Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?

reddit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 658 posts

Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?

#141

Post by losteric »

kredd wrote: post #120
GuardianCaveman wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point isn't that it's different or the same, the point is that the very definition of the site is that all content and moderation pretty much is created by users, and that the users hate being forced to install yet another app when it works fine for years as a mobile webpage. There was/is a spirit to reddit and it's being destroyed and if you love something and someone takes steps to change the thing you love int…

I agree with the poster above, since at this year most of people are accustomed to install an app to interact with a website. It’s not where we wanted the web to be, but also it’s a minority that find it annoying.

My parents are technical sheep. They'll do what a site tells them to, even if it bogs down their phone, adds notifications, and inserts yet another advertising tentacle into their life. They won't be mad because they don't understand. As an engineer, I think it's reasonable to be mad for myself and those that don't know better.

Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?

#143

Post by PartiallyTyped »

donny2018 wrote: post #76
FormerBandmate wrote: post #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)

This is Silicon Valley (the show) level comical.

Spez’s car’s doors open like this, not like this, not like this.

Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?

#145

Post by Razengan »

FormerBandmate wrote: post #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)

Could this all be deliberate to tank Reddit stock as soon as it goes public to make money off shorting?

Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?

#146

Post by lozenge »

p-e-w wrote: post #82
MattGaiser wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they converted it to a subreddit with 1.5k subscribers. That definitely belongs in a textbook on absurd corporate decisions. I thought you must have been exaggerating somewhere, but nope, that is exactly how it went. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubsmash https://old.reddit.com/r/dubsmash/

It's only absurd if you misunderstand the true intention. They didn't acquire Dubsmash to profit from its technology and users. They acquired Dubsmash to shut it down. Today's social media corporations are so fat with (venture) capital that they can, and do, spend that kind of money just to keep any potential competitors locked out. TikTok, the last social network that became truly big, was launched in 2016, seven ye…

Imagine if Facebook shut down its acquisitions Instagram and WhatsApp. Meta would be an irrelevancy.

Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?

#147

Post by paganel »

FormerBandmate wrote: post #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)

> 25% of black teens in their acquisition press release

Not necessarily illegal, but I had thought that, for sure, one shouldn't boast about heavily discriminatory race-related factoids, even if they thought that it would be for a "good" cause.

Didn't they think what would have happened had they replaced the "black teens" in their press release with "white teens"?

Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?

#148

Post by aveao »

Razengan wrote: post #145
FormerBandmate wrote: post #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)

Could this all be deliberate to tank Reddit stock as soon as it goes public to make money off shorting?

that'd be insider trading, and FTC has generally has opinions about that

Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?

#149

Post by bredren »

riku_iki wrote: post #128
predictabl3 wrote: post #60

I am absolutely blown away by the number of subs that have gone private and shocked at some napkin math of how many total subscribers are affected. Further, the Discord is well, finally getting a bit too riled up to hear coherently, but is easily the largest live, wholesome gathering of people I've participated in a live event with. And on top of that, numerous people are signing up for Matrix and joining the bridged…

> I am absolutely blown away by the number of subs that have gone private My understanding is that moderators are the most upset category by API changes, because they are losing some unique mod features from 3rd party apps.

I use Apollo to read Reddit, but mod using desktop web.

Definitely the Apollo and handling of the API changes is annoying.

But this was much more a straw that broke the camel’s back thing from a mod perspective.

I’ve mentioned this before but I am on the mod team for r/portland and the Reddit admin has been terrible at providing tools and support for serious content mod problems and straight up platform abuse.

There was an incident where we had someone who stuck out as disturbed say they would be carrying out a mass shooting event.

There are a lot of problematic posts but this one was so subtly wrong and the second post from the user, rewording it from another pac NW sub.

IIRC, at the time there was no way to report a content type problem like this to the Reddit admin. The content reporting UX was a dark pattern, seemingly purposefully or thoughtlessly designed to avoid allowing mods to report this kind of concern.

I found a category to report it to anyway, and had to follow up multiple times to get any confirmation that an actual person had received my report.

When I finally did get a reply, the message was a short form letter, providing the least possible commitment to addressing the concern. It was just a terrible showing. I recall discussing this specific instance w other portland mods and how much of a bummer it was to not have the company’s support on such a serious problem.

But much more pedestrian of a concern has been astroturfing. There has been a persistent effort to highlight news and article headlines intended to divide people along racial and economic lines.

It is ~ the same playbook used in targeted ads on Facebook leading up to the 2016 presidential election. This has been going on _years_, and it is no secret.

It got to be so bad, at one point I emailed YC managing director and Reddit board member [1] Michael Seibel, about the problem and still got no reply.

While Portland is a large city sub and likely has unique unaddressed moderation challenges inherent to it, I imagine there are many stories from the all-volunteer moderators in large subs who have been let down in various ways by Reddit.

[1] https://www.redditinc.com/blog/reddit-welcomes-michael-seibe...

Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?

#150

Post by chaosjevil »

_zzaw wrote: 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…

There's a second response: to not reward AND punish the offending party.

I've been recommending people to replace their content in Reddit with literal gibberish (from random generators), and then delete their accounts. Each person doing this makes Reddit data less valuable for LLMs, and eventually it means that not even Google, Amazon, Microsoft etc. would ever bother paying for API access.

Post reply on HN