Hacker News Reader

Comment by sorahn | Hacker News Reader

My outcome was the shutdown of Apollo, rather than the blackout. I no longer read Reddit on my phone. (Except for a link or two clicked from something else, but even then I go to `old.reddit` instead to read the comments). That was really where I wasted the most time on it.

It’s kind of a relief. I think I was too “lazy” to stop on my own because Apollo was so comfortable to use.

View on HN

Apollo's shutdown was a blessing in disguise, I was addicted to Reddit and wasted hours on it before going to sleep. Thanks to that event I no longer browse or even feel the need to see what's going on, it's like quitting smoking, I literally feel better and relieved that I quit. I don't think I would've been able to stop on my own either, Apollo made it too easy.

Now I’m addicted to TT :dead:

tiktok made tv shows and movies unwatchable for me haha. that kind of media is just too slow. only sports at this point. I would say I watch 45m/day of tiktok. 5m here and there.

this comment cant be real

Not OP and not on TT, but some of my family have told me they have the same issue with movies and TV now.

I assume it's dopamine addiction playing out in the extreme.

I don’t know. I think the writing has gotten bad. I like thrillers and dramas. The old good stuff Ive already watched at this point. It’s nice when I run across something good I havent seen. The new stuff I can just predict what’s going to happen in a way I wish they’d just get to the point. Maybe I dont know whats going to happen but all the dead end loops are just excruciating. I watch some pretty boring sports like F1, motogo, and baseball so even though they go slow and require patience at least there’s some storyline thats not predictable. With tiktok they get to their hook or point within a minute or three so even if I know it’s something stupid I know the point is coming soon or I can just fast forward next. Mine is also curated towards my hobbies so it gives me ideas about what to do next or how I can improve.

I've recently taken a trip into "Weird Fiction", which is scratching my itch for more variety in fantasy.

I'm also finding that just "getting old" means the more books I read, shows I've seen, etc, the more I find myself saying "oh I've seen this kind of thing before". True, non-dopamine-based novelty is harder and harder to come by.

I think they're separate problems, though I'm going to make a huge leap and say that I think the writing problem is actually in part a function of the dopamine problem. Writers are both influenced more by "short media", and required to cater for audiences who enjoy/are addicted to it, even if the product is long-form.

I know quite a significant number of people that said the same thing. But it's not that they can't watch movies in itself: they can't _sit_ through an entire movie so what they do now now is watch those movies on TT, one short clip at a time, spread over a few days.

I’m not at that point. But have been able to create a curated feed of X content. Sort of how certain channels or networks are organized in cable/OTA

So tiktok causes ADD and we’re ok with kids using it? Sounds like it needs to be used less by adults too.

That's not what ADD is.

yes it is. and when you grow up with short form videos being your form of entertainment you’re just teaching kids to have short attention spans.

No, it isn't. ADD (now classified as Inattentive type ADHD) isn't having a "short attention span", it's a huge swathe of neurological symptoms of which having a short attention span might be one, sometimes - but it isn't the defining characteristic. The name of the disorder is misleading. ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder, like schizophrenia and autism, and isn't something that can be induced through forms of entertainment (though those predisposed to the disorder genetically may find symptoms worsen through them).

i feel this way about twitter since logged out users can't browse tweets anymore. now i can give myself just a tiny bit of friction to break the habit. i still waste time on my phone, but at least it's not quite so effortless now

I feel the same way. I left Reddit altogether in the protest and haven't come back. Suddenly I have hours of time back every week.

Agreed it means I no longer read Reddit at all because Apollo’s gone.

I tried last week ( after a few months off Reddit) to install the Reddit app, and it’s appallingly bad. It’s so confusing that I’m not quite sure what sub I’m reading, what’s user generated, and what’s an ad ( I was never a prolific poster, commenter, mod or anything - just reading is difficult now )

So independently of the politics, I’ve tried to come back to the platform, but I can’t, because the new product is vastly inferior to the old one.

> I’m not quite sure what sub I’m reading, what’s user generated, and what’s an ad

I'm unable to tell apart ads properly either quickly on reddit, and given the it's the same user action to collapse a comment and to click an ad that looks like a comment, I've misclicked on ads many, many times. It doesn't help that they place them at the top of the comments section and seem to be deliberately designed to look like gif comments.

As an advertiser I would not be particularly chuffed. I can say with confidence that my accidental ad click rate on reddit is 100%.

> Reddit app, and its Apollongly bad

Fixed that for you ;)

Narwhal 2 is not bad, IMHO. It’s almost as nice as Apollo on the iPhone, and much better than Apollo on the iPad.

Same, albeit with Reddit is Fun. Personally I used to visit Reddit multiple times per day but now I typically visit it once or twice per week, if at all. I'm sure the official app is fine, but the approach they took to third party developers soured it for me.

Ultimately I think if anything had any impact on Reddit's traffic it would have been the killing of the defacto mobile apps. The lesson any future founders should take is to kill off third party apps sooner rather than later if you ever want to do so, before user growth on those platforms becomes an issue.

Reddit Is Fun (rif) was a well-designed app that just worked. It was fast, had a customisable user interface with defaults that didn't get in the way of enjoying the content, and could run on all of my devices easily, including an Android 7 phone from 2018. It's a shining examplar of what a mobile browsing app should be like.

By comparison, the official Reddit app feels somewhat slower, even on my relatively new Android 12 phone from 2021, having a very noticeable lag when scrolling through articles and comments. For video and photo posts, there's no way of browsing the comments without clicking on the thumbnail and having it auto-play the videos every time, meaning I need to react fast to pause the video (there is practically no way of stopping this). And it doesn't support Android 7 anymore, meaning the only way to access it from my 2018 phone is via the browser.

It baffles me why Reddit would want to cut support for 3rd party apps when they were a key component in the Reddit ecosystem.

Reddit devs are probably the least competent of any modern social media platform. Any talent goes to an actual site, leaving the typical "redditors" () to work for reddit.

Naturally, this leads pretty much any technical project to be doomed from inception.

Biggest mistake by far was letting adtech completely TANK the performance of sites just so they can satisfy paranoid adverts. It's an absolute travesty that a top 3 reason to install adblock comes from a performance POV, because these simple static webpages* are forced to inject MB's of ads into your feed first.

Reddit as a site was never optimal to begin with and it only became worse when they decided to homeroll their own image/video hosting. But the biggest consequence of surrendering to ads turns base Reddit into feel like its 20 years older than it is.

>It baffles me why Reddit would want to cut support for 3rd party apps when they were a key component in the Reddit ecosystem.

money and control, the root of most evils in the world.

Apollo still works perfectly if you sideload it: https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/14nzii3/how_to_c...

https://github.com/ichitaso/ApolloPatcher/releases/latest

https://github.com/EthanArbuckle/Apollo-CustomApiCredentials

What's so great about Apollo I wonder? I've never tried it before :) what does it do differently?

Edit: oh never mind, I've been digging into the links but it looks like it's iOS - only. So that explains why I've never come across it before.

It's a well made app from an underdog, versus a good app from big bad reddit.

In my experience, based on reading complaints about the app, is that many use it for 5 minutes on the default settings and claim it is the worst app ever made.

Same thing here. I stopped browsing Reddit mindlessly and only end up there now if a Kagi search takes me there. Otherwise I am almost completely off the platform, which is saying a lot because I used to spend 1-2 hours a day there.

> if a Kagi search takes me there

Same and mainly because Kagi let's me rewrite the url to a private libreddit instance. Otherwise I'd have downranked it.

+1. I’m grateful because I knew it was in my mental health’s best interest to stop endlessly scrolling /r/all, but I needed a push.

Yep I was using Baconreader and when that stopped working, I simply stopped using reddit. I was not a heavy user by that point, but now my use has gone to zero aside from the occasional google search result leading me there.

On iOS, especially iPad, try:

- Narwhal 2: https://narwhal.app/

Of course, you pay the API costs. But this is pro work, countless UX details thoughtfully made.

- Winston: https://winston.cafe/

- Winston on GitHub: https://github.com/lo-cafe/winston

In TestFlight Beta, OK on iPhone but awkward on iPad unless full screen; layout is jumbled mess in stage manager windows.

I've been using Winston as an alternative but it still doesn't compared to how good Apollo was. My reddit usage overall has decreased simply because of it.

Same, Reddit saved me from it by cutting my 3rd-party app cord.

It's just bizarre to me that they didn't try to buy one of these apps to replace their own. That would've been a net win. It seems instead, as throughout their history, that their leadership is constantly trying to destroy it.

If they had external investors they'd be being hit with shareholder lawsuits constantly.

They already did that it was AlienBlue and thry wrecked it if my understanding is correct

Same here. I'm happily spending more free time on creative and learning ventures.

Same outcome for me but with Relay for Reddit, I could not bring myself to use the official app and now my usage dropped closed to zero which was a good thing, I have more time for productive stuff.

I basically stopped using reddit when they came up with the new web UI, and then pushed me to download the app on mobile. They obviously don't care about users.

Yep, Apollo going away made me stop using mobile Reddit completely. Don't bother on the desktop either, because I liked the Apollo UI a lot more.

Nowadays I'm mostly on Tildes and here, neither of which has the endless inflow of content that Reddit did, it's actually possible to read "everything" on both and then go do something else.

I didn't even use Apollo: I was hooked on the official iOS app. And used the blackout to kick the habit. Haven't looked back since. _Some_ of the free time I got back has now gone towards youtube shorts, but since those really requires headphones, I can keep it to a much smaller percentage of my free time. Instead, I bought a subscription to a local news paper, you know, for when you're on the loo and need something to read. I feel I'm better informed now than when I was reading reddit compusively.

Exactly this.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com