Comment by iamthepieman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by iamthepieman | Hacker News Reader

I stopped using Quora when I kept getting interrupted to sign in/up when not logged in. I did the same for Pinterest. I had deleted and wiped my LinkedIn account for a long time but recently re-activated it for a job search. I'll delete it again when I land a job.

Reddit is getting there but not so annoying that I will stop using it. I get the most value out of Reddit but there are so many ways to get information and/or waste time that something else, digital or otherwise, will replace it.

I imagine people like me are a vanishingly small portion of users or potential users or the increased data/tracking from forcing accounts and logins is worth the lost users but it makes me sad.

But then I see counter examples like Youtube. You can browse all day long without logging in, click through to a video without getting prompted to login etc. Is it just different philosophies (hard to imagine given how much Google is reliant on data and ads) or is it different business practices?

Oh yeah. I really liked Quora in the beginning. There were some good answers to the questions there. Then it got worse, and when it started prompting me to login, I bailed and I've never gone to Quora ever again.

YouTube is pretty annoying when not logged it too. It constantly pops up a "you're signed out of YouTube" box that obscures part of the video until I close it. On every single video.

Maybe if viewing a single video of Anthony Hopkins (for example) didn't replace half of my feed with Anthony Hopkins videos, I might be more inclined to not open it in a private tab (logged out), but alas.

But hey, at least you can watch the video. That's more than I say for half the news and image sites out there anymore.

I think this is just a sign of a declining platform desperate to juice the stats. New signups falling? Just force everyone to log in to view content.

I keep a txt file with a list of the subreddits I’m interest in it. I delete all my posts and my account every few months and create a new one and join the subreddits in the file. If reddit required an email like discord, I would absolutely stop using it.

Reddit provides a way to streamline this for you - I use old.reddit.com so it might not be the same in the new UI so YMMV on the specifics.

While logged in, click the subreddits dropdown and click the "Edit Subscriptions" link, it takes you to https://www.reddit.com/subreddits/ - on the right side is "multireddit of your subscriptions" -- this is a URL string of all your subreddits, just save the URL. When you make a new account, click the URL again and subscribe to them on your new account.

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