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Comment by 4gotunameagain | Hacker News Reader

It's so frustrating that they deliberately make shitty web apps in order to force you to install an app on your phone (e.g. reddit, instagram)

It should be illegal imo

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Facebook is the #1 offender in my opinion. I absolutely refuse to install any Facebook app. Back in the day, you could message people in the mobile browser without issue. Heck, it even loaded new messages without needing to refresh.

Then they decided you should need the app to message people.

Then they decided you should use a completely separate app to message people versus browse Facebook.

Now I have to use mbasic.facebook.com to message people. The quality of the experience dropped so much because, but I'm glad they don't have access to my contacts, text messages, location, etc. They get enough info about me from other sources.

Yup, this exact timeline of degraded experience on Facebook led me to disable my account. I haven't reactivated it in over a year, and I'm happier for it.

What kills me is I recall the mobile browser experience being better in the 2012 era than 2021. We've moved from alright 3G to widely available 4G with populous areas having 5G, and with home internet connections generally being much faster. The same website code could provide a much better experience simply from more bandwidth availability. Instead we've regressed because everything needs an app now.

Some forum software allows the owners to create an app then prompts you to install their app. Not sure which it is, but it's super annoying.

Over the last couple, reddit has significantly limited their mobile website utility, requiring login (like Instagram) and nagging you to download the app.

Marketing metrics seem to have overcome usability in terms of relative importance. It's really frustrating to see what the movie computing environment has become.

I asked my dad to send me a picture of his shed recently. He asked if I have WhatsApp. I reminded him I don't use any social media. And he said, uh, it's going to be very hard for me to figure out how to send it without WhatsApp..

No shed picture. But no compromises here either.

Also I find it totally hilarious that I'm 42 and I have never even seen WhatsApp's interface yet my 80 year old father is a social media expert in a lot of ways.

I've been mostly trying to get my friends and family onto Signal. I really want to ditch FB messenger.

Yeah I agree with the spirit of that. There should be a name for that practice, something that makes it sound as bad as it is but catchy. Maybe, something like webhostaging. Reddit’s webapp on mobile is notorious for webhostaging you into downloading their native app. It’s literally unusable.

There should also be a name for ostensibly public social media sites that webhostage you into signing up. Instagram comes to mind.

It’s a reprehensible dark pattern.

"webhostaging" is a much catchier name than the other suggestions in sibling comments, I think, and more memorable because it sounds weird (a bit like "webhosting"?).

It's so clever I think I'll start using it, and also telling people I came up with it by myself.

It does sound too Much like web hosting and in that sense it’s a fail. Steal it all you want, I win if companies start feeling shame anyway.

Appforcing?

The industry term is "web-to-app conversion" by the way.

I like this suggestion, I think it needs to be more catchy and roll off the tongue a bit easier. Here are some other suggestions:

Appholing Appstunting Nativebaiting

Webcrapp

Has both web and app in it, and it says what it does. Could also be webcrapping as verb.

I think a verb-oriented word is more powerful at shaming than a noun-oriented word. I think Crap is a little too vulgar to appeal to most people, some might feel uncomfortable at work saying crap for Instance. But try it out!

App + Oppression = Appression

Maybe webhijacking? Maybe I should purchase a domain and document it... Who knows, maybe it catches on and people start linking to it.

Yes there needs to be a single use site for this. Everyone is familiar with this , it just needs a catchy name so people on Twitter spread this and easily shame websites en masse for doing it. Webhijacking is too similar to webjacking IMO https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/web-jacking/

I knew it sounded familiar from somewhere, thanks! :)

Slack, too. Slack has a perfectly good workspace sidebar in their web app, but they hide it unless you're on a Chromebook (where you can't install their native app).

Can you spoof the user agent to get it to show?

Yes. There's a Chrome extension that does it and a couple user scripts: https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/144258/slacks-we...

Depends on your Chromebook, I have a Acer R13 and it's installed and running (just checked it). Android app's don't have a designated "runs on Chromebook" Flag as far I know, so you can't really block it.

But Chromebooks are sometimes a little bit special. I'm working on a app right now which is designed for tablets and wanted to check if I could run it on my Chromebook, because of the bigger screen (13" compared to Samsung S5/S6 with ~10") and I couldn't install it from the alpha channel. The thing was, it has a camera, a front camera, but the Manifest.xml required the default camera permission which was missing and this prevented me from even finding the app in the PlayStore.

And Slack as app is basically only the website. All the "native" apps seem to just render it (Linux, MacOs and Windows are Electron apps, the Android version feels like a WebView)

Does spoofing user agent help?

I'm fairly certain Jira does this as well. At least the first step of making the web app deliberately shitty.

JIRA just has poor-quality engineering all round. Their native apps are just as bad.

At least reddit allows third party apps.

Well how long before they tell us they are "a very different company" [1] and decide to pull the plug on 3rd party apps.

[1]https://www.reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/6xfyfg/an_update...

I think the eventual limitations on 3rd party apps are coming. A major part of the community has used/ is using the superior 3rd party alternatives, and they need to figure out how to nullify those advantages. It is inevitable because they want that sweet advertisement money for which 3rd party apps are a barrier.

See everything google related.

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