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Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?

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Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?

#241

Post by paganel »

polytely wrote: post #202
paganel wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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"?

No because it is a different thing. US black population has their own distinct culture (grown out of a shared struggle and history) that simply does not exist for the group that people call 'white'. In this case black teens isn't just pointing at skin color but at culture, one that is very valuable for the VC crowd because it's where cool stuff originates.

> one that is very valuable for the VC crowd because it's where cool stuff originates.

Still sounds racist, in its way. As in, why aren't the black kids seen as the boring, nerdish kids that will get to form the VC crowd themselves in 20 years' time?

Later edit: Reminds me of this Dave Chapelle skit [1], the part with the "white dude" whispering:

> Oh, my God, I think those black guys are gonna try to save us

It's just essentialist stuff.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ORzNgXgDqU&t=65s

Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?

#242

Post by jasonkester »

Oh dear.

On my iPad, this post appears as neatly formatted text in a nice font, centered on a white background with absolutely nothing else on the page. Not so much as a username or date (though it does say "by" on the line above).

There's also a little hamburger icon in the top left corner that does nothing if clicked. and a search icon that behaves the same.

It's... uncluttered and free of distraction, I guess.

Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?

#243

Post by nosianu »

bollos wrote: post #156
bastawhiz wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the attractive part of TikTok-style feeds for business leadership: it requires you to engage with exactly one thing at a time. And you don't decide what that one thing is, and they can make it an ad. It's not a movie theater, it's a TV station. As long as the thing you're looking at is compelling enough to stay after they slap you in the face with an advertisement every few seconds (every 8-30 seconds, on…

I'm always surprised by the sheer amount of ads on Instagram. TikTok barely shows me any ads, even through prolonged periods of me using the app. Using Instagram is pain with the constant amount of identical ads being shoved down the pipeline.

This would make me suspicious, and my first assumption would be that the ads are hidden as fake content. On reddit it's quite obvious, when there's yet another /r/funny post about some (for example) "funny" Coke bottle thing or some other brand. Lots of those kinds of posts, actually. Also a lot of quite obvious fake engagement-encouraging posts, such as the many question reddits with thread-creating questions (/r/AskReddit comes to mind, a large subreddit also shown on the frontpage when I'm not logged in) that even look and sound like they were planned and designed (and they all have a similar vibe, as if coming from the same source).

Modern ads are not the obvious type that are marked as such. It's more like product placement and a bunch of other less obvious methods.

Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?

#244

Post by greiskul »

cityofdelusion wrote: post #221
Razengan wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Its going to tank but for a different reason -- because like Coinbase, Robinhood, and other hyped stock listings, all the insiders are going to dump shares on the unsuspecting retail public. I imagine day 1 of trading will be the highest the stock ever gets.

Lol, good luck doing that during a recession, and after pissing users off. They might have tricked me into buying it before this fiasco, but definitely they lost me now.

Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?

#246

Post by midoridensha »

SllX wrote: post #107
midoridensha wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They need to shut that down. Even better, they should make a desktop app and force users to use that instead of the website. If they really believe in their forced-app strategy, they should bet the farm on it, not just on mobile, but everywhere.

Would be faster to just shut down the corporation and give the money back to the shareholders, whatever they have anyway, but your approach is not without merit, mostly in that I think it would be funny at this point.

That's basically why I'm advocating what I posted, that and also because I think it'd be a great chapter in tech history, showing how doubling down on a stupid user-hostile decision can destroy a company (assuming it does). Then, 30 years from now, people will still talk about how Reddit self-destructed when they decided they needed to control the user experience and forced everyone to use their app.

Rationally, your approach is of course better, but the current narcissistic execs aren't going to do anything like that, whereas I can certainly see them doing something as stupid and out-of-touch as forcing everyone to use their app on both mobile and desktop.

Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?

#247

Post by benjaminwootton »

lionkor wrote: post #215
benjaminwootton wrote: post #188

Why is it so important for Reddit to get you on the app? A daily active user is the same, you can still serve apps, still control your UX and still track. I’m sure they lose more users by throwing up the banner to people who can’t be bothered or don’t want to download the app.

I'm guessing it is because adblockers don't usually work on apps, but they do work on websites. With firefox on Android i have ublock origin, on the reddit app i don't - I'm forced to watch their ads however they feed them. Plus, push notifications like "have you seen this post?" and "your comment got 10 upvotes!"

Even with regards to adblockers, they must be bouncing a ton of SEO traffic and eventual users to try to overcome that.

Nobody other site is so belligerent in getting you onto the app so I can’t see how it’s a net positive for them.

Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?

#248

Post by SebastianKra »

_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…

That's assuming that everyone has a good grasp on what's going on, and considers this funny-picture-App to be their top priority.

That's the issue with operating on principle:

We HN users might be aware of this particular issue, but there's thousands of products that we use, because we're unaware or don't have the energy to fight.

So with all the exploitation, abuse and pollution that you indirectly support, why do you expect most users to draw the line at a weird website?

Not simple at all.

Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?

#249

Post by Nemo_bis »

FormerBandmate wrote: post #75
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/

At one point Dubsmash had 200 million users ( https://stackshare.io/dubsmash/dubsmash-scaling-to-200-milli... ) and in the acquisition press release they tout how 25% of black teens were on the app ( https://www.redditinc.com/blog/reddit-welcomes-video-platfor... ). They had fallen from their heyday by the time Reddit bought them but even still taking those numbers at face value it's probably the worst acquisition of…

It [also](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dubsmash&oldid=11...) had suffered a data breach and went from competing with TikTok and musical.ly to being two orders of magnitude smaller than the combined TikTok.

Probably Reddit thought they were just buying a mailing list and a development team. So the cost should be compared to Reddit marketing's acquisition costs and Reddit HR hiring costs.

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