[HN Gopher] Bolt has a cool web interface and they really don't ...
___________________________________________________________________
Bolt has a cool web interface and they really don't want you to use
it
Author : kuba-orlik
Score : 265 points
Date : 2022-06-19 10:19 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (toot.kuba-orlik.name)
(TXT) w3m dump (toot.kuba-orlik.name)
| mojuba wrote:
| There's an (unverified) myth that retention on mobile apps is
| better. This is one of those things that marketing people keep
| telling each other without ever verifying the facts. (Unless you
| deliberately make the web version inferior, of course.)
|
| The reasoning behind it is that you should take real estate on
| the user's home screen at all costs, because your app's icon will
| serve as a reminder and people will allegedly come back to it and
| open more often.
|
| But what matters at the end of the day is the product and the
| value it brings to the users. I'd argue that deceiving the users
| to provide real estate for your app does not help your business
| in the long term. If you get more installs today by coercing them
| (like Reddit does, for example) you will most definitely see some
| other metric such as retention decline over time.
|
| Broadly, users - us that is - are not idiots. Deception works
| momentarily and can have an immediate effect on some metrics.
| Long term though, every user and no matter how smart or dumb,
| will eventually assess the value it gets them against the money,
| against their time, or against the "home screen real estate" they
| provided.
|
| Speaking from my own experience with multiple mobile apps: there
| are many ways you can trick the users but you can't trick the
| longer terms statistics.
| derekzhouzhen wrote:
| People on HN are not idiots. Users, in a broad sense, are.
| There are people searching for wordle in the app store for
| Christ's sake.
| northerdome wrote:
| The worst part of this is how the Mobile Web experience is
| actively hampered on iOS by Apple. When web apps on mobile do
| have a worse experience for me, it is often due to Safari. This
| is especially frustrating because the average consumer blames
| the website for the poor experience and doesn't understand
| Apple is at fault.
| danpalmer wrote:
| You say unverified, but I'm pretty sure there's lots of
| verification for this. Obviously it will depend on the service
| or app, but it's a well known trend.
|
| At my previous job our app had much higher retention than our
| web product, despite the web product being much more mature,
| modern, and feature rich. We verified this across multiple
| marketing channels, and looked at long term user retention over
| years.
| jimmytidey wrote:
| How do you know that people use the app because they are
| already highly committed to the service, rather than the
| other way around? IE, the whole thing is a selection effect?
| danpalmer wrote:
| We were a logged-in only service, and measured that users
| acquired on the app who never used the website were
| typically retained longer than users acquired on the web
| who never used the app.
|
| We certainly did encourage users acquired on the web to
| download the app, and the fact that those who did were
| retained longer could have been a selection effect, but I
| don't think this accounts for users who never saw the other
| platform.
| mojuba wrote:
| Could it be that the mobile interface was simply better in
| terms of speed, usability, smoothness of the UX? Complex web
| apps honestly often look and feel shite in the browser.
| danpalmer wrote:
| Potentially, but aren't those essentially properties of
| native apps? When we say that apps retain users better it's
| not some magic, it's because of apps typically having
| better UX, whether that's speed/features, device
| integration, or the "UX" of being right there on the home
| screen.
| asutekku wrote:
| Nah, people retain on mobile apps because they have a
| simple icon to use to get there. It's extra effort to
| remember the name of the service and write down the
| address.
| jmcgough wrote:
| Push notifications are really powerful for creating
| habits as well.
| skobovm wrote:
| This is a weird take, and I highly doubt retention is the
| primary reason they choose to limit the use of their web
| interface. In fact, I'm generally suspect of the hand-wavy
| speculation that some less savvy business unit made a decision
| in isolation. The two drivers that I would expect are: reducing
| friction and native compute capabilities.
|
| People generally gravitate towards the path of least
| resistance, which is something you already see companies
| exploiting with things like unfavorable privacy settings
| defaults. Having an app is another instance of that. There is
| much less mental friction in pushing a button on a home screen
| compared to opening a browser, punching in a URL, possibly
| having to log in, etc.
|
| Given that this is rideshare, this is important, because the
| services offered by other companies are effectively identical.
| If someone has Uber installed, they would be much more likely
| to go the path of least resistance -- using the installed app
| -- as opposed to going out of their way to use an equivalent
| offering.
|
| Additionally, there are problems in mapping that would be very
| difficult, if not impossible, to solve in a browser. For
| example: localization (precise positioning) would be incredibly
| difficult without a native library, you wouldn't be able to do
| any offline re-routing, like gmaps does, among other
| limitations.
| s1k3s wrote:
| > There's an (unverified) myth that retention on mobile apps is
| better. This is one of those things that marketing people keep
| telling each other without ever verifying the facts. (Unless
| you deliberately make the web version inferior, of course.)
|
| I own a platform with native apps + web, and I can confirm that
| retention on mobile apps is better, by the numbers. I'm not
| comparable to Bolt though, neither in the business model or the
| number of users.
| moneywoes wrote:
| How much of a delta? Does it justify having mobile?
| rapind wrote:
| I don't think it's really about retention, but rather the value
| of the richer data set you can gather on your users.
| axiomsEnd wrote:
| Sometimes it looks like designers are using this without any
| kind of thought. A page in my country, that is used for
| managing appointments with medical specialists forces user to
| install it, to read some messages (mostly automated) from this
| facilities. After installation it tries to remind user that
| it's there by pushing notifications about it's existence, like
| anyone is going to be like "I'm bored, I'll check all local
| urologists and maybe make an appointment with one, just for
| fun"
| hsuduebc2 wrote:
| This is ridiculous. Why they assume that I'm picking because I
| saw them on screen? I'm picking them because of price and
| service quality. People from marketing voodoo...
| solarkraft wrote:
| I personally stop browsing Reddit and Twitter when their fuck-
| you-banners appear. I have accounts with both, but installing
| the app or logging in is usually more friction than accessing
| the content is worth.
|
| ... So thanks for keeping my periods of distraction very short!
| Maybe they just care about their users' mental health and are
| sacrificing their engagement for it :)
| choward wrote:
| The default Reddit web site on desktop is excruciating enough
| to use. On mobile it's unusable. I only use old.reddit.com.
| If that ever went away I would never visit Reddit again.
| woojoo666 wrote:
| Might be worth checking out libredirect [1] which I use on
| desktop and mobile to automatically redirect reddit links
| to privacy-respecting front-ends like libreddit and teddit.
| Also since I have it on my default browser on Android, even
| if I open a reddit link from, say, a hackernews app, the
| popup webview will use my default browser which will in
| turn automatically redirect to libreddit/teddit. I never
| have to worry about seeing reddit's annoying web app, never
| have to worry about giving reddit my data.
|
| (old.reddit.com still does give reddit data, and from my
| experience Reddit does a lot of tracking IPs + working with
| google + traffic correlation to figure out what stuff you
| browse. However if you still prefer old reddit, libredirect
| does provide an option to automatically redirect to
| old.reddit.com instead of libreddit or teddit)
|
| [1]: https://github.com/libredirect/libredirect
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > Deception works momentarily and can have an immediate effect
| on some metrics. Long term though, every user and no matter how
| smart or dumb, will eventually assess the value it gets them
| against the money, against their time, or against the "home
| screen real estate" they provided.
|
| This doesn't apply to Bolt nor any of their competitors. They
| all work off VC money subsidizing rides and once the VC money
| dries up users will flock to the next competitor that's being
| VC-subsidized. This will happen much quicker than the users
| wisen up to the abuse.
| manigandham wrote:
| Why are you calling it an unverified myth? In reality there are
| petabytes generated everyday proving the efficacy of mobile
| apps vs websites. This has been tested and measured in pretty
| much every possible way at this point with 100s of billions in
| ad spend.
|
| It's not just real estate on the screen, it's faster on-device
| processing with lower latency, rich offline abilities, better
| and more persistent access to more API's from notifications to
| storage, stronger identity with durable logins, and of course
| better analytics tracking.
|
| It's not always the correct choice but native apps are the
| overall winner for mobile UX.
| spion wrote:
| Having petabytes of stats doesn't mean the interpretation of
| those stats is any good. The retention for your web app might
| suck, for example, because you're constantly showing popups
| to the users telling them to switch to the mobile app and
| once they leave you no longer see them in "the data".
|
| The problem with data is that you can't see the things that
| are real but not in the data.
| wallfacer wrote:
| Qualitative data can be valuable data, even in this
| quantitative age.
| survivorBias wrote:
| https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_Bias
|
| More often then not, the front end devs responsible for the
| app are not very good with "normal" web frontends - so they
| sabotage the competition, to reduce work. Also, web pages,
| could be repackaged into Apps by others leeching from the
| products attention.
| jollygoodshow wrote:
| Its typical to have a different set of engineers
| responsible for the web app. Certainly the case if you're
| not a tiny startup.
|
| Sabotage feels pointless given you're still competing
| against other native apps. Also I don't even know how you
| would 'sabotage' the competition, your average app engineer
| doesn't moonlight as a blackhat hacker.
| kuba-orlik wrote:
| But in the context of Bolt, I believe they aren't displaying
| ads in their app?
| manigandham wrote:
| My reply was against mobile app retention being a myth. I
| don't know the reasons for Bolt but it's unlikely to do
| with ads.
| JohnFen wrote:
| A lot of people I know will simply not use a service if the
| only way to do so is through an app, due to the dumpster fire
| that is security and privacy in apps. I understand that such
| people are a small percentage of the population, but I really
| do sometimes wonder if companies are even aware that they
| have a pool of potential customers that they've excluded from
| even trying their product out.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| There's probably more people who won't use something on
| their phone if there isn't an app for it. If it's for a
| bigger activity. Not that either population is that big.
| manigandham wrote:
| They are, but they're also aware of the effort vs return on
| dealing with a "small percentage of the population" as you
| admit. Sometimes its worth it, often it isn't.
| yellowapple wrote:
| Except that it literally takes more effort to exclude
| them than it does to not do so. Bolt is the prime example
| here: they _already have a working web app_ , and they go
| out of their way to block people from using it instead of
| the smartphone app, seemingly only in locales where they
| believe most people have smartphones. Why? What does that
| accomplish?
|
| It'd be understandable if the smartphone apps came first
| and the developers decided a web app wasn't worth it, but
| a lot of these smartphone-app-only developers use
| PhoneGap and other tools wherein one _already has to
| write a web app_.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| > Deception works momentarily and can have an immediate effect
| on some metrics. Long terms though, every user and no matter
| how smart or dumb, will eventually assess the value it gets
| them against the money, against their time, or against the
| "home screen real estate" they provided.
|
| Long term hardly matters for most these days, they're
| optimizing for $ and promotions as mercenaries. That metric
| bump will get the PM promoted where they'll jump ship to the
| next company and juice the app metrics the same.
| mojuba wrote:
| Exactly. Short terms tricks are often also used right before
| a funding round or acquisition.
| addicted wrote:
| My Reddit usage has basically plummeted to 0 at this point
| because of their pushing me towards an app.
|
| I think there are provable cases where an app almost certainly
| leads to less retention than more and something like Reddit,
| whose value lies in allowing you to explore the internet is
| almost certainly one of them.
| manigandham wrote:
| Reddit optimizes for user attention to sell ads. The mobile
| app is better at delivering that attention across the user
| base, even if a few users don't like it. Same thing with
| Quora and many others.
| Lucasoato wrote:
| I really can't understand why Reddit is pushing the app so
| hard. I mean, keep that as an option, but why creating an
| awful UX for the mobile web users? You gather more data but
| the product is worse, less users are staying and you're
| losing value at the end...
| saagarjha wrote:
| Increased engagement and better tracking.
| propogandist wrote:
| You drive high ad revenue with their mobile app, with all
| the data mining. The old reddit experience was destroyed to
| drive ad revenue, they don't care about UX.
|
| also, beware of reddit URLs bouncing through out.reddit.com
| -- which tracks all link clicks on reddit across mobile and
| desktop (profiling interests), regardless of login state
| Zambyte wrote:
| > You gather more data
|
| That's it. That's the whole story. Mobile apps provide more
| opportunity to spy on the user.
| usrn wrote:
| Push notifications. Once someone is hooked on the site a
| notification can get them back into the dopamine feedback
| loop very easily. I think this is why restaurant chains
| have started giving people free food to install their apps
| too (along with all the data they can sell now.)
|
| I think smartphones would be much less popular if people
| understood why corporations love "apps" so much. It's
| nothing like the older PC world full of software more or
| less for its own sake.
| sva_ wrote:
| > Push notifications.
|
| Do people not turn these off? When I get an unwanted
| notification, I immediately withdraw permissions to send
| notifications, or even uninstall the app
| pixl97 wrote:
| If your on HN you're already in a very filtered group
| that is less likely to be passive on abusive technology.
| OtmaneBenazzou wrote:
| bold of you to assume that the average user knows how to
| disable anything on their phone
| doliveira wrote:
| Kind of scary to imagine the experience of such an
| average user. "Evil" is not a bad word to describe the
| attitudes of such apps and services.
| sva_ wrote:
| I suppose you need to have some idea of how the system is
| structured to even consider turning certain "features"
| off.
| dawnerd wrote:
| Easy, harder for users to block the ads in apps. Apple /
| Google should allow add blockers for the entire OS.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Pihole works well here but obviously not end user
| friendly.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Heh, Google adding ad blockers.... I think you might be
| on the wrong timeline.
| jawline wrote:
| It is possible with SNI blocking to adblock on Android,
| even when apps use custom DNS revolvers (though not as
| effective). I built https://github.com/jawline/Puffer a
| while ago but haven't had the time to improve it much
| past proof of concept.
| bragh wrote:
| If reddit ever gets rid of old.reddit.com, that is the day
| that I stop using it.
| sva_ wrote:
| I think a lot of mods use it, and that's why they don't get
| rid of it - since reddit mods basically work for Reddit for
| free.
| andrepd wrote:
| I'm still shook that the i.reddit.com interface still works
| and is virtually unchanged for over 10 years now!
|
| If only more companies followed that principle and just left
| the bloody interfaces alone unless that had a very good
| reason.
| KronisLV wrote:
| > My Reddit usage has basically plummeted to 0 at this point
| because of their pushing me towards an app.
|
| My phone can't even work all that well with apps like that or
| Chrome browser/WebView for that matter. I use Opera on my
| phone because they allow me to have 50-100 tabs open with no
| issues, but maybe that's only passable because I never do
| anything important like banking on the phone anyways.
|
| So, whenever I'm coerced into installing an app for actually
| browsing content, reading comments, looking at media (vs
| something more one-off like ordering food/a ride), I just
| look the other way. Ergo, I never use Reddit on my phone
| without spoofing the user agent or whatever the "request
| desktop site" option in Opera does, but then the UI becomes
| unusable on a phone.
|
| Sadly, cases like mine don't show up in any metrics, nor do
| people care about that use case, so it's likely that this
| will keep being done a lot.
| f1refly wrote:
| You can also use i.reddit.com or old.reddit.com, they're
| both mich better than the regular site and i.reddit.com is
| adapted to mobile.
| laurencei wrote:
| Check out the "Apollo" reddit app. Its a 3rd party app for
| Reddit. I've started using it and would never go back to the
| native Reddit app. No ads, very fast, constant updates etc.
| solarkraft wrote:
| I wish I knew why they're pushing the app so hard so I can
| specifically avoid doing that. If they want you to just
| have any app installed they'd win even if you install
| Apollo.
| joshstrange wrote:
| > If they want you to just have any app installed they'd
| win even if you install Apollo.
|
| Sorry but this just isn't true. They want the app for the
| tracking, push notifications, etc. Apollo doesn't have
| the tracking and does it's own push notifications (so you
| don't get Reddit's marketing-type notifications). Also
| it's much harder, if not impossible, to block ads in an
| app vs the web. Apollo has zero ads, they absolutely
| don't want you using it, even the web is better for
| Reddit. It's only a matter of time before they "Twitter"
| up their API even more than they already do. There are
| multiple things (stats, polls, certain profile features)
| that they don't expose through their API.
| moneywoes wrote:
| Does Apollo use their official apis won't they just
| deprecate those like Twitter did?
| joshstrange wrote:
| Yep, that's why I said this:
|
| > It's only a matter of time before they "Twitter" up
| their API even more than they already do.
|
| When that happens I imagine I'll fall off of Reddit.
| "old.reddit.com" and Apollo are the only reasons it's
| bearable to use other than a Google search destination.
|
| There is and will be for years if not decades a ton of
| important/useful information on reddit. Things like
| cooking tips, home server building, relatively unbiased
| product reviews, video game help, and the list goes on. A
| good portion of that content is evergreen. But as for
| participating, I won't go back to the official app after
| using Apollo, even if that means leaving Reddit after
| over a decade.
| 3np wrote:
| If you don't require authenticated functionality:
|
| https://r.nf/
|
| https://github.com/spikecodes/libreddit
|
| https://codeberg.org/teddit/teddit
| maneesh wrote:
| I agree that Reddit pushes too hard to get people to use the
| mobile app.
|
| I found a good trick was to use AN app, just not _their_ app.
| Apollo on iOS and Boost on android are really good
| alternatives to the official Reddit app, which is littered
| with ads.
| thejosh wrote:
| Best thing reddit did to break my use of them:
|
| 1/ New UI, forcing people on to old.reddit.com 2/ Mobile
| pushes HARD for their app, which is pretty buggy on Android
| from what I can tell 3/ old.reddit.com now shows "other
| links" midway down the page! Absolutely useless. 4/
| old.reddit.com now forces "show more comments"
|
| This is why people left digg to go to reddit. :-)
|
| All I want is the old reddit interface in the middle, feel
| free to place ads on the right. I even went reddit gold or
| whatever it was called for a while. I really miss the old
| reddit UI, there is so much good tech information on reddit
| for random things, that it's a shame.
| gtirloni wrote:
| _> without an annoying app!_
|
| I fail to see why an app that delivers the promised feature can
| be annoying. More annoying than installing extensions, messing
| with HTTP requests, etc?
| AntonyGarand wrote:
| Have a look at the images on top of the post, the bolt websites
| highlight 5 reasons why you might prefer to use the browser.
|
| If Bolt didn't artificially geo-restrict this feature,
| navigating to their site would be all you need to do, and
| that's less annoying than using their app. The current method,
| installing an extension and making a rule for it, is the result
| of this restriction, but would not be needed without bolt's
| restrictions.
| gtirloni wrote:
| I'd just have installed the app and got on with my life. But
| I admire the effort.
| dangus wrote:
| Same. If there's a problem, it's not this particular app,
| it's the status quo of Apple and Google's ecosystem.
|
| I think there are really obvious reasons for ridesharing
| and taxi apps to exclusively use apps. Notifications are
| very important to the experience (which you can't do on iOS
| Safari). Having persistent location access like a
| navigation app is another key part of the system.
|
| Don't like it? Put your arm up and hail a cab or call the
| dispatch office to request a ride, that's what we had to do
| not even 20 years ago.
|
| The app store duopoly and privacy problem isn't one that's
| solved by playing whack-a-mole with individual companies on
| those platforms. The way to solve those problems is by
| regulating Google and Apple's App Stores for both privacy
| and business practices.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| We're only a few more years away from very few services being
| available outside of the google/apple app ecosystems.
|
| Most apps don't do anything that couldn't just be a webpage yet
| we're being forced into handing control and service cut to
| apple and google and opening up more intimate data to service
| providers.
| Strom wrote:
| As a daily Bolt user I have two main guesses as to why they want
| everyone using the app.
|
| 1) GPS tracking. They want to know where you are at all times.
| The app makes this tracking easier than a webpage.
|
| 2) Upselling. The Bolt app has front and center upselling to
| their car rental service, their scooter rental service, and their
| food delivery service. All these services share the same account
| and payment info too. -- Do these exist in the web version? I
| don't see them on the screenshots. These upsells can be
| implemented on the web too of course, but that probably hasn't
| happened as it requires web apps for those services too.
| verisimi wrote:
| I'm glad that geo-fencing was mentioned.
|
| This is what I think all these apps - Kuba, Bolt and all those
| food delivery companies are. They are changing behaviour at
| present, they make things easy and advantageous for the user.
| Then the trap will be sprung.
|
| Similar to how corporate petrol stations and corporate super
| stores drop their prices to force local shops out of business.
| Once they have control and a monopolistic position they can do
| what they like re prices.
|
| Here these companies are working with governance directives to
| decrease traffic on the roads - it suits the corporates for
| consumers to have less ability to travel. Making it easy for
| food, local travel etc whilst making it uncomfortable to have a
| car (extra regulations, decreasing capacity on roads, greater
| licensing fees, etc) is part of the plan.
|
| The concern is that once we lose the freedom of independent
| travel that we have with private cars, that won't be coming back.
| You will be geo-fenced.
|
| This itself fits very nicely with the dystopian agenda I see on
| the horizon, where if you are not considered a good citizen, your
| ability to travel and interact with the system will be curtailed.
| We see this with the freezing of protestor bank accounts in
| Canada, China's social credit system, green passes to access
| shops, etc. Geo fencing will be a part of that.
| AtNightWeCode wrote:
| Yes. The trend I have seen is that companies reversed the
| process when it comes to blocking. They block everything and
| then open for the traffic they want. Any new or minor ISP is
| blocked by default.
| verisimi wrote:
| > This is what I think all these apps - Kuba, Bolt and all
| those food delivery companies are.
|
| I meant Uber, Bolt and all those food delivery companies are!!
| Not the author's name!
| muh_gradle wrote:
| I thought this was about Bolt, the payment and checkout app.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| I know, it's a bit confusing for non EU users, but Bolt (the
| ride hailing app, formerly Taxify) is quite popular at least in
| the Baltics and in a bunch of other random countries (I used it
| in Kenya a lot and it worked quite well)
| gregdoesit wrote:
| I formerly worked at Uber. I'm surprised that Bolt blocks the web
| app from working. Uber also built a web app which is incredibly
| lightweight - here's a summary on how it was built [1]. It's a
| life saver especially if e.g. at an airport and you pay for data
| over roaming. Uber doesn't exactly advertise m.uber.com, but
| there's no blocking of it.
|
| My suspect is that Bold wants you to use their app as they can eg
| send push notifications, and gather more metadata from users -
| some of which can be used for eg more signal on determining if a
| request might be fraudulent.
|
| [1] https://eng.uber.com/m-uber/
| notpushkin wrote:
| I'm not sure if it isn't blocked now, but I remember m.uber
| being blocked for Russian users a couple years ago. My phone
| died and I had to change trains in a couple dozen minutes in
| the middle of the night, so this wasn't a very pleasant
| experience :')
| mattlondon wrote:
| Just tried it in London - logged in as usual, all looks good
| until you try to book, then it tells you booking is not
| available and to use the app.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| I tried this once in London and it wouldn't work.
| captn3m0 wrote:
| Uber actually had two of these: m.uber and dial.uber.com which
| was geo-fenced to India and from what I understood (looking at
| the UX, API calls etc) built by a separate team.
|
| The latter was shut down unceremoniously a few years ago, but
| that was always my favourite thing to point out how over-
| engineered Uber often was - to the point of having two separate
| mobile websites for the exact same purpose.
| gregdoesit wrote:
| Wow, I never knew of dial.uber.com!! m.uber.com was built by
| an engineering team in India, but for global usage.
| pbreit wrote:
| Lyft has a nice one, too: https://ride.lyft.com/
| current_thing wrote:
| > we, the users, are compliant with such abuse of monopoly.
|
| But Bolt is not a monopoly. There are many taxi services in Riga.
|
| > I invite you to boycott any company that forces (or coerces)
| you to install an app...
|
| I do not think I will boycott Bolt just because you hacked their
| product and somehow become outraged. Bolt rides are cheaper than
| the alternative and .. the app works. The alternative mainstream
| taxi app needs an ios upgrade, and the ios upgrade fails on my
| shitty old phone.
|
| Edit: There is no uber in riga looks like. Nice work, but running
| a company that generates cash at scale is hard. So i am
| sympathetic to the app developer.
| edvards wrote:
| Not really, it is sort of a monopoly. The only competitor app
| we had was Yandex Taxi, but ever since the war we don't have it
| here anymore.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Did Uber exit the market in the region completely?
| edvards wrote:
| It never was a thing in Latvia, and neither was Lyft. I
| don't recall Bolt (ex Taxify) ever having another app
| competitor except Yandex Taxi
| Strom wrote:
| For what it's worth Uber is still in the neighboring
| Estonia, which is also the headquarters of Bolt.
|
| Uber entered Estonia quite early and did its classic market
| share grab where it completely dominated. However they
| quickly lost that market share to Bolt (in a period of a
| few years, and even before it was called Bolt - it was
| Taxify back then) because of local market understanding and
| more concentrated marketing/advertising. Nowadays Uber
| still "works", but you have to wait 20 minutes for a car,
| compared to 2 minutes with Bolt. I get a sense that a good
| chunk of Uber drivers are banned from Bolt, but this is
| just a hunch based on the Uber drivers accepting low fee
| rides during surge pricing on Bolt.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Okay, yeah I'd used Uber once or twice when I moved to
| Estonia but Bolt just so completely dominated that I
| switched over to using that whenever I was in Estonia and
| then if you wanted to go really low priced you could use
| Yandex Taxi (although I mainly used that in Armenia
| because that was the best local option at the time).
| kuba-orlik wrote:
| > But Bolt is not a monopoly. There are many taxi services in
| Riga.
|
| My experience is that if you don't speak Latvian, Bolt is
| basically the only choice to order a ride in Riga. Oh trust me,
| how I've tried. I never use those ride hailing services unless
| there's no other option left.
|
| > No thanks I will not boycott Bolt because you chose to
| violate some ToS and hack their product and somehow become
| outraged.
|
| Well, I'm not inviting people to boycott Bolt because I "hacked
| their product". I'm inviting to boycott Bolt because they are
| using dark patterns to take control away from users.
| current_thing wrote:
| Agree with this part.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| At the end you talk about having laws passed. What sort of
| law do you want passed exactly (and do you mean EU, specific
| EU countries, US, elsewhere)?
| kuba-orlik wrote:
| I guess one thing could be to force businesses of certain
| scale (or ideally, of any scale) to not offer services
| exclusive to a particular digital ecosystem, unless that's
| the only way to provide that service.
|
| My local restaurant uses an app to do loyalty stamps... I
| really wish tey would come back to the traditional paper-
| based ones
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Why should the government mandate something like that?
| Why don't you just give feedback to the businesses that
| they should make these changes and if you and enough
| other people feel the same way, they probably will. I
| understand government intervention in cases of dark
| patterns that harm consumers (e.g. the recent Intuit
| settlement in the U.S.) and to protect certain groups
| that are likely to be harmed or neglected (e.g. the
| handicapped, blind, etc.) but I'm not sure I understand
| the need for government to intervene in a case like this
| where it is a business choice and the consumer while
| annoyed is not really harmed and there is no monopoly (as
| far as I remember in Estonia when I lived there a few
| years ago it was quite easy to hail a normal cab anywhere
| and was the same when I travelled the Baltics), and
| personally I get very nervous when the government starts
| regulating very specific things.
| ldhdksbdndmd wrote:
| this will never happen.
|
| outside of the imperial centers, "big tech" have already
| reached into governments.
|
| for example, latin america governments make it very
| difficult to schedule a dmv visit without a cellphone
| number AND a meta/facebook's whatsApp account. While all
| public universities accepted a free google meet account
| for covid time remote classes, and now got a surprise
| multimillion bill to access material uploaded to the
| system after the original offer period.
|
| things are already way past the point of no return.
|
| while rich engineers are busy fiddling with websites to
| solver their own problems (could your immediate family
| have hailed that ride when in a similar situation?)
| companies have already encroached themselves in the very
| foundation of the institutions that could solve this via
| public policy.
| darepublic wrote:
| Web too good and too free. So we get crap like Reddit harrassing
| mobile web users to use their app and purposely sabotaging their
| own web interface to further that.
| nicbou wrote:
| I can't speak for others, but I refuse to use most mobile apps.
| Websites run in a much smaller sandbox with an ad blocker. I can
| trust them to stop running code on my device after I close the
| tab. It won't try to hijack my attention with push notifications
| and icon badges.
|
| If a business forces me to use their app, I won't use that
| business until I'm out of alternatives.
| jjjjjjjjjjjjjjj wrote:
| This reminds me of Reddit's approach to mobile. They make their
| mobile web interface excruciating to use, and block features
| client side just to push you onto their app.
|
| I'm guessing it has to do with mobile users being more lucrative?
| martin_a wrote:
| Add the German site "ebay-kleinanzeigen.de" to this list. Some
| responsive design would be easy, but they'd rather have their
| users use the app with more ads and all the other sweet revenue
| juice.
| laurencei wrote:
| Its funny though - because their mobile web interface is SOOOO
| bad, I'm using the "Apollo" app, which means I dont see any
| Reddit ads, and its a much better experience.
|
| If they didnt have such a crappy web experience, I would
| probably just use the native web page and see some ads.
|
| So its actually driving people away to alternatives that
| reduces their revenue. Crazy...
| throwaway2048 wrote:
| I'm about 90% sure that reddit is going to pull a twitter and
| kill off API access so apps like Apollo no longer function.
| brycewray wrote:
| The result of which will be, paraphrasing an old letter to
| the editor for a magazine that had temporarily stopped
| publishing such letters...
|
| ====
|
| Dear Reddit,
|
| What a coincidence. You've stopped allowing third-party
| apps to have access to your API, and I've stopped visiting
| your site.
|
| Sincerely,
|
| A Former User
| sp332 wrote:
| Is that a net negative for them though? Unless you're a
| really active or popular poster, you're probably just
| costing them money browsing the site and not looking at
| ads.
| brycewray wrote:
| Yeah, thought of that after I replied. OTOH, it would
| leave them with people not sufficiently tech-savvy to
| block ads, which is reminiscent of the old joke about a
| jury's being composed of "12 people who weren't smart
| enough to evade jury duty." I guess they don't care about
| that one way or the other as long as Some EyeBalls See
| Ads.
| sp332 wrote:
| Yeah it's definitely not what you would want if you were
| building a community. But maybe it's ok if you just want
| cash.
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| Well, if I'm not there providing expert input on esoteric
| programming stuff, memes on StarTrekMemes, or
| participating in my local community's small sub, they'll
| all decline in value
|
| Reddit will turn into a bad TikTok clone and probably die
| off to the real TikTok if too many people like us leave
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Exactly that.
|
| I'm pretty sure they made the math, and that's the reason
| old-reddit and the API are still alive despite the many
| threats and deadlines they published for taking them out.
|
| In fact, I would not be surprised if most deep content
| come from those (despite most users not even knowing
| about them), because the new interface and the app are
| both extremely focused on shallow stuff.
| leadingthenet wrote:
| To be fair, people have been saying this for years, and
| it's still yet to happen.
|
| It is, however, true that they've been slowly adding
| features that can't be accessed via an API, so I think the
| more likely scenario is that they'll just try to make
| third-party apps artificially less competitive, betting
| that it might add up long term.
| stefan_ wrote:
| Sure, in another 10 years or so. They have increased
| headcount 10x and VC investment 10x but execution is
| forever stuck at "worse than Twitter" levels.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Reddit is about 10x > twitter. lol
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| talk about losing half your users overnight lol
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| I'm really surprised why the didn't just buy clients from
| developers like the ones who make Apollo. They are so much
| better than the one they make
| kuba-orlik wrote:
| My suspicion is that it's harder to monitor network traffic in
| an app than it is on the Web, and they want to push as much
| trackers as possible
| nguyenkien wrote:
| You mean easier to track on app than web, right?
| pixl97 wrote:
| "This app would like to use location services"
|
| 'Allow'
|
| Or
|
| 'Uninstall'
| cdrini wrote:
| You can actually disable the open in app prompt; it's kind of
| hidden, but if you open the menu > settings > uncheck "Request
| to open in app". This makes it usable for me.
| golergka wrote:
| Reddit is just content that you browse and occasionally leave a
| text comment on, it fits browser perfectly.
|
| A taxi app, on the other hand, has a lot of functionality that
| is very hard to fit into a browser and implement well.
| stavros wrote:
| I have a location where I am and a location I want to get to.
| I need a way to specify the two, and a way to enter payment
| info. That is literally all a taxi app should do.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Why is that all the taxi app should do?
|
| Getting a message "heavy traffic, your car has been
| delayed" is what everyone else seeming rational really
| wants. Messaging and awareness of the current state of the
| transaction they are in.
| stavros wrote:
| Before it arrives, you mean? That's still not something
| that a web page can't easily do.
| golergka wrote:
| Okay, that's the 90% of the taxi app. What about the other
| 90%?
| edmcnulty101 wrote:
| Reddit mobile web is so full of dark patterns.
|
| It really put a dent in how much I used to love Reddit.
|
| And the mobile app is terrible terrible turd of epic
| proportions. The person who designed it is a monster.
| donatzsky wrote:
| More lucrative in the sense that they can collect a lot more
| information on the user :/
| guilamu wrote:
| And that's it is a bit harder to block ads in-app.
| kylebenzlee wrote:
| retube wrote:
| try this www.reddit.com/.compact. No ads, a billion times
| easier to grok
| unsafecast wrote:
| They do the same thing to old.reddit.com (cookie banners
| redirect there, etc)
|
| Like, I get that you don't update it anymore, and I don't need
| (or want) you to, but the new version is insanely slow on my
| computer, so just let me use whatever I want please.
| rekoil wrote:
| The "new" redesign is just so bad. Viewing a post only shows
| comments 1 level deep, and then to see the rest of the thread
| you have to click "continue this thread" and then you have to
| go back to get to any other threads, just constant tiresome
| clicks...
|
| Reading the comments on a post in old reddit is a pleasure,
| but in the redesign it's a complete mess. Why?
|
| Oh and what the hell is the deal with links to content
| containing other completely unrelated content as well?
|
| The day they kill old.reddit.com _or_ API access to force me
| to stop using Apollo (which is an insanely well-built reddit
| client for iOS) is the day I 'll just reluctantly stop using
| reddit entirely.
| draw_down wrote:
| growt wrote:
| I don't install social media apps like Reddit, Facebook or
| Twitter. And all of them are trying to force me to install their
| apps. There is even a similar restriction with Facebook
| messenger, which you can use in mobile Chrome if you use the
| "request desktop site" feature, but not on the normal mobile
| site.
| Hamcha wrote:
| Does this kind of stuff really never backfire? I can see maybe
| with Bolt or Uber since you're in a hurry you might just cave,
| but I see this behavior everywhere!
|
| In a world where every app tries to exploit "spur of the moment"
| brain shortcircuits a big nag seems counterintuitive, e.g.
| Reddit's "Download the app or go away" is my free reminder that I
| have better things to do.
| [deleted]
| Fiahil wrote:
| > (I'm not going to share the particular details on which request
| and which query parameter that is)
|
| Why not ? It's not like that would matter anyway...
| kuba-orlik wrote:
| Author here. I just don't want to make patching it easier for
| Bolt
| natch wrote:
| About one thing you said, Apple and Google need not be lumped
| together. They are as different as night and day.
| unsafecast wrote:
| I think they meant that ios and android are the only
| companies that apps are made for (so they're the only
| platforms people actually use), hence it's a duopoly.
| [deleted]
| andrew_ wrote:
| That doesn't add up. Even if they become aware of the thread
| and were oblivious as to the side effect of omitting the
| parameter, they're going to be able to enumerate the query
| parameters they use internally fairly quickly.
| Fiahil wrote:
| Well, I don't like to be a party pooper, but there's only two
| way this can go :
|
| - nobody working at Bolt care that they geofencing is lame.
| The fault was there since the beginning and the two
| freelancers maintaining the web version have a long backlog,
| little visibility and no bargaining power. Plus, they haven't
| got their contract renewed yet.
|
| - They have no idea your workaround exists. Even if they are
| bored enough to read Hacker News on a Sunday, their web app
| is going to be discontinued on the next API upgrade anyway.
|
| Bonus point :
|
| An app is just a nice frontend. I'm pretty sure you could
| make your own web client and order your own ride with a few
| API calls even if they patch the fault.
| ehnto wrote:
| > So basically I made it easier for me to give Bolt money. You're
| welcome, Bolt!
|
| This is the key takeaway I think, so many online businesses spend
| so much time trying to push me into their app, or accounts, or
| subscriptions, that they forget they're supposed to be taking my
| money. There are plenty of services I would have loved to use,
| but ya'll made it so damn hard to give you my money and order
| your services that I gave up.
| pixl97 wrote:
| There are some people's money that's not worth taking for one
| reason or another. In the software world it's not uncommon to
| loose customers because the features they need would cost too
| much in support and upkeep vs the revenue it brings in.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| What you're missing is that a large majority of tech was never
| about customers' money. It's about "growth & engagement" which
| can be leveraged to raise astronomical amounts of VC funding,
| much more than the product itself is ever expected to make
| (sometimes the product is fundamentally unprofitable and will
| never make _any_ money).
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-06-19 23:02 UTC)