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Comment by ryanwhitney | Hacker News Reader

They want our data badly.

I primarily browse on mobile, in a private window, without an account. For this, i am faced with constant banners and pop-ups to try and get me into the mobile app, which i'm told is "the best way to experience reddit". (It's not.)

Being logged in is an annoyance as it gives me a blank landing page that's an extra click away from the main "popular" page.

"New reddit" has brought some nice UI improvements, but their design team is choosing some absolutely miserable paths in the name of data collection.

Can't even expand most comment threads on mobile these days without logging in. Worse than most news sites.

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I disagree strongly that new reddit brings improvements.

For example cutting off the comment section under an article after just a few comments and forcing 'related' articles into your feed is a terrible user experience. Its designed only to keep you on the site and click more for more ad revenue.

> some nice UI improvements

Their responsive mobile design is for the most part, pretty good. It's a huge upgrade from the past when there was absolutely no mobile optimization. :)

Agreed on that though, there's so so many dark patterns that have come along with it.

The latest bummer for me was seeing usernames disappear from the landing page on mobile. Who cares about users anyways, not like they've ever contributed anything to the site…

> It's a huge upgrade from the past when there was absolutely no mobile optimization.

It’s not. They went in trying to make a mobile first experience, and somehow made it worse than a desktop first experience browsed on mobile. Base reddit works fine on mobile. The redesign is absolutely trash, bloated, slow and ugly.

> It's a huge upgrade from the past when there was absolutely no mobile optimization. :)

I preferred it then, especially when browsing from my mobile device! It used to be very easy to get the zoom I wanted just by tapping on my ipod touch. Now, it's both wasteful of space and cluttered with a bunch of things I don't want. It's become harder and harder to skim the feed.

I still prefer Reddit desktop on mobile, but double tapping doesn’t work consistently on iOS anymore.

>Their responsive mobile design is for the most part, pretty good. It's a huge upgrade from the past when there was absolutely no mobile optimization. :)

I know this has been around for at least 5 years. https://www.reddit.com/.compact

Having only learned of .compact recently, I was shocked by how fast and mobile-friendly it is. "Reddit mobile" is a monstrosity by comparison. Why does it seem like mobile sites have regressed in the past 5 years?

Because they have. Mobile designers are less focused on optimizing for poor processors and limited data budgets, instead preferring to target "responsive" and/or flashy designs that look impressive in screenshots.

That only happens if you're not logged in. So it's a dark pattern designed to frustrate you into logging in.

I agree about disliking new reddit.

I use Redirector extension for Firefox with a rule to always send me to the old version of reddit when following a link:

  Redirect:

  https://www.reddit.com/*

  to:

  https://old.reddit.com/$1

  Example:

  https://www.reddit.com/bob → https://old.reddit.com/bob

I wonder how long before they kill the old site off?

They still have i.reddit.com so that is a good sign.

The main reason why anyone would want you to use their App is your likely inability to block ads (unless you block them at network level, that is). Sure, logging your behavior while using the App is a nice to have component as well, but the best way to serve ads and make sure they are seen by majority of users, is by having the user not use a browser.

I'm working on 20-things.com, my alternative to reddit, still in the making. I use it as a personal public bookmarking service, posting things I find interesting/worth sharing. This does not scale well since large userbase have large operating costs, so my plan is rather simple: keep it small and closed, periodically opening it up for new users as others leave.

But how will it make money? It won't, and that's ok.

This is pretty neat looking. I am really digging the UI.

Would you ever consider making this open-source? It would be a great addition to the Awesome-Selfhosted list. [1]

[1] https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted

Thank you, that means a lot! :)

I plan to publish the source code with step by step instructions on how to build and host your own instance. Publishing the source will require some cleanup/preparation, I'll get to it as soon as possible. I never really thought that someone would even want to look at the source xD

It's nothing fancy, really, and every library used is noted on the about page[1], as well as third party services such as the one used to transmit SMS for account verification.

[1] https://20-things.com/about

> large userbase have large operating costs

You can scale a single sqlite db to millions of users without too much trouble. The "large operating costs" meme primarily arose due to the atrociously large costs big cloud providers will make you pay for moderate traffic. It's not helped by the cargo cult of scalability, which strongly pushes you to use something shardable when in all but the most extraordinary cases the dumbest solution will keep working long beyond what's expected.

As a new year's resolution I've blocked reddit on my pihole and life has been better.

If I search for something and the result is a reddit post I'll turn on the vpn, view the result, and close it. The site is run by shills, advertisers, bad actors, agitators, and toxic people.

OK, so you still use Reddit?

Yeah, the same way that I use a dictionary.

My experience on mobile is that after viewing a subreddit a number of times on chrome it just blocks you and forces you to download the app to view any posts at all. This can be bypassed by using old.reddit.com url.

Why would you subject yourself to this when there are multiple FOSS reddit mobile apps available?

i.reddit.com is still the best reddit

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