Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access? • Hacker News Board

Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?

#531

Post by ascagnel_ » Mon, Jun 12, 2023, 1:56 PM UTC

kitsunesoba wrote: post #482

borbulon wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not forget that the in-app browser page can be injected with whatever javascript the owner of the app wants. FB/Instagram use this for tracking. There is a more comprehensive list of what apps do this somewhere; I do not remember where it is. But for FB/Meta, you can find the info here: https://krausefx.com/blog/ios-privacy-instagram-and-facebook...

Worth pointing out that not all in-app browsers are created equal, however. A huge number of apps, probably the majority, on iOS use SFSafariViewController for theirs, which is basically an isolated Safari tab that runs out of process and app developers have no access to. Furthermore, SFSafariViewController instances are unique per-app, each with their own separate set of cookies so apps can’t trick you into visiting…

You are correct; however, in the case of some of the biggest apps (Reddit's official app among them), they use the old WKWebView specifically for the ability to inject code. The more user-centric third-party apps that Twitter/Reddit have targeted lately used SFSafariViewController.

Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?

#532

Post by xeromal » Mon, Jun 12, 2023, 1:56 PM UTC

rightbyte wrote: post #387

sdwr wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never wanted to use the reddit app. Must have caved and installed it one day. I use it now, and it doesnt feel different from the site. Say what you want about HN, but at least the contrarians bring out opposing views. The bigger reddit subs have a mob mentality that use to annoy me, and now scares me. People are itching for a chance to hate, and pile on from every angle. It's childish, naive, and most of all vindi…

> The bigger reddit subs have a mob mentality that use to annoy me, and now scares me. It has gotten way worse right? Or is it me getting older? Many subs are like sects with a razor thin point of view allowed that is shifting constantly. It feels like insane people are pushing every BS problem as a do or die proposition and that those are dominating.

[dead]

Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?

#533

Post by blibble » Mon, Jun 12, 2023, 1:58 PM UTC

tuukkah wrote: post #487

beezlewax wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely there is a way of checking api calls made by an app and blocking those? I have never looked into this mind

HTTPS means the network connections between the app and the backend are opaque to third parties including the user. Certificate pinning means you cannot insert yourself as the backend and/or MITM the requests. The app will only communicate directly with the owner of the private key it was pinned to. Depending on the app and OS, it may be more or less easy to change the app to remove/crack the pinning. In general, if…

for android you pull down the apk using adb, patch maybe 1 byte in it and push it back

very very easy, no root required

Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?

#534

Post by scarlet_lovah » Mon, Jun 12, 2023, 1:59 PM UTC

lannisterstark wrote: post #116

x3874 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are / were they really 'friends' though if doing so obliterated your connections? Most people tend to misclassify being friends with being open & friendly with another.

Yes. Putting people through hoops and then going "were we really friends if you didn't do it for me, huh, HUUUUH?" is a "I'm the main character" mindset. A friend recently deleted all his apps and he asks me I just email him if I want to talk. I'm just not gonna do that. I barely remember to email my work people.

LOL. Wow. Speaking of “I’m the main character”…=)

Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?

#535

Post by mynameisvlad » Mon, Jun 12, 2023, 1:59 PM UTC

nosianu wrote: post #243

bollos wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/As…

Those are two wildly different things.

I’m almost positive that Instagram also has those sort of embedded promotions/ads, which are generally done outside of the official platform. But they also have a metric shitton of actual ads, within their own platform, that they queued up.

Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?

#536

Post by xeromal » Mon, Jun 12, 2023, 1:59 PM UTC

safety1st wrote: post #168

alwayslikethis wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 don't know about this argument. "Everyone else is doing it so there are no alternatives." I believe less in this argument every year. * There are alternatives. Like for me it's Mastodon, IRC, SDF and the Tildes. Now there's this thing Lemmy bouncing around out there which is a straight up federated clone of Reddit. Are they all kind of different from Reddit yeah, are they smaller yeah, so what? The alternative is y…

I would add a small counterpoint to your second point. For me, reddit is becoming pretty essential in my life. Since Google has been taken over by blogspam and ads, I struggle to find reviews or opinions of things I buy or use. I use google to search reddit to find comments relating to thing I'm interested in. Those comments might be astroturfing or paid support too, but it's easier to sus that out by searching past comments and painting a picture of the user. It's not perfect, but it's much better than trusting the authenticity of random blogs save a few I have bookmarked.

Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?

#537

Post by rchaud » Mon, Jun 12, 2023, 2:00 PM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #10

brucethemoose2 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

The IPO brokers just care if they can pass the bags to the general public. And that includes retirement funds and such, especially the general ones that follow indexes of various types.

Chances are, the investment bank looked at Reddit's financials and said "Here's the IPO price we can hit", and Reddit's execs realized it would be well below the amount they thought their stocks option packages would be worth.

Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?

#538

Post by rocketbop » Mon, Jun 12, 2023, 2:00 PM UTC

ok123456 wrote: post #529

veidr wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The web puts the user in control; apps (on all significant platforms currently existing) put the company in control. Yes, Google and (especially) Apple may force Reddit to comply with this or that, but Google and (especially) Apple also prevent the user from doing all sorts of things they can do with an open platform like the web. Users can't block ads in an app. Users can't block telemetry. Users can't prevent track…

You can block ads in apps. In android 11, you can have it use OpenDNS's adblocking server.

I suspect only a small subset of people who generally run an adblocker also block ads on apps as it requires a lot more specialized knowledge.

Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?

#539

Post by awestroke » Mon, Jun 12, 2023, 2:00 PM UTC

data-ottawa wrote: post #514

awestroke wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1 minute? Is that a typo?

No typo, the other commenter is correct. Screen Time on iOS/macOS lets you override the clock but in a “snooze” style. It blocks me from habitually browsing the front page but lets me land there from search.

So you've restricted the reddit domain to 1 minute?

Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?

#540

Post by rchaud » Mon, Jun 12, 2023, 2:01 PM UTC

qolop wrote: post #287

In Zuck's interview with Lex he was talking about a text-based social media platform they Meta has been experimenting with recently. This would be a great time for them to try to acquire users

It's called Threads and it's a Twitter ripoff.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/8/23754304/instagram-meta-tw...