Technology

Jeez. The speed at which I've gone from "man it sucks that Apollo is shutting down but I still really enjoy Reddit and will suffer the first-party client" to "wow, Reddit is really trying to destroy their service and it's probably best I don't invest any more time there" is insane... going to draft up some thoughts and a probable farewell message for my frequented subs and followers there. End of an era.

It's one thing to test a new idea or a UX tweak or similar on a small portion of users - but just turning off a key way to access your service is so just so weird to me. How many of Reddit's decisions at this point are some version of, "hey, how angry do they get? What can we get away with?"

This is both informative and unfortunate.

It's unbelievable how's user hostile all of these major site have become. I deleted my 11 year old Reddit account today and while it hurt a little it's important that we send a message and not use Reddit at least until they repeal this bullshit.

old.reddit.com isn't going anywhere

-- a spez lie

Dollar-store Elon Musk is going full "fuck you" to redditors.

This... is dumb. Reddit gets traffic from people using it as a secondary search engine to get relevant answers.

Most people on the Internet view it from mobile. Reddit already makes their mobile experience genuinely awful despite this. Blocking it entirely?

The herding to their mobile app is so transparent (and DEFINITELY through stick, not carrot) I'm morbidly curious to see what horrible things they planning to put in their app that they know users will loathe, that requires their alternatives to be zero.

My mobile is experimenting with not visiting reddit.

It's getting worse by the minute. I really really hope Lemmy usage picks up.

Having already rather violently shot himself in both feet, spez has started aiming for his other body parts.

I hate when people use passive voice in these things. It's such a slimy way to try and avoid responsibility.

"We have blocked you from using a mobile browser." is the active voice. It includes a subject ("we") and a verb ("blocked"). It says that someone made a decision, executed that decision, and is responsible.

"It looks like ... ", " ... is currently unavailable" is so fucking weaselly and irresponsible. You are 100% a complete piece of shit if you ever say something like that. You are not responsible enough to handle a Wendy's drive-through order, let alone a large organization.

This happening in the middle of the API gate seems like a pretty dumb move, even for Reddit.

Damn now this is just next level bullshit. I thought that even if I can't use Infinity anymore I can still access reddit through a firefox mobile with adblock and privacy addons to make the ux somewhat bearable.

So..

What were they thinking doing this experiment in the heat of the third-party app protest?? Are they trying to aim for their foot?

Elon and Donald taught everyone that when you start being a dick, double down on it.

Love how totally out of touch with human psychology these decision makers are.

As a sysadmin - I sort of welcome every dumb thing reddit does. I'll get more sign ups on my Lemmy instance :D

Pretty disappointing to see something I've spent so much time with go down the tubes like this. I know that for a lot of people, Reddit has been dying for years, but I've stuck to old.reddit and my Android apps, and haven't looked at /r/all in a long, long time. I unsubscribed from all of the big/default subreddits, and just hang out in my happy subs where people (mostly) are people and aren't lunatics, and it's still been a nice place.

Killing the mobile apps is pretty much the last straw for me. I'm sure I'll still click on search results from Reddit sometimes, but I won't be logged in anymore and it will only be on a browser with ad-blocking and privacy features. There is no way I'm downloading their app.

If they were to go this route for all users, I would simply never use Reddit again on my phone. And yes, I'm in the minority, and yes, I know they don't care about losing me, but man, what a bummer.

Reddit's unwavering stubbornness to continue spiraling is just plain sad. What a way to go.

Between this and Twitter, I feel like "enshittification" is really the word of the past year. It's incredible to watch these massive social networks completely turn on their users in the name of profit.

Some asshole at Deloitte is going to make a ton of money writing case studies about this.

Fuel on the flames huh? Got to love their tactical timing with this. Let's piss everyone off in every possible way?

It's almost like Elon bought Reddit as well as Twitter the way this is going.

I want to leave Reddit completely so bad. They're ruining such a good thing, I was a member for 13 years. I hope Lemmy kinda just naturally replaces it for me but I'm sure there's some stuff that's just the best to go to Reddit for, I hope that changes slowly and people start using Lemmy or something else. But hey im here and it feels pretty good. Feels kinda like when I found Reddit for the first time all those years ago. Hello everyone :)

Unbelievable. Are they actively trying to get as many people as possible to leave their platform all together?

Steve saw Elon's work at twitter and thought, "Watch me. I can ruin a company faster."

Their approach here seems inherently broken. People aren't going to use the app they don't want to use.

It's funny you post this. Not more than 5 minutes ago I was trying to figure out what was wrong with Firefox on my phone. I kept trying to login over and over again on mobile and it didn't work.

A week or so ago, I really felt like reddit was nearly an S tier social media platform. It's heartbreaking to see it completely destroy itself. It's nearing Twitter in how bad it works.

They already crippled the mobile site years ago and put login walls from a long while ago, way before the pandemic. old.reddit.com was the only thing that let me skip it. They deserve to die out.

The more they push their shitty mobile app, the more people won't use it.

Honestly this is so absurd it's funny. Peak business brain to think that people in 2023 are willing to download an app and register an account to simply access content.

hahah thats ridiculous, removing the last thing that made it actually bearable on mobile, now of all times...

Sure I had fun, but was it good for people? Communities of people did good things, not Reddit. Reddit was a great source for hate speech, propaganda, and ads. People did their best to be good in spite of the noise.

Reddit needs to die. People will find each other again, we always do.

Honestly, mobile browing (even using old.reddit) has been garbage for years because they detect your mobile OS and constantly try to push their app on you. Click on link, do you want to open in mobile app? let me open the playstore for you. And then you also get limited comments. To see more comments open in mobile app... You could do a case study in how to alienate your customers into leaving your platform on just mobile browsing reddit.

Wow, they're really putting some effort into alienating their user base. What a shame.

Earlier today, I was reviewing some Lemmy information in Google, and one of the links was to Reddit. I didn't think anything of it, but I clicked and saw the message that's given to mobile users saying you have to view NSFW content in the Reddit app. Fine, I've got the garbage app installed already for situations just like this. I click the link, and it throws an error stating my third party app (Boost, in this case) must be uninstalled in order to open links in Reddit.

No it doesn't, Reddit. And why do you care what's installed on my phone?

The API issue was a huge nail into the coffin of the user experience at reddit. For sure, mobile site will disappear and then old.reddit.

Everything about this is utterly tone deaf, you can see it in u/spez answer in his AMA about how the company will continue to be profit driven until it’s profitable. Bro, this is not how you talk to your user base. Your actions, policies, and strategic outlook should be toward driving the user experience and your service so that it is profitable. Not degrading all things for grinding down every extra cent at the expense of your entire companies differentiators.

Fuck spez, fuck reddit.