At first, it was as a futile protest, but then the inevitable addiction hunger kicked in. But this time, I had no choice to use the offical Reddit app.
The sluggishness of that app added enough latency, that my Reddit consumption is now non-existent
But now that I think of it, after just choosing to delete my account and go cold turkey, what keeps me from habitually returning is the same thing that would discourage me from spending time with friends I only drank with after having spent some time away, or what keeps me from moving back to my home town, or what keeps me from getting another car; not a lot changes, it's more apparent than ever nobody has anything interesting to say, and driving has always sucked. They're self-reinforcing cycles.
Krugman's observation, so often maligned and mocked for the past 20 years, to the effect that he was ignorantly claiming to have seen through something he had not even seen, is starting to look more and more prescient:
'The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in “Metcalfe’s law”—which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants—becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! '
As someone who's only been using the "old" interface (https://old.reddit.com) on all platforms, I'm remaining blissfully unaware of the debacle.
(And if you are reading this comment on HackerNews, that means you're absolutely OK with the "old"-style interfaces).
Unfortunately, that means that my reddit usage time stays high.
I was daily Reddit user, commenter, and poster until the third-party app shutdown. I still occasionally browse /r/$city anonymously, but other than that I haven’t returned. I don’t miss it in general, but I am sad to no longer see inspiration on home improvement, software engineering, and hobby subreddits.
In chrome and firefox: Settings accessibility text size.
It's what I use on mobile but I mostly browse reddit on desktop. If I could only use mobil I would probably use it a lot less.
I would be hopelessly addicted to Reddit again if they had an HN-esque interface.
So browsing Reddit on mobile via a desktop website is clunky enough to have the same effect as above
I refuse to install the app. Reddit aggressively tags random posts as NSFW and then offers "anonymous" browsing if only I install the app. What? That's silly. And creepy. Going to old.reddit.com still works if there is something I want to see, but I suppose eventually they will close that loophole. And thus will end my reddit experience. I already got rid of my own account ages ago, so I only read, and that cut my interaction time way down. Force me to use the app and we're done.
"Request desktop site" setting in mobile Safari also works for me to bypass this.
IMO the quality of Reddit's product has never been a pillar of its valuation.
To a certain degree, I get it, but for a website that is built entirely on user interaction and input, not even giving the users the opportunity to weigh in?
That was despicable.
Looking back, I would have paid $5/month to own my posts and keep reddit what it was, but we never even got the option.