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

Tell HN: Reddit mandatory login to see sensitive pages

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 111 posts

Re: Tell HN: Reddit mandatory login to see sensitive pages

#51

Post by joshlemer »

Sebb767 wrote: post #36
hbn wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also have a very strong hunch that the day is coming where this gets deprecated. There will be some kind of big database migration or service refactor, and reddit devs will not want to be messing with that "gross, old legacy codebase" to make it continue working and so the entire thing will be taken offline.

I highly doubt that. Every single time Reddit comes up here, people complain and complain, but also share old.reddit.com as a work-around instead of actually leaving Reddit. It's a perfect way of keeping the hardcore users addicted while having a modern, instant-gratification interface for the majority. They know what happened to Digg, so far I don't see any indication that they're going to repeat this mistake.

Yeah I guess the issue is that the share of users on old.reddit.com is diminishing to the point of being irrelevant. The number of users still on the old site is less than 5%.

It's also sad because even though the old reddit is available, it's not the same. Since all the users are using the new UI, you get a totally different type of user engagement than you used to get I feel. Nowadays it's rare to have any sense of community or long discussion and every subreddit has moved along the spectrum to shallower interactions, image posts, and less distinctive character.

Re: Tell HN: Reddit mandatory login to see sensitive pages

#52

Post by Sebb767 »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #27
xqcgrek2 wrote: post #20

It's best to just entirely avoid reddit and other low quality social media.

Yeah yeah yeah. Let's just dismiss the entire site without regard to the fact that there are actually some very good subs on it.

Working your way around Reddits problems and dark patterns while still feeding the content machine and contributing to its network effect isn't really a superior solution, either.

Also, this is just a personal anecdote, but ditching Reddit was one of the best ideas I've ever had. There's good stuff in there, but also a lot of obvious and hidden advertisement and it's very easy to get lost and spend hours just scrolling.

Re: Tell HN: Reddit mandatory login to see sensitive pages

#53

Post by woweoe »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #27
xqcgrek2 wrote: post #20

It's best to just entirely avoid reddit and other low quality social media.

Yeah yeah yeah. Let's just dismiss the entire site without regard to the fact that there are actually some very good subs on it.

You forget that those subs could be replaced by a more practical forum.

Re: Tell HN: Reddit mandatory login to see sensitive pages

#54

Post by mrweasel »

Sebb767 wrote: post #36
hbn wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also have a very strong hunch that the day is coming where this gets deprecated. There will be some kind of big database migration or service refactor, and reddit devs will not want to be messing with that "gross, old legacy codebase" to make it continue working and so the entire thing will be taken offline.

I highly doubt that. Every single time Reddit comes up here, people complain and complain, but also share old.reddit.com as a work-around instead of actually leaving Reddit. It's a perfect way of keeping the hardcore users addicted while having a modern, instant-gratification interface for the majority. They know what happened to Digg, so far I don't see any indication that they're going to repeat this mistake.

My guess is that a large number of younger people use the "new" reddit, and basically pay to keep everything running with the ads they view. Many older Reddit users just go to old.reddit.com, and would sooner leave the site than use the current design.

It's absolutely fascinating that they have both versions. To me it illustrates so perfectly what the Internet was vs. what is has become. There's probably more money to be made from the infinite scrolling and dark patterns, but it's also completely unusable and comments and discussions seems to be of less concern. Just keep scrolling.

Re: Tell HN: Reddit mandatory login to see sensitive pages

#55

Post by arbitrage »

DiffEq wrote: post #3
mikkergp wrote: post #2

Is this in web? It’s been terrible on mobile for a while. I think you have to login and be on the app. Reddit has added nothing but user hostile features over the past few years. It sucks because all things considered Reddit used to feel like a pretty bottom-up non corporate “for the people” type product, that’s almost all gone now.

Welcome to the new Dig, oh….I mean Reddit.

After all of Digg's toxic users migrated to reddit en masse, Digg became a much nicer and more enjoyable place, IMHO.

It's nice not to have to wade through the people who identify with a website on a personal and intimate level -- when all i really want to do is scroll a news aggregator, and potentially have light-weight conversations.

Re: Tell HN: Reddit mandatory login to see sensitive pages

#56

Post by obituary_latte »

jamesbfb wrote: post #19

Desktop mode on mobile still works fine for me. That said, I really don’t feel like having to login when in incognito mode when I want a cheeky wank in the loo.

For me this morning on ios it was forcing me to use the app to view nsfw content otherwise return to the homepage was the only other option. They're probably a/b testing, but either way, it's an immediate exit for me.

Re: Tell HN: Reddit mandatory login to see sensitive pages

#57

Post by obituary_latte »

For me this morning I noticed for the first time on iOS Safari it was trying to force me to use the Reddit app to view nsfw content otherwise return to the homepage was the only other option. They're probably a/b testing, but either way, it's an immediate page close for me. As soon as a website starts trying to force me to view their content a certain way, I become 99% less interested. I will just Google whatever it is and find it somewhere else if I want to see it bad enough.

Re: Tell HN: Reddit mandatory login to see sensitive pages

#58

Post by bil7 »

bdw5204 wrote: post #35
hbn wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also have a very strong hunch that the day is coming where this gets deprecated. There will be some kind of big database migration or service refactor, and reddit devs will not want to be messing with that "gross, old legacy codebase" to make it continue working and so the entire thing will be taken offline.

The day they shut down "old" Reddit is probably the day a large number of people leave Reddit altogether because the main Reddit site is a dark patterns hell. I think they'll still do it though because most web sites only want the kind of users who don't know how to install ad blockers.

large number? Reddit has seen by far the most growth after switching to the new UI. The old reddit has already not been maintained to support new features such as polls.

Re: Tell HN: Reddit mandatory login to see sensitive pages

#59

Post by Rackedup »

cma wrote: post #41
Rackedup wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Firefox addon is called Old Reddit Redirect ... but there is also Redirector which is a more generic redirector, for any websites and patterns. But to be able to use them on Firefox Android, you have to use an addon collection.

> But to be able to use them on Firefox Android, you have to use an addon collection. How does this work? Edit: seems only for FF nightly so far?

I don't think that it is only available only on nightly anymore: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-use-collections-add...

Re: Tell HN: Reddit mandatory login to see sensitive pages

#60

Post by arbitrage »

nathanaldensr wrote: post #5

This has been happening for awhile. I'm not sure why sometimes one is able to continue and other times one must logged in. I've chalked it up to Reddit insisting on tracking you (along with their ridiculous "use our app!" BS on mobile browsers).

reddit does covert and aggressive A/B evaluation on its live user base.

that may be why you see that behaviour inconsistently.

Post reply on HN