This is one month old.... what am I missing? I still use Firefox with the extension that redirects to https://old.reddit.com
This was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A/B_testing, i.e., only for some users.
Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?
541–550 of 658 posts
Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?
#542Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
The Reddit API changes are hyper-focused on killing 3rd party mobile apps. Most mod tools should be unaffected simply because they fall well-inside the free usage limits. As for the remaining mod tools? Reddit admins have even resorted to making explicit promises to fix those if they break (probably just by exempting them from API limits). But most (if not all) Reddit moderators are also reddit power users, some of t…
Those 3rd party apps have mod tools built in that have been requested for years by moderators and never implemented by reddit.
The official apps and tooling is paltry in comparison, and rarely used because 3rd party tools have done the job. Even basic things like mod queue in the mobile apps is not a thing in the official app.
“Mod tools” in the way it’s been defined by Reddit is an extremely small category of apps which doesn’t adequately cover the tools mods actually use to do their unpaid job.
Reddit has committed to fixing this, sure. But they’ve also said that for the last few years and ignored the most basic of features so why should mods trust that they’ll actually stick to their promises this time, when they haven’t for many, many years?
Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?
#543Earlier 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…
This, this and exactly this. Their finance team probably made a projection that if they can get X% of current mobile web users onto the app, they’ll be able to extract Y% more total revenue. They have no idea that they should split users into contributors and lurkers and even if they had, they have absolutely no idea how to model their value, so they don’t, the board sees the numbers and tells them ‘ASAP’ and that’s…
My former boss, someone I used to think had a brilliant business mind, at an e-commerce company, forced us to produce a shitty mobile app, and then to pour more resources into it, because of how the average spending of users in-app was higher. I mean, no sh*t, these are people who are such fans of your brand that they want to download a whole dedicated app for shopping at your site. Of course they’re buying more. I have an app for stores I frequent a LOT, but would not see myself installing one for like, stores that I visit maybe once a year. But the causality was in the other direction.
Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?
#544Earlier quoted context omitted.
This, this and exactly this. Their finance team probably made a projection that if they can get X% of current mobile web users onto the app, they’ll be able to extract Y% more total revenue. They have no idea that they should split users into contributors and lurkers and even if they had, they have absolutely no idea how to model their value, so they don’t, the board sees the numbers and tells them ‘ASAP’ and that’s…
> They have no idea that they should split users into contributors and lurkers Comments like this amaze me. People really think these giant corps are out here not doing things like this.
Reddit is far from giant in terms of employees or revenue, and you'd be surprised at how many dumb decisions and how much money is wasted by startups that have raised hundreds of millions of dollars. You really shouldn't assume competence in situations like these, especially when Reddit has recently been making a bunch of terrible long term decisions to try and juice their numbers in the short term for IPO
Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?
#545Someone disrupt Reddit already... I'm sick of it sucking up all the forums on the internet into its eternal September matrix.
"Disrupt" is VC cringe-speak for toppling the current monopolist and inserting themselves into that position.
Reddit needs decoupling, not disrupting.
Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?
#546FWIW I mod a sub and was able to use the mobile site last night (around this post's time, a few hours after) to make the sub private.
Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?
#547Earlier quoted context omitted.
They do – there is a beta option in preferences that is unticked by default that lets you opt into experiments. However it seems to me they just kinda forgot about it? https://www.reddit.com/r/beta/wiki/index https://www.reddit.com/live/x3ckzbsj6myw/
I've subscribed to the beta experiments years ago, before the dark patterns started emerging and I was actually looking forward to any changes, and you're absolutely right, it is totally abandoned. The subreddit has just become a place for people to vent their frustrations and to be completely ignored by the admins.
Sometimes I like to imagine that I was the only one still using beta.reddit.com.
It was used during the redesign where they added thumbnails like 14 years ago, to allow people to see the new design before it got launched.
This was the birth of /r/beta
The subdomain is basically the same as old.reddit now, but I continued using the domain all this time for no reason.
The /r/beta subreddit was repurposed for beta testing, but has been abandoned for at least 8 years. I don’t know why they leave the subreddit active.
The subdomain I can only imagine was totally forgotten.
Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?
#548Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean the other way around. Sure, bully your users by default but let them opt out via a somewhat hidden setting. If they use the setting instead of installing the app you have your result.
It's still not quite what the experiment is designed to test. How many people who opt out when given the ability would stick around when not given the ability?
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Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?
#549Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean the other way around. Sure, bully your users by default but let them opt out via a somewhat hidden setting. If they use the setting instead of installing the app you have your result.
It's still not quite what the experiment is designed to test. How many people who opt out when given the ability would stick around when not given the ability?
If they make opting out difficult (ie. You go to a page in settings that you have to directly link to because you’re “signed out” in the main app) then that wouldn’t skew the results that significantly, while still providing an escape hatch that isn’t “wait for this to be finished”.
Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?
#550I'm the mod of a small subreddit [1] with a few thousand members. Today I've spun up a Discord server [2]. Personally I've had a guts full of the banners trying to force the Reddit mobile app down my throat. It sucks it's a shitty app. Just no. I don't like how Discord is a walled garden however it seems like Reddit too is also becoming a closed platform. I might as well go for the company that can actually build a g…
Good call - I'm sure the next private company won't eventually treat their users like garbage.
We’re web surfers; surfers move from wave to wave, they don’t expect to find the perfect wave frozen in time unmoving and never ending.