[HN Gopher] It appears that Reddit is forcing me to use their ap...
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It appears that Reddit is forcing me to use their app to see deep
linked content
Author : stevenhubertron
Score : 105 points
Date : 2021-06-18 19:29 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| scotuswroteus wrote:
| they don't force that at all. they have an annoying pop up. so do
| many other high profile information-conveying websites on the
| internet.
| finiteseries wrote:
| The phrase "deep linked content" might lead some people to ignore
| this as comments have been blocked for a while now, I wouldn't
| have realized this specifically meant post content & toplevel
| comments from the title without coming from the Windows 11 design
| conventions thread.
| stevenhubertron wrote:
| Thanks for the suggestion, I updated the title.
| TimSchumann wrote:
| For those who don't know, for _most_ content if you just prepend
| the old subdomain, you can bypass this behavior.
|
| https://old.reddit.com/
| ncann wrote:
| It used to work great but over time more and more threads are
| broken and cannot be viewed in old reddit, for example the poll
| threads, or the prediction threads, or threads with inline
| images mixed with texts.
| taurath wrote:
| Also there are browser add ons to always redirect to the old
| (non broken) style.
|
| When they drop old style they should be prepared for a huge
| migration of users away like what happened to Digg. Hoping
| someone has a viable competitor spinning up for when they
| decide to make their next decision that is terrible for the
| users.
| [deleted]
| jordigh wrote:
| I doubt there will be a huge migration. I think it's already
| a small minority of users holding on to "old". I've seen
| people on social media asking, "why would anyone use the old
| and broken Reddit design?"
| taurath wrote:
| Maybe I'm a curmudgeon. To me the browsing experience and
| content density is night and day favoring the old style.
|
| On the app I get 2, maybe 3 posts per screen and at least 1
| ad taking up 30% or more of the screen. I don't see how
| that's an objectively better user experience unless someone
| desperately needs glasses.
|
| Another factor is that communities can't use CSS to style
| their pages with the new site. /r/nfl for example is a
| thousand times better with their CSS than the few tools for
| differentiation Reddit provides.
| sschueller wrote:
| Once they kill that I'm gone. 13 years...
| PenguinCoder wrote:
| Same. Also, moderator of a few large subs. They keep shitting
| on mod feature and abilities, still wanting us to mod
| 'efficiently'. One more major "fuck you" and I can promise
| I'm gone from all that.
|
| Get more value and less hate from here, as it is.
| 48309248302 wrote:
| https://i.reddit.com/
| snowwrestler wrote:
| https://www.reddit.com/.compact
| toxik wrote:
| Infinite scroll is a very dangerous thing. Seriously should
| be regulated.
| turminal wrote:
| It's a dark pattern that was successfully imposed on us.
| alternatetwo wrote:
| Reddit Enhancement Suite has had this for years btw. It's
| on by default but you can turn it off.
| iblaine wrote:
| Reddit seems destined to follow in Digg's footsteps. The negative
| feedback on the reddit redesign and the reddit app has been
| building for years, and they continue to push it. The motivation
| is puzzling. Are executives knowingly pushing the need for
| advertising at the expense of users? Do Product managers have too
| much free time?
|
| For anyone else annoying by the reddit redesign, you can use the
| Redirector chrome extension to fix it w/the following...
| redirect: https://www.reddit.com(.*) to:
| https://old.reddit.com$1
| ping_pong wrote:
| They want to increase engagement by forcing a newsfeed type
| experience, but I hate it.
| caslon wrote:
| Active users have been exponentially climbing. The redesign is
| awful in comparison to what once was, but it's been incredibly
| successful as a vessel to make reddit into a Facebook
| replacement. Facebook users are a lot easier to profit off of
| than reddit users, _and_ they 're higher in volume.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| The mobile design isn't puzzling at all. It's infuriating, but
| easy to see why they're doing it. They want to force everyone
| onto the app because it's easier for them to advertise on.
| TX0098812 wrote:
| Also people are easier to track if they use the app.
| ayngg wrote:
| Their new, but not really new anymore, redesign is so
| adversarial that the site is frustrating to use unless you use
| the old version or a different mobile app. Comments section cut
| off by a news feed, nested comments require loading a new page,
| but going back doesn't save your location because it was
| collapsed to show the news feed. The news feed preload lags way
| more. The new search basically has never worked.
|
| It basically feels like you are constantly trying to fight the
| ui to show you what you want while trying to dodge the buffet
| of churned content they throw at you to try and keep you in the
| social media vortex. Like everything else that becomes
| mainstream popular, the demographic has shifted away from
| people who care about these things.
| tootie wrote:
| I prefer https://i.reddit.com
| celeritascelery wrote:
| Yes! This is what I have been looking all along!
| lvs wrote:
| The mobile amp.reddit.com link-throughs from google results are
| even more obnoxious than any other way of viewing a thread.
| You're linked into some kind of snippet of a thread with other
| unrelated threads glommed onto the page. Terrible. It feels
| like an outbrain-style visual assault. For extra fun, see what
| the mobile amp links look like with javascript disabled. It's a
| sight to behold.
| ncann wrote:
| It's the worst. It only shows a few comments so 99% of the
| time you would need to load the normal page anyway. It also
| messes with the way Google indexes the date of the page, so
| the date of the page according to Google is almost always
| wrong for old threads.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| what? don't need an extension it's simply a user preference to
| always use old.
| sevenf0ur wrote:
| Lots of people lurk without an account or go private for a
| bit. The web app is basically crippled in those cases.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| > The negative feedback on the reddit redesign and the reddit
| app has been building for years, and they continue to push it.
| The motivation is puzzling.
|
| The feedback is minimum, and the users who are complaining are
| not the users who make Reddit money. Like if you're not making
| them money they're not going to want to improve your
| experience. They're going to want to make it worse and push you
| into a better experience. Their motivation for this is clear,
| and I am confused as to why anyone would be puzzled why Reddit
| wants to control how people use their app, especially since if
| you use the app, you have to see ads and you are getting
| tracked. There are also notification possibilities to push more
| content to you. This all makes a lot of sense, and I am pretty
| sure revenue-wise, it's working.
|
| People keep talking about Digg but Reddit has already had their
| Digg moments and are still standing and there are countless
| clones and countless apps that just mirror their content. Use
| them.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| "does a company need money?"
|
| the answer is yes.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| what are you even trying to do? Can't seem to duplicate this.
| Android/Chrome it offers up on first load the 'open in app' or
| continue in browser option, select continue in browser and life
| goes on fine. For both logged in and logged out.
|
| It's a sketchy annoyance but hardly a problem. Or use old.reddit
| like everyone else suggests.
| gruez wrote:
| >Can't seem to duplicate this. Android/Chrome it offers up on
| first load the 'open in app' or continue in browser option
|
| Are you visiting the exact subreddit? I can reproduce it just
| fine. As I mentioned in another comment, the behavior is
| subreddit specific.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27554337
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| ah ok, that exact thread then? Fairplay. Yeah, can duplicate.
| Weird/annoying.
|
| (logs in, continues on merry way, in browser, all working)
| brightball wrote:
| Request Desktop Site
| qalmakka wrote:
| Thankfully BaconReader still works. It might be ugly, but it's
| still a thousand times more functional than that Reddit official
| crap.
| emsy wrote:
| Similar to how quora forces you to sign up if you click a link
| coming from a Google search. I just avoid these sites altogether.
| Unfortunately, I'm but a drop in the ocean.
| theturtletalks wrote:
| I remember reading Google would start penalizing these sites
| for using these dark patterns. Would losing traffic from Google
| search force them to change their ways?
| toxik wrote:
| A site like reddit? Very doubtful.
| twirlock wrote:
| That one is especially infuriating because quora had a large
| data breach a few years back.
| xtracto wrote:
| Quora reminds me of the experts exchange times. They are
| "improving" themselves into irrelevancy.
| azalemeth wrote:
| They don't actually remove the content, just hide it with an
| obnoxious scroll-down-to-trigger-login-spam JS and a blur
| content blocker. It's dismissed with one right-click -> inspect
| element -> delete div
| bombadilo wrote:
| Alternatively, typing '?share' at the end of the URL works
| too. Quora is awful these days though so I rarely use it
| anyway.
| rchaud wrote:
| Quora is at that point in its lifecycle where it's barely any
| better than Yahoo Answers. The nice, knowledgeable people that
| used to provide detailed answers are long gone. Like Medium,
| it's full of content marketers and clout-chasers who've figured
| out that getting their answers on Quora is free SEO for their
| brand.
| holler wrote:
| If you're looking for an alternative to Reddit, check out
| https://sqwok.im
|
| - realtime: every post has built-in slack quality chat w/markdown
| support.
|
| - open: the site is completely open for anyone, if you want to
| chat, creating an account is a breeze w/no email required
|
| - minimal: focus is on conversations w/low friction, designed so
| both tech and non-tech people can post, share, and easily join in
| a conversation.
|
| - clean design: mobile/desktop web friendly
|
| - new features dropping regularly
|
| Most importantly, you don't need to download anything to view a
| post!
| andrewzah wrote:
| This is not really an alternative to reddit. I don't care about
| online users, and part of the point of using reddit is comment
| chains. Having a linear chat breaks that.
|
| There have been numerous reddit clones. But the main issue is
| the lack of a community. People who like reddit... still use
| reddit for the most part. It'll take something like reddit
| killing the old ux to finally force enough people to move to an
| alternative such that a good, sizable community is formed.
| vagrantJin wrote:
| Yes. I have the app but theres 30-40% of URLs that send me to the
| browser which then asks me to download the app.
|
| I dunno.
| duckfruit wrote:
| Even worse, when I clicked on "Continue in App" it didn't
| actually open the relevant page in the app, instead taking me to
| the product page for Reddit on the iOS app store.
|
| I already have the app installed.
|
| Native apps and URLs are like peanut butter and mayonnaise, they
| just don't go well together.
| cryptoz wrote:
| Same exact thing happens to me. The link just takes you to the
| app store. No content linked at all, not even linking to open
| the reddit app!
| lostgame wrote:
| Bizarre. Absolutely works for me and always has. (iOS 14 atm.
| Worked since about 9.)
| mikeg8 wrote:
| haha that last line made me chuckle because there is an older
| guy in my office who swears a PB and Mayo sandwich is the shit.
| I will never try it, but he's been bragging about them for
| years, no joke.
| sslalready wrote:
| Sounds like he hasn't been introduced to banana with tomato
| ketchup yet.
| SllX wrote:
| Dunno how many 3rd Party apps do this, but on iOS, Apollo has a
| share extension that lets you open the page in that App. It
| can't claim Reddit URLs because of Apple's limits on devs, but
| this is a decent workaround that keeps 3rd Party apps viable.
| throw03172019 wrote:
| My Reddit opens fine. However, and Google Maps links always go
| to Safari instead of the app installed on my phone. I don't
| know what changed. It works fine on my partners iphone. Please
| fix Apple!
| rchaud wrote:
| Might be an issue with how Safari renders links, or maybe the
| app itself is not a default for opening Reddit links.
|
| When I get the mobile page on Reddit, clicking "Open in App" on
| the popup works fine for a third party Android app (Now for
| Reddit).
| cryptoz wrote:
| It's not an issue with safari or the app. It's an issue with
| the website blocking you from seeing content that it
| advertises is on the web.
|
| And it is on the web for others, but not for you!
| gabetax wrote:
| This is a tangent on your metaphor, but PB&M has actually been
| a popular combination in the past.
| https://www.atlasobscura.com/foods/peanut-butter-mayonnaise-...
| nescioquid wrote:
| Oh wow. I never knew that was a thing. When I was 6 or 7, I
| decided to make the most disgusting sandwich I could think to
| make. I ended up "inventing" a PB&M on white bread.
|
| I was pretty disappointed as it wasn't too bad.
| redwood wrote:
| One of my favorite subreddits, longreads, doesn't even load
| anymore
| thih9 wrote:
| It's weird.
|
| I guess as long as it "works", i.e. as long as dirty tricks
| continue to increase certain metrics, we'll see apps that use
| them.
|
| Still, I'm surprised, because good UX seemed to be part of the
| core offering of this particular website.
|
| Are they betting that the community won't go anywhere? Do they
| want to attract so many new users that they don't care about
| existing ones?
| twirlock wrote:
| Reddit, and its system for letting "powermods" dictate the
| acceptible boundaries for discourse, was the bait and switch that
| destroyed freedom of speech on the internet. They effectively
| drained all the content from traditional forums and then deleted
| the parts of that were deemed problematic by the intelligentsia.
| If you condone this, you are an authoritarian.
| spiderfarmer wrote:
| Apollo is the app that lets Reddit shine. The difference in
| polish and UX is night and day. One man vs. an entire team.
| Talent and passion vs. boring dayjobs.
| schnebbau wrote:
| What is going to be the successor to Reddit? Maybe some type of
| federated Mastodon-like thing?
| bee_rider wrote:
| It is hard because unfortunately, lots of these federated
| websites seem to attract the sort of person who was banned from
| Reddit... and not being banned from Reddit is a pretty low bar.
|
| Lemmy seems OK, though (and IIRC is actively trying to avoid
| that fate somehow).
| ggreer wrote:
| Scott Alexander talked about this six years ago[1]:
|
| > HL Mencken once said that "the trouble with fighting for
| human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending
| scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws
| are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the
| beginning if it is to be stopped at all."
|
| > There's an unfortunate corollary to this, which is that if
| you try to create a libertarian paradise, you will attract
| three deeply virtuous people with a strong commitment to the
| principle of universal freedom, plus millions of scoundrels.
| Declare that you're going to stop holding witch hunts, and
| your coalition is certain to include more than its share of
| witches.
|
| 1. https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/07/22/freedom-on-the-
| central...
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Federation means that each site can introduce their own
| standards for moderation, so that's hardly an insurmountable
| problem.
| andrewzah wrote:
| No, as decentralization merely complicates onboarding users
| while not really solving anything and creating new problems.
| The fediverse will still be nice for an alternative social
| media/blog sphere.
|
| My guess is something will pop up with good UX and rules, that
| a critical mass moves to. Something akin to lemmy, but
| centralized.
| skunkworker wrote:
| On my iPhone I just use a shortcut to take the current page and
| go to Narwhal, it's a little cumbersome but much better than
| using it on the web on a mobile device.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| I noticed the other day when I wanted to watch a video in PiP and
| I went to go edit the DOM to do it, Reddit refreshed the page on
| me.
|
| Must have been some MutationObserver hook to prevent people from
| fiddling.
|
| I was pretty turned off after that. Anyway, that being said,
| browser perf is so bad with the new Reddit, you basically have to
| use the app.
| 34679 wrote:
| I stopped frequenting a while ago, but I do have the Firefox
| "Old Reddit" plugin for when I click on a reddit link. It works
| as you'd expect.
| wreath wrote:
| I know this is offtopic and will probably be downvoted to hell
| (and so what?!), but I really dont get how adults can complain
| about such a thing in a public online space with phrasing that
| makes it sound like something terrible happened to the person
| tweeting. I really dont get the appeal of this. Is it another way
| to generate conversation?
| wtetzner wrote:
| I decided to just stop using Reddit a while ago. I can't be
| bothered to use a website that is so hostile to being used.
| pg_bot wrote:
| Reddit is one of a few websites (Twitter, LinkedIn) whose design
| has gotten progressively worse for as long as I can remember. I
| really wish someone would come along and execute on a clear
| design vision for the company. It's insane to me that it is this
| poorly built.
| taurath wrote:
| It's intentionally built - the purpose is to funnel people into
| the app which has an extremely high ads to content ratio
| compared to the old site, or most other social media platforms.
|
| Their design vision is: more ads, more user tracking, more
| selling of user data.
|
| All of this to the detriment of the actual content,
| readability, and user satisfaction. They're betting it doesn't
| matter. I for one hope they're wrong.
| jl6 wrote:
| > progressively worse
|
| For you.
|
| Forcing users into an algorithmically-controlled scroll tunnel
| is probably great for their advertising sales though.
| tootie wrote:
| Reddit is leaning in to the 90/9/1 rule. The 1% of content
| creators know how to circumvent the barriers and are probably
| using an app anyway. The 90% of users just stumbling in from
| google get assaulted with prompts to login/download/read ads.
| They're the revenue providers.
| rchaud wrote:
| The design is fine, but you can't make money by showing ads to
| a bunch of anonymous users and non-logged in visitors. Hence
| the dickbar for mobile users. Reddit have big investors now,
| and they are under pressure to monetize. Unfortunately their ad
| product is garbage, and the Reddit audience is notoriously ad-
| unfriendly.
| Razengan wrote:
| dickbar is my new favorite word.
| bhj wrote:
| It was coined in 2011 by John Gruber:
| https://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/03/06/dickbar
| Judgmentality wrote:
| I could be wrong, but doesn't reddit make most of its money
| (which probably isn't that much) selling awards? It seems
| dumb to me, but people buy them.
| [deleted]
| 1270018080 wrote:
| Reddit web/mobile is painful to use, slow, ugly, and full of
| dark patterns so I get that. But why do you think Twitter is
| bad? Yeah they force ads on you, but the app itself is nice
| imo.
| turminal wrote:
| Twitter in mobile browsers is painful and slow too, at least
| for me, but still much better than reddit.
| totony wrote:
| Twitter is one of the slowest websites I visit via HN. Plus
| they have so many popups if you're not logged in
| cuddlybacon wrote:
| I find it a bit funny that this is posted to twitter which won't
| load on my phone unless I use their app.
| spankalee wrote:
| What phone? The Twitter mobile site / PWA is regarded as one of
| the better ones.
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| Twitter pwa often simply doesn't load the cintent, this has
| been discussed to death on HN. When it dies load I suppose
| it's decent and much faster than reddit indeed.
| cuddlybacon wrote:
| iPhone.
|
| In the area where the Tweet would show, it instead says
| "Something went wrong" EDIT: it has been like this for
| several years so I assumed it was a dark pattern.
| moistly wrote:
| I browse in iOS Safari private mode. Reddit has now started to
| _entirely block_ many subreddits from my view. It pops up
| "Continue in app / go back to r/popular". I do not know how it
| determines which to block; newer and less-popular seems to a
| pattern.
|
| I have been finding ways to bypass their blocks, so my apologies
| if they decide to make it an entirely private site.
|
| Edit: using the www prefix, not old or i.
| gruez wrote:
| I reverse engineered it and it seems to be based on the
| "community_reviewed" flag in the
| https://www.reddit.com/r/:subreddit/about.json endpoint.
|
| >I have been finding ways to bypass their blocks, so my
| apologies if they decide to make it an entirely private site.
|
| using the i.reddit.com subdomain should work.
| LegitShady wrote:
| Just prepend old. Or I. Instead of www to the URL. Once you're
| in old reddit it won't switch you back to new reddit until your
| next session.
|
| It's not as convenient on mobile but reddit now is hostile to
| lurkers so it is what it is.
| rubatuga wrote:
| You have to create an account and login, even a throwaway is
| fine
| Havoc wrote:
| Yes, it's become increasingly user hostile boiling a frog style.
| southerntofu wrote:
| Funny-not-funny to complain about that on Twitter, which in the
| past years became unusable without JavaScript and more times than
| not doesn't work in Tor Browser's "Safer" mode (1st party JS
| enabled).
| diveanon wrote:
| old.reddit.com or even better teddit.net for an alternative
| privacy friendly front end.
|
| Personally though I think you would be better off just avoid
| reddit, that place is horrible for people.
| Darvokis wrote:
| I'm not aware of any better site to find information on special
| interests. Just avoid the toxic subreddits. Reddit is way too
| useful a resource to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
| swiley wrote:
| >Reddit is way too useful a resource
|
| I _never_ open it at work and get along just fine.
| [deleted]
| afandian wrote:
| Quite aside from the scummy behaviour, the assumptions behind it
| are a real bugbear. Just because I'm on a mobile browser it
| doesn't mean I'm able, or want to, install apps on my phone. What
| if it's a friend's phone, or I don't use Google Play, or it's an
| out of date version of Android, or any number of reasons.
| arvidkahl wrote:
| So THAT's what they mean when they claim to be "the front page of
| the internet."
|
| JUST the front page, it appears.
|
| For a website that has been around so long and has been a
| fundamental building block of what most of us understand to be a
| diverse, open, and highly interconnected internet, this is quite
| close-minded.
| scambier wrote:
| why not use a 3rd party app?
| stevenhubertron wrote:
| When I clicked on the link sent to me, it defaulted to the
| browser not Apollo which I prefer.
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