastle in this story? Safari? EDIT: Forgive me, I’m cranky. Of course the communities resting on Reddit’s beach are themselves the castles. I’m so tunnel-visioned on the API aspect that only used that lens.
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Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?
#19If you want piece-of-mind, don't build sandcastles on a corporation's beach with the waves lapping at your feet.
What is the sandcastle in this story? Safari? EDIT: Forgive me, I’m cranky. Of course the communities resting on Reddit’s beach are themselves the castles. I’m so tunnel-visioned on the API aspect that only used that lens.
The sandcastles are the communities built around subreddits. The subreddits are on a corporately owned beach, the owners are building a mall, and the sandcastles are in the way.
Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?
#20There is only one appropriate, effective response to disrespect, and that is to not reward the offending party. I made it a matter of principle to not use the Reddit app. Even if they removed all ads and made it an acceptable user experience, I'll never use the app as long as they are harassing me about it. It's simple. Don't reward bad behavior. Sometimes, denying obnoxious people something they want means denying y…
The issue is for every person like you and me, there are 10 or 100 others who put up with this crap, and reddit attracts people, centralizing communities, giving you little option for alternatives. It drains activities from forums, etc, toward itself as it is presented as a more convenient solution. I for one will try to undo my past contributions to accelerate its decline. The blackout is unlikely to work, but I hop…
I lurk in a few subreddits that have well established forums outside of Reddit (decades old with tens of thousands of users) that are the top Google results and I'm always a bit amazed that people will still post on Reddit instead of using those other forums where they will get much, much better answers.