Live data from Hacker News

Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?

reddit.com

31–40 of 658 posts

Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?

#32
post #2

That'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.

Its so stupid that this is all "for" an IPO. I can't imagine huge investing houses, retirement funds, analysts and such investigating Reddit, and missing the massive user retention issues these changes precipitate. Its not like the stock market is littered with social media website corpses or anything...

People can go to great lengths to avoid noticing things of their bonus depends on it.

Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?

#34
post #3

There 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…

man I did this with facebook and it obliterated my social connections. it doesn’t make sense from a micro perspective, game theory sucks man i installed instagram in december and it’s so much easier to make friends. I feel in touch with what’s going on in the community

That's how Meta pulls you in, but reddit has always felt less user-focused than subreddit and comment-focused. Read a link, make some smalltalk about it asynchronously for a few hours, move on.

Reddit is probably among the least sticky social media sites because of it.

Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?

#35

One month old, but still very interesting. The admin confirmation is here: https://old.reddit.com/r/help/comments/135tly1/comment/jim40...

The incredible thing is that this is an "experiment", not a policy. As an experiment they're ready to harass and alien X percentage of their users? Amazing.

Also, the answer theoretically should be right below the question 'cause it's most relevant but I can see how no one could bring themselves to upvote this.

Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?

#36
They are desperately trying to be TikTok. It will not work and has no chance of working. Look at their hilariously terrible acquisition of Dubsmash for $50 million (they converted it to a subreddit with 1.5k subscribers when they had 200 million users at their peak and touted having 25% of black teens in their acquisition press release. Every post is people saying the Reddit app sucks and asking where Dubsmash went)

Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?

#37

People don't complain as much when Apple does stuff like this.

I guess they don’t because I’ve never heard of Apple doing user testing that shits certain users out like this.

In a sense releasing things like they have is testing. It just doesn't seem like tests because they haven't had to pull anything back. They should have had to though. If people heeded Stallman's warnings, nobody would have continued to support Apple after they launched the iPhone without third party apps (other phones had them) or when they launched third party apps with no sideloading. The world would be much better for it.

Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?

#38
post #22

I stopped using Reddit for a few weeks because of this. I use Reddit almost exclusively on my phone and I don’t need nor want to download a separate web browser just for one site. But then one day I checked out of habit and I was back in. But if they want to “ban” me from the site because I visit with my phone’s browser, so be it. Honestly they’d probably be doing me a favor. But I’m not downloading the stupid app.

I've set a screen time limit of 1 minute per day. It's enough to be annoying unless I end up there from a Google search.

For the time being I'm just going to reallocate my Reddit time to reading about my hobbies.

Post reply on HN