Why do they care so much?
I really don’t want to use their app. I just wish they’d give up and let me use the browser in peace.
I'm never going to install it, and I have all but stopped reading it because these prompts are so obnoxious. That's probably +$ for Reddit though.
I don't understand why companies constantly do stuff that serves only _themselves_, and then expect users to engage with it because it exists. Users are able to identify when something is valuable to them. If you make it valuable they will use it. Consider the difference on an ecommerce site between a comment section vs a few company-picked "testimonials" above the fold. _Everyone_ knows the testimonials are garbage. Maybe your conversion goes up a tick the first time you put them on the site, but when a repeat viewer sees the same ones again they're going to roll their eyes and register you as untrustworthy. Whereas a (reasonably-managed, honest) comment section provides loads of information that's actually valuable to the consumer.
This is indeed a troubling trend, so many annoying popups, banners, and notifications only seem to serve to forcefully try and push a small percentage of users towards some feature. If adoption is poor, it's probably because it's not wanted. Of course, in some SaaS contexts, it makes a lot of sense to keep users informed of features that might be of benefit to them and they may have otherwise not discovered, but that's a completely different game from just shoving stuff down their throats.
It's free and opensource, available on f-droid or if you are so inclined google playstore.
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.quantumbadger.redreader/
The interface is a little clumsy, it is open source and verifiably not making unrequested connections to the Internet is amazing.
"Slide for Reddit" is also open source and has a lot more features
Which of course leaves me wondering how long it is before reddit pulls the plug on their API and forces people to use the busted mobile site or their app.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.ccrama.redd...
Of course. How will they do it? That's yet to be seen. Instead of pulling the API entirely, I'd bet they simply wont introduce API for new features. This will leave 3rd party apps as inferior while Reddit doesn't have to deal with the backlash of pulling the API entirely. I'd argue this is already occurring.
Links from any 3rd party service show up in the phone as the content i want to share.
Reddit? You try to send someone a Reddit video link and they get affronted by a pop up banner to download the mobile app when they click through. WTF!
I sent a reddit link to a video to my dad, once. He replied 'cant open it.' So f* off reddit. Allow rehosting or change your content policies. Stop making the internet worse.
A couple of weeks ago, someone was asking for the full video of what looked like a 10s clip (which also played just 10s). Someone else replied, that it was literally the post. He got downvoted to hell (like below 100). He was right. After checking his comment, I went to the video and by seeking I got it to show the whole 2m and something. This was not the first time this issue has appeared for me.
v.reddit.com is abysmal. I agree.
What's worse is that once it opens, that post is now permanently in your account's history. Reddit provides NO WAY to remove things from your account history.
In more recent times the authors compare two towns across the US-Mexico border: Nogales, AZ to to Nogales, Mexico. Even thought the language and ethnicity is mostly the same (95% Hispanic), with same climate and what not - Nogales in the United States has three times the GDP per capita of Nogales, Sonora. The difference is more inclusive economic and political institutions in the United States - while Mexico has suffered under one party rule for decades.
Yet now we suffer under two-party rule.
However, throughout our history, our two-party system has generally (with some notable exceptions) been able to work and work together. That's no longer the case. As such, it's hard to tell if the political polarization is a reflection of society, or if society is just adopting the polarization of our political elites.
So I stand by my original statement.
But I figured that HN is an educated audience, so no need to specify the few exceptions I had in mind.
BTW, 2008 and 2000 don’t even compare with 1828, or 2016. The election of 2016, and the (only partially merited) furor that has followed it will unquestionably stand out in US history, quite possibly as a prelude to our descent into another civil conflict.
And what’s rose-colored is making an oblique claim that our current political situation is nothing more than business as usual.
See, historically, when we spoke about parties, we really spoke about their respective establishments. The voters decided which one would be running the show at any given moment, but internal party politics were not readily accessible to the outsiders, and thus candidates and platforms were also vetted by the party establishment. Since establishment tends to be conservative by its very nature, this provided a screen against more extreme positions. To be clear: the politicians would still run on extreme positions, if they saw it as advantageous - but that didn't mean they'd govern accordingly if they won.
Then we got primaries. It's not that they didn't exist before - the first ones date back to before the Civil War. But they weren't anywhere near as common until the second half of the 20th century, and even then most were non-binding (and their results were often ignored when the "wrong" candidate won them).
And the primaries themselves changed over time, generally so as to broaden eligibility. In most other countries (where primaries are internal party matters), you have to actually be a member of the party in good standing in order to participate in that party's primary. The American system, where you merely need to register party affiliation in advance, is much more lax - and by now, even that formality is no longer necessary in many states.
So, voters now have a lot more influence over party politics. And this caused a nasty feedback loop, where agitprop that's thrown by the establishment at the voters, solely for the purpose of convincing them to vote one way or the other (appealing to emotions, especially fear and anger, since it's the most effective way), is regurgitated and injected into internal party matters and policies. So the party platform moves further away from the center, and its agitprop shifts accordingly, creating even more radicalized supporters, who again feed it back into the party etc.
Tea Party was a wake-up call in that sense, when a bunch of traditional Republican candidates lost to grassroots crazies who said mostly the same things, but who also sincerely believed in those things. Trump is also part of the same phenomenon - he might not be a sincere believer, but he appears as one to his followers. And there's some evidence of similar processes happening in the Democratic party. Slower, because its electorate is a broader coalition with more conflicting goals, and so the direction in which the voters move the party is less clearly defined. But you can see the internal radicalization spill out on some issues already, and there's more to come.
But don’t fool yourself that this kind of populism is only occuring on the right.
If you have people in 5 parties to vote for in your riding(district?), then first past the post is the only way it works easily! Seldom will one of those 5, get 50.1% of the vote!
And why would they? The most popular wins, the people have spoken.
Additionally, why do we need to have a single representative for any individual instead of say 10 people representing a larger district?
Why is that "the number"? Because it's more than 1/2? You're thinking "two parties".
If you're worried about "most people's support", then why isn't the number 80%? 99%? 100%? Why does '50.1%' make it 'OK' and less 'not'?
I don't get this arbitrary fixation on "but, that guy didn't get 50.1% of the vote!!". So?
Let's say there are 5 parties. One gets 40% of the vote. Yet if each party had equal votes, that would be 20% each. The party with 40% of the vote, received 2x the votes compared to the number of parties.
Is that OK? Why not?
I don't get what's wrong with a number less than 50%. I don't get why anything above 50% is fine.
Let's say you have 10 people, and 4 plans. Plans to defend the city from invasion. Each plan has its merits. You ask people to vote. 2 abstain. The next 2 receive two votes each. The last receives 4 votes.
4/10 is less than 50%, yes? Yet, clearly it is the most popular. Must the 2 abstainers vote? Must those that don't agree, be forced to vote for a plan they don't agree with?
How is this undemocratic? Were the people's voices heard? Was the most popular plan voted on?
I literally don't get it, or understand the issue.
The main reason FPTP ensures at most 2 parties is that, say you have parties 1, A, and B, where A and B are relatively similar to each other. And say A and B are together more populous than 1, like a 40/30/30 split.
By splitting those 60% mostly-similar votes between A and B, both lose to the less-popular 1. It becomes in A and B's best interest to not cannibalize each other's votes, i.e. merge and dominate (or at least compete). The less fragmented ideology wins, not the most desired.
It's even more compelling during the formation of new parties when there are only 2: by not voting for one of the two dominant ones, you are literally throwing your vote away because it has no chance, and it's worse for your ideology than if you had chosen the most-similar of the dominant party.
Canada uses FPTP, and yet there are five parties represented in the house of commons [0].
While it's true that two parties have the lion's share of seats (155 for the liberals, 121 for the conservatives), as there are 338 seats, the liberals can't just steamroll legislation unopposed; they have to get at least some approval from other parties.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Commons_of_Canada
But yes, Canada has soldiered on remarkably well in spite of it. USA used to be multi-party as well, the transition to 2-party takes time and there's nothing that truly guarantees it, just innately encourages. There are ways to slow it down / isolate sections... but the dominant parties can also whittle away at those over time.
For example, the Conservative Party of Canada:
- formed from a merger between Progressive Conservative Party - and the Canadian Alliance
Of which, the "Canadian Alliance" appeared entirely from grass roots.
It started with the Reform Party, where the PC party lost all but two seats, but the new "Reform" party obtained significant seats:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_Canadian_federal_election
Which then morphed into the Alliance Party:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Canadian_federal_election
Which then, after the merger, with what was left of the PCs, formed the minority:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Canadian_federal_election
And then formed the government:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Canadian_federal_election
It should be noted that the merger between the older PC party, and the reform/alliance party was with the Alliance party at massive strength, in the House of Commons with a respectable number of seats, and 100% in charge of the future of the merged party.
My point here is ; the willingness for people to embrace new parties, new ideas, and vote for people .. not parties, helps with real political renewal in Canada.
Further, while some provinces aren't, most are MORE dynamic than the federal level at party change. Take Quebec, which has had new parties appear and then even form governments, in a period of two election cycles.
FPTP does NOT mean 2 parties. At all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo&list=PLNCHVwtpeB...
For example, if you want them to do something about climate change you might vote for the Green party instead of Democrat. They won't win but your "stolen" vote might cause the Democrat party to lose. They don't want to lose so they might adopt policies from the Green party to attract you and all Green voters. That would be as good an outcome as multiple parties.
Canada has both Federal, and Provincial FPTP parliaments. On the Provincial level, new parties appear, and are elected , minority or majority, all the time. Constantly.
On the Federal level, things move more slowly. Yet new parties are appear, grow in popularity, and replace older parties.
Canada is not only a place of multiple parties, it is a place of constant party renewal.
And as a Canuck, I am all too familiar with vote splitting. We have party mergers. Parties that split and form new parties.
We know all about strategic voting, but because we have the concept of minority governments, and because we don't vote for who our Prime Minister is, the dynamic changes a bit.
FPTP isn't what causes two parties only, it is certain methods of government that do, mayhap combined with FPTP.
That is incorrect. In your scenario, you would be figuratively throwing your vote away.
The key word there is easily. Now that we have computers and instant communication we can do things that would be/used to be considered hard but give better outcomes.
I'll also point out you don't need a winning party in an election you just need to be able to form a government and there's no reason 2 closely aligned parties can't work together or even traditionally opposing parties.
#2? Canadian parties do this all of the time. We have parties from coalitions, and then form the government.
Worse yet, because most FPTP elections only require plurality for victory, you can have a party get less than 50% of the vote in each district (but more than any other party), and still take all the seats. In which case you literally have the minority running the country - so much for "people have spoken".
One party would only have internal competition.
What makes you believe that the author just "wrote basic observations and concluded they are the root cause of everything"? Most ideas are easy to dismiss when you assume that a blurb posted to HN is all there is to them.
Kinda like saying something must be done because it is "company policy"; passing the buck in the hope you don't question it, and realise company policy is also decided by the company.
It exists, because they decided it does.
There are other sites with similar features and layout to Reddit (Voat, Ruqqus, Saidit, Raddle, communities.win, etc.) but none are really in competition to be "the front page of the Internet". This is because Reddit has a huge community with varied interests which provides self-perpetuating advantages. For example: the activity level is generally higher; if you start a subreddit for a niche topic you have a chance at finding an audience; great comments/submissions will garner thousands of upvotes rather than a few dozen (smaller sites have a proportionately tinier vote ceiling, making it hard to differentiate between "good" and "amazing").
I can see increased retention/monetization maybe leading to a larger user-base in the short term, but if it makes good content less likely to crop up, or leads to less discerning users (ingenious effortposts lose out to low-effort pandering memes), or even if it just narrows the interests/hobbies represented on there, then over time it will destroy Reddit's main source of value.
Like old school reddit, people do say inflammatory things to get reactions but usually get downvoted. There are also good tools for muting people.
What finally made me quit was a post of a meme involving Kamala Harris in a non-political section which was one of the most upvoted things I'd seen on the site, yet the meme itself was childish and racist.
I dislike censorship, but if the initial source of people visiting a site which has these anti moderation policies are low quality, good luck climbing out of that hole. Smart people are attracted to smart people, so your initial userbase is paramount. This isn't a condemnation of all on ruqqus, but the majority are looking for a right wing echo chamber.
The site is nowhere near as bad as voat, but give it a little time, it'll get there.
If you want something to grow, you have to invest in it.
* EnoughTransgenderSpam: Transgender ideology makes no sense.
* SimpsInAction: Simp - A man who foolishly overvalues and defers to a woman, putting ...
* JustBeWhite: A place to discuss racial dynamics in the dating market.
* JewishQuestion: This community is dedicated to discussing and exposing Jewish control...
* SoyBoys
...looks like all the worst supremacy and hate channels from reddit.
This is fresh air?
For a site like reddit there is literally nothing they can't do with pure HTML/CSS/JavaScript.
Also, I like Firefox on mobile because you can block ads and install other extensions.
There are third-party apps. I have been using Sync (Android) for years, and it's bloody fantastic.
I wonder when they will cut third-party apps off.
Anything that helps you escape garbage companies run by garbage employees is good!
Probably because most users don’t really care and those that do make excuses like “what else am I going to use?” or “I can’t stop using reddit, how will I stay in the loop?” or any one of many other excuses. If you want reddit to change, stop using them. Entirely.
Actually, Reddit users are quiet educated. Source: https://social.techjunkie.com/demographics-reddit/
I strongly disagree with this. Users are just responding to dopamine sensors that have triggers that they don't understand. "Value" extracted can be detrimental to a person's well-being, even if they chose it for themselves. Gambling addicts at casinos, obese people at fast food restaurants, pay-to-win whales and the newest version of Candy Crush. Reddit is just a casino where you gamble with your time and win addicting emotions like novelty and outrage.
Using the same sense of value, Reddit's _app_ is not valuable to people relative to reddit-on-mobile which is why so many people in this thread agree with the claim.
There’s almost always a bit of political drama behind the decision too: Marketing gets to say that they’re acquiring new users in short term (thereby increasing their budget and clout in the Org) while destroying customer value in the long run
Your attention, retention and engagement is a lot easier to manage and increase through an app than it is through website.
I'd love to be proven wrong though; what websites see daily, recurring, long time active usage?
Also not to be underestimated is that a mobile app will always have better UX than a website. Think of the subtle things like page transitions. Navigating Reddit still causes full-page reloads, whereas on the app it's a much more organic process. Speed is also an important factor.
Part of that is definitely self-selection, but as some people already said, other notable effects are push notifications, mindshare, loss aversion (you're on somebody's device already, so they can just as well use it) and partly better performance.
So much about the users, but Monetization is much better as well, mostly due to mobile ad-IDs, which especially on iOS lets you extract double the revenue per user due to targeting. Ad blockers are harder to bypass.
In the end, a mobile app will get you anywhere between 2-10x the revenue per user you attracted to your property, so that's why Reddit is pushing so hard.
To stay in Reddit's lingo though:
`LPT: https://old.reddit.com`
It's what I like about HN.. It feels like they don't even care how much users 'engage'. I bet they don't even run a report on it. They just let us do our thing here and not worry about it. As a user this is a much nicer experience.
14. The Haunted House – Privacy on Google Street View (harpers.org)
8 points by b0b10101 1 hour ago | flag | hide | 1 comment
15. GiveCampus (YC S15) hiring Sr Engineers who care about education (lever.co)
1 hour ago | hide
15. is a job posting by a YC company. Perhaps you could classify it as an ad, but I see it as a perk that YC grants its own companies.
The job posting is certainly "sponsored content", a privileged post put there at the behest of a third party, which blends in fairly well with neighboring posts yet isn't subject to the normal rules. I don't know if money actually changes hands to put it there (maybe each YC company is granted a posting there, or maybe they have to pay for it), but in other respects it's straightforwardly an ad for a job.
All that said, I have no problem with it being there.
Ah, sorry, I misread what you said.
> A regular "Who Is Hiring?" thread appears on the first weekday of each month (or Jan 2). Most job ads are welcome there. Only an account called whoishiring is allowed to submit the thread itself. This prevents a race to post it first.
> Another kind of job ad is reserved for YC-funded startups. These appear on the front page, but are not stories: they have no vote arrows, points, or comments. They begin part-way down and fall steadily. Only one is on the front page at a time.
I'm not sure either of those qualify as ads in the sense we're talking about Reddit ads -- the first one doesn't bring in any revenue to HN (or cost "advertisers" any money); the second one seems like it's a perk for "graduating" YC and it's unclear whether it's something HN makes revenue from, either.
Could be the reason why web to app migration practices are followed. best of both worlds.
Do you really think that people would stop going to reddit if they used the site instead of the app on their mobile? (But, of course, the people more prone to recurring visits are more likely to install an app.)
> mobile app will always have better UX than a website
And again, it's reddit we are talking about here. The app experience is just horrible.
Nope. It’s just a message board. Sell contextual ads for the different subreddits, don’t bother tracking people, and be done with it. Of course that would likely require a significantly smaller workforce.
And no, email does not fit all the same use cases as notifications.
What we are starting to see is web push notifications becoming fully supported by browsers, and I think it's only a matter of time before iOS and Android start allowing app-like websites to notify users without them having to download a full-fledged app.
It would be interesting to see what this does for the iOS and Android development landscape. They're in a golden age now where every major property needs both a mobile site and a dedicated app on both platforms. But if the mobile site can handle more features that were previously the sole provenance of native apps, that seems likely to shift the landscape.
iOS still has no support, and nothing even on the horizon, as far as I know. Apple is intentionally holding back the open web. I find this infuriating.
Also, the new awesome privacy settings in Safari on the beta iOS and beta iPadOS and beta macOS Bug Sur are very much appreciated, at least by me.
It absolutely IS possible to add the feature, as opt-in like with app permissions, and e.g. with some user-initiated event like audio already does.
The REAL motivation here is money, forcing users to use the appstore, instead of the web which is an open protocol.
Nagging will always be good business, no matter what platform or what shape or form.
Please tell me the beta community is calling it that.
Aside from the shabby technological issues involved, the applications themselves these pseudo OS features are put to generally are opposed to some of the things I value highly: privacy and stability, for example. Most applications don't need a social component or to harass me to re-engage, to utilize hardware or other software services on my device, or even to export/share data with other applications.
As far as the technology itself: the platform is generally a terrible technology for even the dubious purposes it is usually put. It's clunky, and even with things like wasm the development story for the platform is, at best, terrible. Also, in my experience, the quality of development in the web sphere is generally (not always) poor compared to similarly complex projects in other areas/applications.
Also, Apple's stubborn insistence on lock-in (and lock-out) is really annoying if many of your contacts are not on Apple platforms.
There are clearly trade-offs, and there is a lot of valid criticism of the Web, but I'm really glad that the Web exists as a sort of operating system that guarantees some freedoms that native platforms are increasingly taking away from us (although not all of them are as paternalistic as Apple).
May I ask why?
Infuriating.
That said they badge the notifications icon in the header of the desktop web version as well–just now mine had 8 unread "Notifications", 7 of which were suggesting I congratulate acquaintances for work anniversaries or telling me about trending posts. Why can't that just be in the feed? Maybe because I don't actually ever scroll through the feed, because I don't care about the garbage people post on LinkedIn.
settings > username > notifications.
I left just the comment replies on and turned everything else off.
With the app, you can not only send notifications, but you also have the app icon which reminds people of the apps existence. Even little things like "badging" (when the app icon shows a dot or number to indicate new notifications) and even that can have a noticeable impact on retention (we're all programmed to click into anything with a notification).
Also, they can recommend better content for you. I don't know if this is still possible and whether reddit does it, but an app used to be able to get the list of other apps installed on the phone, and many companies used that as an input into their recommendation systems (along with your location, etc).
FWIW, retention is monetization.
- You can sell ads to them
- You can continue to sell ads to them
A proxy, if you will. For a for profit business, what other reason is there if not to drive some monetary value.
I, for one, would love to see support for push on mobile web on iOS. But I’m not holding my breath.
This is exactly why I don't want to install the app. All of these things seem designed to steal my attention and direct it towards stuff others want me to focus on rather than what I want to focus on.
While having a mobile App store is probably a net good, in a lot of ways I wish Steve Jobs' initial vision of having the iPhone run WebApps and just improving the OS level support for improved hooks and functionality with actual websites was the way the world went.
The apps would never have gotten as good and stuff like Uber might never have happened. But it also would have kept Facebook and Reddit and all these other sites focused on making you visit because you want to visit rather than because you're being skinner boxed and nudged into visiting by overbearing tracking technologies.
Also the chat feature is extremely watered down and doesn't even have support for attaching images. But that doesn't matter if someone on Reddit chooses to contact you via chat and you want to respond. It compels you to use their platforms instead of a third-party client.
Users who have the app are anyways likely to be the ones who use Reddit more so naturally it has much higher engagement than on a browser.
So that needs to get fixed, and then this problem might go away naturally
This was pre-redesign and it became clear what they were doing and their roadmap of features all were to grow the ad business. Mobile makes sense as it's how their key audiences consume content and it enables stronger profiling, richer engagement and better ad-targeting due to persistance.
The mobile app allows reddit to mine user behavior (every outbound link click is tracked, even on the desktop website) and then they're able to link your device profile, to content you consume and engage with. This can be used for ad-targeting or sold to other data brokers to build a richer profile about ABC user with this device, across XY IPs, typically based in ZZZ location.
A guy I know worked for a PC manufacturer years ago. The offered a windows version of a machine, and folks asked why they didn't offer a linux version.
A linux version would cost more money, because they made a non-trivial amount of money by loading up the PC with shovelware.
I've seen this countless times at companies. The decision makers do not want to greenlight projects that do not make money, or worse that cost them money.
So I think if you follow the money you'll find a mobile app makes them more money.
I’m not pissed off about this: It’s like dropping in on a bar I used to enjoy a decade ago, to find out it has been redesigned a few times and everyone’s a new face.
Sometimes, that’s a really cool experience: “Say, this is neat.” Sometimes, not. But times must change, and we either change with them, or get left behind.
I am not going to change and become an engagement addict, clicking on shiny baubles out of boredom. So in reddit’s case, I am a part of its past, not its present, and I must accept being left behind in its wake.
That is honestly the best analogy I have heard to describe my feelings towards the site. It's still reddit... sort of, but its not my reddit. I joined during the digg exodus and I don't know if it's because I was younger or what, but for a while reddit seemed like that go-to bar: always warm, inviting, and socially enriching.
For a few months of gold...
I'm just waiting for the day that Reddit decides to lock down their API enough to hurt all third party apps and force people onto theirs.
Free version https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.laurenceda...
One time payment version to remove ads https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.laurenceda...
As a web designer/developer, this approach offends me. At the risk of sounding like I'm taking this more seriously than I should, I believe that good design is founded on respecting ones' users. Reddit throwing what's essentially an ad in my face every time I try to use their site is bad design because it is disrespectful to me, the user.
Maybe their app is a better experience; there are more respectful ways of highlighting it. As immature as this sounds, not using the app is almost a matter of principle for me at this point, because I don't believe in rewarding disrespectful design.
Edit: And the only way to sway those nagging boxes away is to have a code of conduct, which is how appstores can impose a no-nagging experience.
My current anti-crap shield is a patchwork of various plugins/utilities, most of which only work on my desktop: a plugin to turn JavaScript off (this alone eliminates about 90% of the nonsense, while preserving most of the valuable content); a bookmarklet that hides fixed-position elements (wipes out a lot of the popups/reminders); and a plugin that lets me edit a site's CSS so I can manually remove the junk that the first two methods don't. (Using adblockers and readability plugins goes without saying.) A browser with all of those baked into it—especially, say, something like smart popup removal—would be something I'd be willing to pay for.
I don't believe the web is headed for death; not yet, anyway. There are certainly trends that are deeply troubling, but for most of us, building a website is still far more feasible than building an app.
So far we can filter out some ads because for sites it's just cheaper to use off-the-shelf solutions from ad networks, which are the same for everyone, and to preserve accessibility via HTML. Enter heavy randomization or the canvas, and filters won't work. Look at Yandex: it took the fight with adblockers seriously, so uBlock's lists finally gave up—it just was no use.
If you try to use customization via CSS, on some modern sites the crazy mess of divs with cryptic classes already makes no sense and doesn't lend itself to CSS selectors.
Unfortunately, Firefox for iOS is built on Webkit, so there are no plugins for it, so this approach doesn't work on my iPad.
Here are some readers.
0] https://github.com/GetStream/Winds
1] https://github.com/FreshRSS/FreshRSS
2] https://github.com/feedbin/feedbin
3] https://github.com/yang991178/fluent-reader
If you like something closed source, try feedly.
Reddit provides rss for now. For sources that don't, you can use rss.app or similar.
https://www.reddit.com/wiki/rss
One more useful thing some readers provide is an email address that you can use for subscribing to newsletters.
Self plug - you can try my app Plenary on Android (no ads/trackers) - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spians.ple... that has Reddit as one of the RSS Assistant option. It basically creates RSS feed for subreddits, users, search terms etc for you.
It’s also surprising that even on HN, a place where many people write software for a living, people are avoidant of advertising paid features.
Sorry I didn't find any dark patterns here. If you can elaborate more on this, that would be really helpful.
> It’s also surprising that even on HN, a place where many people write software for a living, people are avoidant of advertising paid features.
Exactly! A lot of users want privacy focused - no ads apps. But many of them are hesitant to pay for it. For them, all apps should be FOSS (that means relying on good will of the developer that he will have motivation to maintain the app regularly or relying on some bug foundations) and no dev should generate revenue from their apps.
I don't think you were being malicious, but it would of been useful to know up front that those RSS features cost money is all. Otherwise I see nothing wrong in your initial comment.
But I am not opposed at all to pay for apps that include the source (and build instructions). I don't mind if it's licensed accordingly to prevent me redistributing it (which would undermine sales). I frequently buy apps like that.
More times than I can count I have bought an app that was later either abandoned when it stopped making money, or got an unwanted UI overhaul that wrecked it, or removed an obscure feature I depended on, etc. I will happily pay for software, but if it's not software I could potentially maintain myself then the amount of money I'm willing to spend goes way down and I'm a lot more hesitant to make the initial purchase.
It's not about money, it's about freedom.
As opposed to paying for it which guarantees you'll get the service you want - except it doesn't. At least FLOSS would give you and others the opportunity to fix bugs /maintain the app themselves.
> But many of them are hesitant to pay for it
Depends what it is. There's a difference paying for a non free app, and tipping for a free app.
Notable features: * Links to the content rather than the comments * Embeds a summary of the content * Supports images, gifs and videos * Extra query params (nsfw block, up vote limits) * Open source https://github.com/trashhalo/reddit-rss
https://www.reddit.com/r/rss/comments/fvg3ed/i_built_a_bette...
https://www.reddit.com/r/rss/comments/galitc/my_improved_red...
Been using it daily since Google googled its Reader.
Yes there are always ways to improve, but some people working there are expert on this specific topic, if the topic is important for the company they probably already do what is the best
Having worked at many companies, I find that statement very bizarrely naive. I don't understand how anyone with any real world experience could possibly actually believe what you said.
I think you grossly overestimate the intelligence, creativity, and willingness to optimize of most FT employees.
Yeah, so companies aren't led by super humans. They make stupid decisions all the time.
I believe this is why cookie warnings have suddenly skyrocketed, and why Google Recaptcha treats us all as robots suddenly. It means that the form of 'intermittent' tracking you describe will only work for everyday Reddit visitors, not for those sufficiently occasional to see their cookies purged.
Reading that I realized I would not expect to be happy to look like a robot (to another robot I might add) on the internet just 5 years ago.
You don't need to track users forever on end to only show messages a small percentage of the time. Just showing it sometimes on a new visit is good enough to not be annoying. Even better if you wait for a few site interactions before even considering displaying the message. Also, don't show messages more than once for users who have logged in.
This is not a difficult problem to solve. Companies just refuse to understand that no-means-no.
We have to assume that smart people are working at Reddit, that they have tested the living crap out of this model, and have found it to be optimal.
Debatable.
My guess would be it's meant to annoy you into submission.
No reason to believe that this is not considered to be optimal by the company.
I wish more people in HN thought this way. Perhaps it's there because it's working and getting better engagement is the way to go.
> Reddit may go public by 2020, said CEO and co-founder Steve Huffman during a keynote conversation at the Internet Association’s Virtuous Circle Summit on Monday. “The time frame is pretty far out,” he admitted. However, he also argued that going public was inevitable for Reddit to both reward employees and investors, calling it “the only responsible choice” for the company.
[1] https://variety.com/2017/digital/news/reddit-ipo-1202613811/
I imagine Reddit's website gets tons of traffic from "non users" coming in on shares and searches who will never consider installing a Reddit app no matter how many modals they put up but nevertheless driving ad impressions.
A product that is entirely based on user generated content is exactly the type of thing that requires active rather than passive users.
Mobile websites are generally optimized for passive consumption, and mobile apps – for active creation.
They're barely a link aggregator anymore, they try to self-host as much content as possible. Images, videos, they even attempted to make user-pages à la Facebook (no idea if this caught on). They're competing with Facebook and Instagram, not Hacker News.
On paper that's not necessarily bad, but they don't hesitate to make the user experience worse to achieve this. If you want to link a video hosted on reddit, there's no straightforward way to only link the video and not the full reddit thread. Here's a random example from the frontpage:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Whatcouldgowrong/comments/ici161/wc...
No way to share just the video, you have to share the garbage comments as well. Of course many video sharing sites are the same, but Reddit was supposed to be a link aggregator at first, not Youtube-but-worse. They've added a photo gallery feature lately with the same limitation: you can't just link the gallery, you have to link the full comment page. I suspect that they did that specifically because they couldn't really prevent people to share the URL to the image directly since that's a standard feature of the web, so by adding galleries they can "lock in" the content. At least they don't do referrer checks, I suppose... Well, not yet.
And yeah, as you point out, the mobile experience on a browser is atrocious. Especially if like me you're only a lurker: if you're not logged in you can't even browse a subreddit, it forces you to install the app (or alternatively, you can go to i.reddit.com that still works and is much faster to boot).
Vanilla Reddit is effectively becoming less pleasant to use that those shady streaming websites that change their domain names every month to evade copyright enforcement. At least those website usually manage to stream SD video reliably.
Basically Reddit tries to become Instagram for people who think they're too cool for Instagram, and it shows.
Or a different client (Reddit hasn't gone full Twitter yet), or enable Request Desktop Site.
I usually don't like to rag on bad but highlight good, but in reddit's video player they are obviously doing too much tracking in it or it was rushed because it is not responsive many times even on a fast connection on a massive desktop machine. It is hard to seek, hard to play/stop/pause, half the time half way through it goes to down version that is compression glitched and blurry, on and on.
If so much of the site is video, why not make that the slickest player of all time? Youtube has always known how to do this. Streaming services do as well. Open source tools are better than this. What is going on reddit with the video player? It probably has lots to do with tracking, cost savings and more but it is unwieldy right now.
Works great for Twitch-length stuff. For a 10 second gif-equivalent, you don't get enough scale up time.
I also think they shouldn't even attempt to stream video under a certain bitrate, I'd sooner have a video buffer for 10s than end up with something that's unwatchable because the resolution is like 10x10.
And I'm barely exaggerating, I don't have an amazing connection but I can stream Netflix and Amazon Prime in 720p without any issue, yet I just got this on Reddit:
https://svkt.org/~simias/up/20200819-142013_redditvideo.jpg
This is not upscaled or anything, that's literally what I saw on my screen as the video was playing.
It's just half-assed, there's no other explanation really.
Many uploads on reddit are also repeated re-uploads of compressed and then recompressed ad nauseum videos and stolen content, so I wouldn't be surprised if a fairly significant amount of the uploads started at 360p or less, downloaded from a phone.
> I also think they shouldn't even attempt to stream video under a certain bitrate
You are not the target demographic; the target are mostly on phones, where rapid start and 360p is not a huge deal. You don't get 1080p or 720p from snapchat or instagram. In super blunt terms reddit would rather not want you, they'd much rather have someone with the app downloaded, all tracking on, with push notifications on and the impossibility of ad blocking.
In your example, the video thumbnail implies that this is a recording OF a recording - this is someone that has already uploaded a compressed version to Twitter, where it has been further compressed, and then recorded and cropped on presumably a phone screen, then uploaded to reddit.
If I google the text, the first reddit results are all natively in 240p uploaded original.
I activated throttling in Firefox, setting it to "Regular 3G". I went to Youtube, selected a random video I had never watched before (so no cache): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mMIOhoUcCM
It loaded for about 10 seconds then started playing at 480p. Quality was fine, it's SD but sharp. Once it started playing it wouldn't buffer anymore: https://svkt.org/~simias/up/20200819-153915_youtube.jpg
Then I went on Reddit, same settings, this page: https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/ib6gmu/i_pretended_t...
Reddit ends up playing in 96p apparently (judging by the file name, DASH_96, altough maybe it's misleading). It looks like this: https://svkt.org/~simias/up/20200819-153748_redditvideo.jpg
Note that in the "optimal" version of the video the text on top is perfectly sharp.
So you can spin that any way you like, doesn't change the fact that Youtube performs vastly better in the same degraded conditions. But maybe the target demographics are people who have a fetish for ultra blurry video?
They have two completely different use cases - reddit is garbage that you infinite scroll through on a mobile phone, YouTube is content you watch. YouTube also generally has higher/better uploaded source videos, while reddit is a mess of reuploaded deep fried memes.
The use case for this, scrolling and keeping attention and continually pushing new content in, loading for 10 seconds is a death knell and entirely unacceptable.
Having to watch a pulsating loading icon while it's fetching a few KiB of plain text comments is frankly shameful, especially for a website that's mostly about comments in the first place (I know there weren't comments on Reddit at the very start, but I can't imagine that it would've reached that level of popularity without them).
I think it's a case of poorly aligned incentives, they clearly only want to funnel everybody to the mobile app. The website being an unusable lagfest might be a feature, or at the very least there's probably not a lot of effort put into improving it.
Honestly, I thank them for that and I hope they don't remove it.
I like to think of myself as an adult with agency and yet I log into HN on reflex probably over 100 times a day...
https://edavis.github.io/hnrss/
Check no proc option too.
You’ll thank me when you won’t get piles ;)
Is there evidence that lingering on the loo in a relaxed state causes problems?
Also, these concerns can be mitigated with a a squatty-potty [1] or a small footstool to get you into the proper position. We've lost the flexibility for that in Western Culture [2]
[1] https://www.squattypotty.com/
[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/03/can-you-d...
It's easily circumvented by replacing "www" with "old" in the URL, however, quite irritating nonetheless.
(Firefox mobile, not in desktop mode if it matters).
Previously discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21780092
Now they just look 100% like regular posts, and it feels more and more shady.
I must somehow be immune to the charms. I find it intentionally, aggressively irritating.
I used to lose hours there, but now don't browse around at all anymore. Follow a link in, find what I'm looking for, and dismiss the junk-pit.
Simply uninstalling the app did the trick. In the beginning I would open the mobile browser out of compulsion, but the UI was so revolting that it’s essentially cured my addiction.
I also hate the mobile UI, I think this will work.
One handy tip: Reddit I find, is still one of the best sources of user submitted content for niche hobbies, traveling, consumer advice, etc. So I use Google’s cached search results for those instances where I want to take advantage of Reddit’s information, but don’t want to actually go to the site.
That blocker / screen time app (MacOS only) worked for me. Also having trusted person set the screen time password on iOS is an approach I've heard people using.
Either way, it’s turned me off as well, and I thank them for it because I got a lot of free time back.
I knew what problems my tomatoes were having the moment it started. I learned about blueberries needing something stronger than coffee.(and more)
I learned what microcontrollers are popular in the enterprise world by lurking.
I got some extremely useful information in a table form which was impossible to find in a Google search.
I suppose I just need to stop browsing the popular feed and it would always be useful.
Pick a subject you're very familiar with the nuances of and start sorting comments by best, go straight to the bottom and among the low quality junk you'll find that there are tons of valid and well informed opinions that get rejected because they required more nuanced thought to understand than a bunch of amateurs who just googled it could muster or wasn't 100% compatible with the ideology of the group at large.
The net effect is that you get "if you just Googled it yourself" quality answers (pretty much every "open to the internet riff raff at large" platform has this problem to an extent) but sent though a filter that removes a substantial fraction of the opinions from people who actually know what they're talking about. Frankly the chans are better in this regard because the only mechanism for disagreement is to reply and the content of replies makes the nature of agreement/disagreement pretty obvious.
As bad as HN is about rejecting anything that doesn't fit it's narrow ideology about how the world works it at least usually doesn't reject things if they're technically correct. The same cannot be said for Reddit.
If you want professional advice you need to go somewhere with some sort of permanence and a higher bar to entry (i.e. the people who wind up there have actually care enough about the subject that they sought the place out), traditionally forums fill this role.
Half of what I search for nowadays has a "reddit" version tacked on the end in googles auto complete. That is, people are deliberately searching for results to questions explicitly from reddit and it's popular enough that it's surfacing in googles autocomplete.
The only other site that gets that kind of treatment is stackoverflow.
Compared to opening 2-3 reddit threads you get 20-30 opinions all without filler and get to then form your meta opinion on that. Its absolutely magic!
Perhaps it is because I autopay $5/month to Reddit? It could also be the newer version of Safari in the beta iOS and beta iPadOS?
I'm having hard time understanding how someone manages to write such horrid piece of software, and how it keeps on being used on one of the most popular websites in the world.
Reddit’s risk here is that there’s very little value to their back catalogue, since most users use it as a stream of new and novel things. So the only thing protecting reddit is that it’s still the main place people go to post funny videos and similar, which is much easier to move than their back catalog. The fact that video playback basically doesn’t work is a serious problem here.
But the real reason is tracking and spamming you with notifications to get "engagement".
So maybe that’s why they want you in the app? They know their website is terrible?
Open source and neat design
Loads lightning fast, can load thousands of comments on a page without loading bars or context switch. Don't even care if I have to pan and zoom it still works better than the mobile app.
Starting to feel like the idea of a mobile app being a universally better experience is a software industry mass hallucination. A handful of things apps work way better, modern banking comes to mind but sites styled like reddit and HN are just better in a browser with desktop view and high information density.
My eyesight’s not great. If I can’t pan&scan your content (or continuously vary text size to suit my needs in the moment), you wont have me as a user. Very few native apps on mobile work this way, so I don’t use most of them.
I warmly recommend that one. Except that since the latest firefox mobile release it hasn't yet been ported. But given that it does exist on the desktop version, I guess it's only a matter of time until it reappears for mobile firefox as well.
Fair warning that you still get kicked into the new mobile version when selecting some content links.
For mobile usage I use the third party app, Apollo[1], highly recommended.
For desktop I use a couple of third party extensions to improve the experience & normalize the UI, Old Reddit Redirect [2], RES [3]. I then disable subreddit css and enable dark mode. Any subreddit I visit looks exactly the same as any other, it really allows you to focus on reading content.
- https://apolloapp.io/ [1]
- https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/old-reddit-redirec... [2]
- https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/reddit-enhancement... [3]
My two go-to solutions are: 1. Use old.reddit.com/ 2. Stop using reddit
I will never download the app just because they do this.
They're not forcing you to use the app. Did you try logging in?
Noticed Twitter switching to the same pattern too, show 1-4 replies then just some random unrelated algorithm posts from elsewhere.
And they get lucky with people continuing to contribute to their horrible platform for the same reason.
This includes stuff like hiding comment threads and only showing one or two comments by people you follow on LinkedIn, or features like "canned comments" ("Congratulations, John Doe!"). I don't know why websites stopped respecting their users' agency, but my pet hypothesis is that some product team is being measured on some sort of superficial "user engagement" KPI and ended up optimizing for meaningless reactions instead of actual discussions....
You're seeing the latter two happening with reddit, probably other sites like tik tok.
When does it ever make sense to hide thread comments?
HN is a great example of how playing to the strengths of web results in a great user experience (possibly the best of any forum type site). Unfortunately it might also be damn near the only example.
Don't get me wrong, I love simplicity like hacker news does. But reddit's old theme just rubs me the wrong way.
It falls apart a bit on phones, unfortunately.
I absolutely hate that. If you still have a Reddit account, it can be turned off in settings. Otherwise, add this to your adblocker:
b.thumbs.redditmedia.com/*.cssIt’s admittedly a little clunky on mobile, but still preferable to “install app!”
Marketing is extremely pleased with the accuracy of the new metrics and analytics, even if the numbers are going down. Large ad-driven companies seem to prefer accuracy of tracking to user comfort
Honestly, I hate how in 2020, every single social media service tries this hard to manipulate its users into spending more time with them. It's nothing but pathetic at this point.
They show that algorithmic stuff to increase engagement. Of course, if they show related content so close by, people are going to check it out more often. You can’t really argue against that.
What they could do is have a paid tier. Instead of paying with engagement, you’d pay money to have the better UI. But they don’t want to provide that option at all.
Funny you should say that, they do https://old.reddit.com/premium and an in app currency too https://old.reddit.com/coins for some reason.
You wouldn't have noticed any of this if you're an old.reddit holdout though.
The "top" comment always seemed to be referencing some discussion or context I didn't have, and I thought there was always an inside joke I simply didn't understand...
Open source too
Webpage[1] and AppStore[2] link to save you guys time, since AppStore search is horribly broken.
[1] https://apolloapp.io/ [2] https://apps.apple.com/app/id979274575
It's working as intended.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-advertising/apple-c...
By visiting the website, you're the one pulling, wanting to visit and viewing the content or messages on your time. By installing the app, any message or update is pushed to you instantly, pulling you to the website, making it less your decision to visit, but being pulled in. A Medusa-like call that's hard for many to resist.
Reddit are not unique in this. Even updated 'XXX sent you a new DM' from Twitter via email for example.
Anyway, I'm shot of Reddit. Their recent purge shut down a lot of subs that for many were mutual support groups caught in the cross-fire of admins vs. sophisticated trolls using them as flare-scatter to escape themselves.
And agree on one person show / bootstrap vs bloated VC money.
When I click on a link in an app, I have no clue what is about to happen. It could open my web browser, it could open some shitty in-app browser or it could show content in the app.
Also, having apps installed means I have to deal with the absolutely horrendous UX of being on the web, clicking a link and then having the app version of YouTube/Zillow/whatever forcefully opened instead of normal navigation.
So, I uninstalled all of those. I hope Apple gives me a setting to turn that fucking piece of shit feature off someday.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rubenmayay...
Now, I really wish Twitter would let me pay a monthly fee for no advertisements.
Maybe I should root for it, for all the time I'd get back not using Reddit though.
For years they’ve had an extremely hostile user experience on their mobile site — you scroll half way through a long answer, and get interrupted with a modal prompting you to finish reading it in the app.
But the modal cannot be dismissed — there is no way to close it. You can’t scroll the page, it persists on reload... rendering the site utterly unusable.
But despite having similar goals and a willingness to experiment with behavioural patterns, they ended up with incredibly different experiences.
There's probably a core group of users there, but I can only imagine it's a stagnant pool now.
- Make more money than last quarter
- Having more user engaged than last quarter
Having user engaged is much easier when you have the app installed, as they can send you push notification. As a result of that, the number of users on the mobile web version is probably very low, so they don't put a lot of effort on the product and would probably love to deprecate it.
They also probably don't make the effort to optimize the monetization of those users, as they are so few, so they push them to use the app.
And above all HN users are probably not the ones who click the most on ads, so they don't care if you use reddit or not as you will not bring them any revenue.
I use
2) https://github.com/Docile-Alligator/Infinity-For-Reddit
I don't use neither the official bloated site nor official Android app. They are way much animated, bloated,slow.
I think that current focus of reddit is to become social media. Earlier days,reddit was focused on creating better forum,discussion platform. There is gradual change in focus ,i guess.
Theres a few people talking about the "unbundling of reddit" that's going on at the moment. I forget where I read it but basically some larger communities are starting to break off again into their own platforms.
Beyond that, Discord is not really the same thing as Reddit. It's true that reddit tried to compete with Discord by offering their own chat service when they realized that many communities also had a Discord server, but they don't really offer the same service.
Discord is IRC, reddit is BBS/usenet/PHPBB.
First their website redesign makes the whole thing slow and unusable, then they start making the app get invasive and abusive.
All in the name of "engagement".
Dear Reddit, (and the likes),
You are a service company. You provide me a service. You are not an authority, or a thought leader, or anyone who's opinion I for some reason automatically respect or am interested in. You simply make it easier for me and users like me, to aggregate information and to share data, in a format that we like. You did not create that format out of thin air and you do not own it. It is we, the users that told you that this is the format we wanted to use, by going to your website and not competitors. You A/B-tested it from us. This does not give you any authority or right to pretend like you know what is better for us. You are simply a utility provider. Start acting like one. I do not care about your opinion about anything, let alone how I should use your site, what I should read, what I should buy or not. I just want a service, the aggregation of information. The utility of it. I don't care about how you make money (none of the users really do, let's be honest). If you stop giving the utility, I will go somewhere else. If you can try to provide this utility and also making money in the process - good for you. If you ask me to pay for your service, a fair (!) price, I will gladly do, like I do for any utility like electricity, clean streets etc.
The more shenanigans like this you pull, the faster the decentralized versions of those utilities (a useful forum for quick information, in your case) will come up and eat up into your revenue.
It's absolutely garbage for comment-heavy subs, but the vast majority of reddit users doesn't visit those.
They care so much because as you browse links out to other content, they can keep you in the app using the embedded browser. And when you read that content and share it, you share reddit links, not the source links.
I'm sure time in app blows away time on site for mobile users.
Seeing how popular the old interface is, they provided an option in the settings to keep using the old interface. A few months ago they decided to not honor that setting on mobile. So now many links on the site are broken and I have to go to old.reddit.com to get around it. Took me a while but now Safari autoprompts and fills it, so not an issue. However I can see a day where they will fully abandon the old interface and that is when I stop using reddit.
rif is fun is pretty good imo.
Free version (ads): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.andrewshu....
Paid version (no ads): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.andrewshu....
you can still use the old ui via old.reddit.com
i have no use for anything they introduced in the current ui
Meaning collecting data even if the app is not opened? I would suspect so.
But nothing can defeat first party tracking you get with the app.
Reddit, quora, yelp, facebook on the other hand are Plagued with dark patterns that give a middle finger to the user.
It makes me wonder the kind of shit we build in the name of “user experience”. What is wrong with our industry?
Capital providers that want a return (or at least not a loss) on their investment. More engagement + more users = decent source of ad revenue.
How many Usenet poseurs give them the thumbs up?
That don't pay the bills.
If at all you wish to have a smoother experience and no notifications though, I suggest Relay for Reddit on Android.
Long term: to turn it into a chat app and somehow cash out.
You think they're making big money off of Reddit Gold?
Twitter's (great) PWA is a notable exception.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.laurenceda...
It's a lot nicer than mobile sites or offical app.
There are annoying quirks like some links in comments and wiki/sidebar can take you to new reddit site and it is harder to solve this on FF mobile. But I strongly prefer that over whatever abomination their new design is.
Even leaving aside the UI aspects, the annoying thing about their new site is, it progressively keeps turning bad, earlier it was just that ugly banner for app install or the collapsed comments, or the new page redirection. But now for some reason a lot of communities fail to open in the new design. I don't know why Reddit hates the web so much, they can very well show the ads there as well.
As an added bonus, it should be easy to teach the engine to "see" all the monkeyboxes and eliminate them while at the same time giving no clue to the upstream server that AI was involved in improving the human user's experience.
As a test, I switched to Bing. Problem went away. I'm assuming there's some way to disable Amp on Google as well for my account, but I haven't gone any further in researching this.
[1] https://hermit.chimbori.com/ [2] https://hermit.chimbori.com/early-access
A lot of it is that they want to violate your privacy, particularly track where your body is. There are some legit uses: McDonald's can put your burger on the grill when you approach the 'restaurant', if you want to snipe an Uber driver you'll need to have somebody be bait for the trap unless you can figure out how to spoof your location...
It's like removing a giant time sink that was not adding any value to my life.
I can speculate a bit but let's look at the product from a VC POV. The key metric for all I know they are tracking is "engagement - a.k.a amount of time spent on site which is a proxy for number of ads viewed/clicked etc". This has a few implications :
1. A mobile site (e.g. on mobile Safari) can't entice a user to view articles when Reddit wants them to. In other words, "I" open reddit when "I" want to.
2. I haven't accessed mobile site in a while but (hopefully) it won't have infinite scrolling which means I tire quickly of clicking "Next" and leave the site. An app removes this possibility
3. As alluded in #1, an app can have all sorts of notifications which entice me to access reddit a lot more and can possibly track a lot more than a browser will allow. This is valuable for Reddit in terms of "targeting ads" and hopefully makes the mobile users more valuable than us plebes.
Thank you reddit for pushing the app so much. I hate it and will not install it.
I really don't want to have to install a separate app for every website that I visit. These sites should just cut it out. You can ask me once, or maybe once a year or something, but don't keep bugging me every day.
Ads is a good reason too. In my past workspace, we spent a crazy amount of money on facebook ads and got 80% of traffic from their mobile app.
Reddit is trying to follow the same too.
I think people make too many definitive statements and bad assumptions based on what they can measure. Leaving off understanding gaps where data doesn’t exist or never will.
My guess based on experience in this area in other companies is that app users will report a better experience, stay much longer, and return more often.
The difference is high enough that converting one user will more than cover the CLV losses of all the other users who are driven away by the popup.
The reddit marketing team will be trying to maximise CLV and A/B testing tonnes of different ways to do this.
For reddit CLV is based on ads and premium subscriptions/reddit gold, and these figures for mobile app users will be based on a number of factors including data mining, ability to send push notifications to device, control over the ad experience, avoidance of ad blockers, likelihood of returning to reddit, posting frequency etc. Using the website, especially on mobile, will make a lot of those metrics fall off a cliff when looking at CLV, and I wouldn't be surprised if an app user has a 20x or 30x CLV than a mobile web user.
Businesses that rely on advertising revenue will always seek optimal channels for peoples attention. The mobile app gives them two very import things:
1. Push notifications. Push notifications give companies the ability to advertise to you without you even visiting their website. Also, it allows them to piggyback on the Pavlovian response that has been conditioned in your brain by smart phone companies. Essentially this allows them to "mainline" their product into your brain. Just woke up? McDonalds breakfast PN. End of a long day of work? PN from reddit to remind you to binge their content for your entire evening.
2. People can't run adblock on mobile applications. Even if that only accounts for 10% of it's users, it's still a huge increase in ad revenue.
They turned Time Inc into a spammy content factory - did huge deals with Taboola/Outbrain, along with creating stuff like a short FB video show about brunch foods. Came over to Reddit and keeps spouting off these huge proclamations about billions of users. They came over right after the huge raise so it's clear that the clear mandate is to commercialize at every possibly touchpoint.
As part of this they have also other things that they do that I think are downright dishonest, for example, when you land on a subreddit and are asked to log in or use the app, the top bar logo link no longer leads to homepage but to /register. For me that's why shady and made me immediately leave the site but it's still there which suggests that it works on a significant part of the userbase. Again, I'd really be interested in seeing their data.
Randomly locking subreddits for mobile users saying: "Sorry mobile browser user, but, /r/xyz is only available on your device through the mobile app." is just infuriating.
Tangential annoyance: the youtube app attempting to have me sign up for some premium service _every time_ i use the app is frustrating.
It's probably not that they "care so much", it's that they simply don't care. The random people who occasionally navigate to a Reddit thread from a web search, but otherwise don't engage with Reddit in any consistent way, are basically just white noise to them. It's a demographic that represents such as small and unreliable source of revenue that it's just not worth thinking much about from a business perspective.
One certainly wouldn't want to risk reducing the conversion rate among people whose attention is easier to capture, just to mildly appease the never-downloaders.
But Reddit is one of the worst. I wouldn't ever visit the site if it didn't rank so high on search results. I've noticed the frontend has gotten worse and worse every time I look at it. Ever since they changed to a React type frontend, at least 5% of the time the comments won't even load. It just doesn't work. Reddit really is a cautionary tale of attacking your users. I expect it to follow in Mozilla's footsteps as another company that makes no money but pretends it's a unicorn.
But whenever I find myself filling my time by scrolling through popular subs, I end up feeling like shit. They're teeming with misanthropes and the low-IQ'd. For example "Ask Reddit: What's one thing you wish guys knew?" or whatever. Or r/WatchPeopleDieInside (you mean watch someone have a disappointed look on their face... why is this entertaining?).
Reddit is like any popular entertainment (music, film, Nascar...), with a typical bell curve of un-intellectual stimulation.
There are a lot of good subs, but the big ones ain't it.
Abandon the site and perhaps they'll learn it was a bad idea.
Reddit deserves their Digg moment so much. I shall cherish the day it arrives.
Perhaps someone wanted to increase app install numbers (and/or user engagement), this sounded like it would work, and they did it. Simple as that. They did not ponder whether it might have negative effects. They just did it and moved on to something else.
Of course I have no concrete evidence of this, but with the state of product management in our industry, I can't dismiss the possibility.
I guess at some level, their data costs too go down with an app, when compared to a site.
Also, with constant notifications, apps have a better chance to become addictive. At some point, someone saw data of the time spent by users on their site, to that on app and thought, wow !
It allows for better gamification and better avenues for making users buy awards for posts.
I have seen more 'gold' posts than ever after the app became popular.
Here is the link if you want to check it out: https://rdddeck.com
[1] https://www.producthunt.com/posts/deck-for-reddit#comment-11...
Identity: add or remove accounts; find accounts on the device
Contacts: find accounts on the device
Other: use accounts on the device; toggle sync on and off; run at startup; read Google service configuration; draw over other apps
(I deleted a lot of stuff but left the things that Reddit might find more useful). Compare that to the information about the user Reddit would have via a web login.
Just write the redesign off as a failed experiment and build a new design off of the old one. Seriously, even at Reddit what proportion of employees and developers use the new design when given the option?
I was on Android until a few months ago. If I was sent a Reddit link it would open in the Reddit app I liked, no need to ever even look at the mobile site. I was shocked that that seemingly basic feature ISN'T available on iOS. Instead my options are view the Reddit link in browser or on the official Reddit app.
Most of the time I just choose not to click the link because of that.
i hate the UI/UX for reddit, it's atrocious.
Try the legacy mobile website https://i.reddit.com/ there’s no thumbnail view but otherwise it’s much faster and less annoying.
I'm not sure how effective it is. But it's dogmatic for this generation of product designers.
Building an app and still tolerating web usage (on the same device) requires a level of self-confidence, few seem to have. Obviously not reddit.
Because there are multiple third party apps that are actually good, and at least one that is fully free under the GPL (search for Slide on F-droid).
I loved reddit's original UI, similar to HN, you can quickly scan the headlines, not stare at empty space into the oblivion.
Bad UX all over reddit...
I don't think Reddit cares about how you feel about the platform, just as long as you continue to spend half your day on it.
This has switched off all of those reminders and popups and crap for me on mobile.
Last time I went looking for the setting though, it had gone.
Properties that were app only at one point, such as nextdoor, robinhood, instagram and tinder, now have mobile and desktop interfaces that are almost nearly all there.
It's a very 2013 era move
Venmo moved back to a mobile-preferred;crippled-desktop experience. So it is possible that most of these properties will pull a similar move. Especially IG and Tinder. Like with Venmo & Paypal, IG is the mobile-first version of Facebook, and Tinder doesn't make much sense as a desktop product, outside of maybe some messaging capabilities.
This is a thread with hundreds of comments, +95% of the people here have either stopped using or dramatically deceased their use of reddit, it drove shrink instead, vast, incredible de-growth.
They've certainly increased the number of children on the platform, which could be their goal but I don't buy that either, reddit is full of porno
Their Aaron Swartz days are long behind and they've become just another spammy internet property run by buzzword speaking dunderheads with PowerPoint slides.
The force the app formula is stale and lots are migrating away from it
- on desktop adblockers are prevelant. On mobile not.
- on desktop you can't send push notifications thus keeping engagement up.
- Getting into the habit of using mobile apps gets engagement up.
Is it really required to keep ALL previous scroll history in memory and on-screen?
If they only showed what you're currently scrolling, it wouldn't be the most battery sucking app on my phones.
In my simple case, I follow specific subreddits, but I check other ones from time to time. The web browser is much easier to work with URLs on my phone. I can go to specific reddit’s very easily by just typing in the URL on my phone browser. Even better, there is still old.reddit.com which is much faster and less glitchy (media not loading, complicated UI frames appearing resulting in unexpected scrolling/zooming issues) than their new website for tablet and desktop usage. Further, the new site constantly loses my place and resets to the beginning of the subreddit losing my place.
The constant ads for the mobile app, and the automatic switching back to the new app on browsers are a massive hurdle, so I do seek out alternatives. However, there are some great communities and information on Reddit, so I will keep using it until critical mass moves on.
You can use their classic mobile site by going to i.reddit.com
Hamburger menu > settings > ask to open app
I used to be regular surfer of reddit's nsfw subreddit and also lurked around randnsfw for quite a bit of time.
The simple idea that being able to open incognito and browse indulge in porn and erase all (I mean most, uhh ahem) traces of your browsing activity is quite soul destroying in my opinion.
The upside of this limitation even though it is extremely annoying is it stops (to an extent) this mindless indulgence.
It actually made me be less addicted to reddit and the dark and wild usage pattern.
Apollo is an excellent Reddit client for iOS.
other than that the reddit app wants you to use it because there is no ad blocker and they can keep pulling you back in with push notifications.
It’s hassle free.
There's also i.reddit.com, which works really well.
(I am addicted to a game from apple app store that is slowly becoming a gambling game. I realized how well thought is this kind of brainwashing and i feel cheated)
Some product manager at Reddit has his perfomance measured by app adoption, and not by the reputation of the company and future of it's service.
Large companies which have a diverse user base in the hundreds of millions make decisions based on how a particular change affects the entire user population. The larger their user population, the more diverse their user base is and the harder it gets to cater to the needs of each type of user. The folks commenting here are a vocal minority, an important one given many people here are probably early adopters and also have the skills needed to build a Reddit competitor, but it's hard to see the reactions of this minority on a dashboard. A problem worth solving IMO but non trivial.
Typically initiatives like this come from a team within the company who's objective is to improve a key metric, in this case let's say user engagement. Some individual in the team probably spotted the trend that users on the app are more engaged than users on mobile web browsers. They then launched an experiment to test getting users over to the mobile app. Many users who end up on reddit via SEO probably don't know that reddit has an app and on seeing this end up downloading the app which makes them more engaged with reddit. Overall on the dashboard this shows up as a win where user engagement in the enabled group is up compared to the control and given that they give users an option to continue using the web app there is not a significant user drop. At this point, a decision needs to be made on whether to ship this change or not to ship. Folks making this decision do understand that it might be annoying to some people but the data in this case overwhelmingly supports a ship decision. They talk about it, mention their reservations, but eventually make a decision given the data and don't think about it anymore. They also don't have to feel the pain as most employees have the reddit app installed and don't see this again and again.
The key thing to know here is that there are lots of incentives in the company to make this decision a ship decision vs a no-ship decision - the data, the success of the team, the success of the individual who pioneered this change but there is not enough evidence or visible push from users to not make this change. Let's say there are some customer reports for this but unless they reach a very high volume no one is going to notice it.
Posts and discussions like this are actually a great way to get your word known to companies. This will probably stir a conversation in the team that made this change and hopefully bring out some change in the experience. Don't expect it to go away but maybe they will remember your preference of not wanting to use the app.
1. Go to the website on mobile
2. go to Settings
3. Uncheck “ask to open in app”
A little bit cleaner.
On the content side: moderators are becoming more and more authoritarian: they hand out bans if you don't toe "their" line. Diversity of opinion is frowned upon.
It's a dumpster fire.
1. Amateur porn aggregators. 2. Financial noobs with Robinhood accounts.
Fight me.
I have used this app for like 7 years, it is fast, simple, and keeps the old style format. If you want to use reddit but don't want to use the garbage that their interface has become, check it out.
https://geomarketing.com/reddits-safe-play-in-the-game-of-ge...