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Comment by cheeze | Hacker News Reader

Saddens me how far the site has fallen. The abysmal mobile experience shoehorning you into using their low quality app is frustrating.

It makes sense, need to monetize and appeal to the average internet user, but it bums me out there isn't a great replacement as of now.

Many small communities that I like, but one of my favorite search queries is "_________ reddit"

Need to understand timeshares? Want the best rice cooker? Usually reddit has a post with actual humans responding.

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Reddit is great if you unsubscribe from all the default subreddits and subscribe to programming subreddits (I'm subscribed to apachespark, julia, python, rust, vim, etc.).

My Reddit feed now has more programming related articles than Hackernews.

worst complaint is not that but the rapidly deteriorating usability of the web versions

They haven't killed old.reddit.com (yet). I assume they see the metrics of who refuses to swap over and who doesn't.

Yeah, the dark-pattern to push you to their app is pretty annoying. Their app actually works way better than any mobile browser I've used. I don't know what underlying tech they built it on, maybe its optimized for their particular workload. Still, I'd want that option in my own control. They've already implemented a mobile specific front-end that works, why cripple it?

I think the app works great. And the conversations are usually pretty good too as long as each side is willing to be civil. Particularly in my local city/community subs.

For example, my local city sub is like NextDoor only without the nut jobs and constant "my Pitbull got loose in the park again" posts.

wow, my local city sub is a nightmare. All three of them are, really, created one by one as the current 'main' one got progressively worse. It's the one safe place all the people in the surrounding suburbs have to talk about how much they hate the place, apparently.

lol r/seattles assemble!

I did wonder how unique a scenario that was :)

When the app works it's perfectly fit for purpose. When it doesn't it feels like Reddit is a pets.com era company trying to play in the arena where Facebook and Google dominate.

My city sub is full of alt right trolls.

That's weird... All the geo-related subs for my country are full of angsty socialist children or camped and permanently set to private.

The best Reddit user experience by far is via third party apps like Reddit is Fun. I am expecting them to turn of API access for those apps any day now.

Of course there's nothing preventing them from monitoring the site either. The drive to app pattern is atrocious and has driven me to use the site significantly less.

I think a lot of that has to do with changes in the google search algorithm. Years goneby forum posts and discussion boards were frequently featured at the top of many searches. Nowadays you have to give google a hint as you suggest. I don’t know why it was changed, but I suspect that the reason is that very few forums have ads on them and google would prefer to send you to ad rich sites.

The much more likely explanation is that no one is using forums anymore. Forum posts still show up in google but they are always from 2009.

I’m not so sure. There are many extremely active forums that exist, particularly for specific hobbies. In my case for example, if I google for “subaru brz forged wheels” I get nothing but vendors and product pages. But if I add “ft86club” to the query a great many forum posts appear. In the past those type of forum posts would appear ahead of vendor pages.

Probably "outdated" forum software that doesn't have much SEO bells and whistles.

> The abysmal mobile experience shoehorning you into using their low quality app is frustrating.

This has to be the number one complaint, been hearing it for literally years. Keep ignoring them, reddit. Someone like Discord will launch a web facing community app and eat your lunch soon!

If you're looking for an alternative check out https://sqwok.im

It's a sort of hybrid between Twitter, Reddit, and Slack aimed at open, frictionless discussion using real time messaging instead of comments.

It works on mobile and desktop web, and while still early and in active development, I definitely appreciate feedback!

Cross posted this thread: https://sqwok.im/p/TC2uSScaSpqllg

Or use DDG and do !r ____.

Have you tried Apollo (iOS)?

The problem for me is a good chunk of my entries into Reddit are through Google. Having an app installed means the search results will transition your entire phone into the app, wait for it to load, and then you can't smoothly go back to the Google search results.

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