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Comment by jknoepfler | Hacker News Reader

I stopped using reddit when they put a "USE OUR MOBILE APP OR DIE" message that cannot be closed conveniently on their mobile page. There is no possible advantage that can accrue to me by giving them app-level access to my device rather than running in my browser, which I trust far more than I trust them. They are literally a dynamic, partitioned page-ranking system, why in the heck would I ever let that escape the browser's sandbox?

I'm (obviously) not the target market, but I absolutely detest disingenuous behaviour like this.

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Reddit's mobile site is designed to be a bad experience to such a degree that it's comical. I use it everyday and still get confused wrt to basic functionality like what to click. It's also suspiciously slow in a way that Reddit proper never is.

Their new mobile version is pretty bad.

I use their old mobile site and it's fast to load and easier to use. I hope they don't sunset it...

https://i.reddit.com/

I think that the regular Reddit site bypasses the API somehow, but the mobile site and app uses it, hence the slowness.

I very rarely load up reddit on mobile but did so this morning and noticed the exact same message and couldn't believe it. The selling feature they use for the mobile app on that message was that it was faster than the mobile site. I don't see why that needs to be the case - it seems the reason the mobile site is slow is because they force it to do client side rendering. Or at the very least, just that it's Javascript heavy. I'm not sure why reddit needs to be like that given the content.

I can't help but think to myself "it's faster because I don't have to erroneously click out or onto this obnoxious popup ad"

OT: but I feel the same about imgur. You can't use their mobile site to upload pictures anymore. You have to request the desktop site or install their app.

Yelp also. They put up bizarre barriers, like you can't view the 11th photo in a gallery without installing the app, can't read specific reviews, etc.

It has bred surprising resentment in me! I'm plotting a Yelp killer in the back of my mind now.

Yelp does all sorts of shady stuff.

I've been bypassing it by manually entering http://imgur.com/upload

The workaround I use is appending "/.compact" to the url, it shows the old mobile format. It still works fine for all pages/comments.

But yes, I find this highly annoying also.

If you're on iOS, you'd just move it from one sandbox to another.

Really? I don't know if Reddit has been AB testing, but they seem pretty reasonable to me with their app ads. It's always been easy to clear and stays cleared for a while for me.

They absolutely have been A/B testing it for a curiously long time. Sometimes it's dismissable, sometimes it's not. IIRC it's even more hassle if you aren't logged in.

I sort of believe that the push to mobile is to utilize technologies like GPS, and for tracking purposes / more information points. To get to know the [s]customer[/s] mark better than they know themself. Also, the ISPs may help this push since mobile data is more costly to the consumer than regular ethernet cable type data. wired > wifi

/takes off tinfoil hat

I don't know the reasons, but it is getting really annoying. I book a flight in Delta, from a browser on my laptop and it kept saying "Download our apps, it will be such a better experience!"

I do not want to have to download a different apps for each vendor, that's why we invented browsers. If the your browser experience sucks, fix it, don't push your mobile apps on people!

Well... why would I need them to "serve" me content. When I am supposed to subscribe to what I want?

For your and any other readers' benefit: On Android, you might try using the app "reddit is fun".

It requires no permissions and its style is delightfully basic and compact. It's my preferred way of redditing these days.

You can use the desktop/classic version from a mobile device.

Noticed as well a while back. It is super annoying but they got me anyway. I downloaded the app but use the browser still about 50% of the time.

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