
Reddit app got 50M downloads by making mobile web experience miserable - alborzb
https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/09/02/reddit-gets-its-app-to-50-million-play-store-downloads-mostly-by-making-the-mobile-web-experience-miserable/
======
r721
Recent reddit app discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24208958](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24208958)
(650 comments)

------
ragnese
I genuinely wonder if the people in charge of Reddit ever come around to
places like this to read these sentiments. Hell, they actually only need to
read actual Reddit posts to understand that many people are utterly disgusted
by their tactics to try and force you onto their mobile app, they're upset at
how slow the (default) site is, etc.

Maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe people will keep using it forever. But I doubt
it. They've turned Reddit from something that had potential to exist for a
long time into something closer to TikTok (which, even without the current
drama, was never going to be more than a fad IMO). There are more efficient
ways to get low-effort shitposts and memes than Reddit. Those who want that
will move on, and the people who were interested in more than that are leaving
now.

~~~
screye
I have come to the conclusion that reddit is 2 apps/websites.

The first is a tiktok-esque waste of time, instant gratification meme machine.
Everyone on this app uses the reddit native app and doesn't care about dark
patterns. They would never know that reddit's app is shit, because they
literally don't care enough.

The 2nd is a Hackernews-esque collection of hobbyist sub-forums. These people
are invested in their hobbies and sub-reddits. They use reddit to interact and
discuss, but also a source of niche-news for their hobby. Every one here has a
3rd party reddit app or uses RES. (if you don't, please do). Unlike twitter,
reddit lets 3rd parties offer feature complete wrappers for reddit. This group
has ad-block, but will occasionally give someone gold. This group hates
reddit, but also has no where to go.

If a person tries to make reddit both, then it is an annoying experience. I
use reddit entirely as the latter. The front-page and r/all are garbage to me.
Every super popular (barring sports) subreddit is trash. But, my niche
subreddits are literally the best places on the internet to gain niche
information.

Examples where the subreddit is the best source of open discussion on the
internet for that niche: dota2, manga, soccer, metal, prog, civilized
discourse, history, male fashion (kinda), calisthenics, small cities, fantasy
fiction, niche YT channels, super authentic cooking....and that's just for me.

PSA : Use a 3rd party reddit app (SYNC is my preferred. Pay up the 2$ dollars.
It is worth it). Use RES, and enforce filters strongly. Use RedditProTools to
detect trolls, bias and top contributors. Use Imagus (hoverzoom has malware)
for pop-image/video viewer. These will greatly enhance your reddit experience.

~~~
maest
> Examples where the subreddit is the best source of open discussion on the
> internet for that niche: dota2, manga, soccer, metal, prog, civilized
> discourse, history, male fashion (kinda), calisthenics, small cities,
> fantasy fiction, niche YT channels, super authentic cooking....and that's
> just for me.

With the risk of sounding elitist, for some of those topics the main subreddit
is overran with pointless and repetitive memes. You'd have to go to the
r/true* subreddit to get the serious, in depth discussions.

~~~
colinmhayes
Unfortunately many of the true subreddits are now alt right havens.

~~~
stjohnswarts
There are plenty of both extremes, what's mostly missing are moderate
"political" subreddits that aren't full of SJW and cancel culture. That's why
I only bother on the hobby/computer subs. They're generally fairly well
behaved and neutral as long as politics doesn't come up and the better mods
are good at shutting such nonsense down. I don't care if you're a biden or
trump support if I'm in r/diy

~~~
colinmhayes
r/neoliberal for discussion of center left politics focusing on evidence based
policy.

~~~
srtjstjsj
That one confuses me because I've only ever heard the label used as a slur so
I expect the posts to be like /r/EnlightenedCentrism but it's actually a
boring pro-Democrat sub. Certainly not evidence-based policy, unless you
consider "removing Trump" as a policy.. . which apparently is Biden's
platform, so yeah it fits.

~~~
colinmhayes
The name is a joke. Moderate democrats get labeled as neoliberals by reddit
leftists so they embraced it, the sub isn't actually neoliberal. Right now
there are a lot of memes, but once the election happens it'll go back to
normal. You can still look at the effortposts which are pretty high quality.

------
fc373745
There is a phenomenon when older and older groups enter a social platform, the
quality of that platform deteriorates for the younger generation, and perhaps
maybe even overall. We saw this with facebook, We saw this with twitter, and
we're now seeing this with Reddit.

(yes, there is twitter outside of tech, and it's content quality is extremely
poor and juvenile)

Reddit, at one point, was just science, memes, an occasional atheist post, and
and A list Celebrity AMA every other day - a platform that provided niche
content mostly for age 18-30 year old Americans.

Now with the flood of all sorts of ideas from all fronts, It has become way
too overwhelming to really digest what everyone has to offer - Diving deep
into reddit will eventually and inevitably get anyone upset and bothered.

As Reddit builds its foundation upon favoring ad populum, it is starting to
become evident that not every voice should be heard, especially when the
average american individual is as uneducated as he or she is.

“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our
political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means
that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”

― Isaac Asimov

I'd like to one up Asimov - that it is not a false notion, but literally the
core tenet of what democracy is.

That all opinions are of equal value.

And in all honesty... this is dangerous.

~~~
dimmke
I've been using Reddit since 2009 (after the Digg exodus for ironically - a
bad redesign.), and the biggest change I've noticed (aside from the terrible
single page app they switched over to) is how massively popular schadenfreude
content is now. Subreddits like "Justice Served" and "Public Freakout",
"Malicious Compliance" "Entitled Parents", the list goes on and on.

It's all "This person/people/group did something bad and now are getting their
comeuppance." and the site has become like a nerdy version of World Star Hip
Hop.

You really can't browse the regular Reddit front page without encountering a
lot of content that is designed to upset you. I've started to actually hate
using Reddit. Niche subreddits are still useful in limited ways, but it's a
shame to see things go this way. Reddit had a good run.

~~~
Magnets
Reddit is completely infested with politics too, many subs that you wouldn't
expect to be political are clearly aligned a certain way.

~~~
ycombinete
Yeah, I’ve noticed recently. For instance /r/ActualPublicFreakOuts is quite
conservative, in comparison to /r/PublicFreakOuts

~~~
srtjstjsj
That happened as a reaction to PublicFreakouts becoming ProtestsAgainstPolice

------
jpe-210
From my perspective there are only two ways to browse Reddit nowadays:
visiting the old.reddit.com site and through a third-party mobile app.

I’m not one to speak either about the changing dynamics on the site since it’s
launch, but my experience there as a whole has shifted hard into the direction
of carefully curated subreddits. Avoiding anything I don’t want to see is just
as easy as never visiting All or Popular.

~~~
isoprophlex
I use i.reddit.com on mobile, it seems distinct from old.reddit.com?

~~~
cmeacham98
old.reddit serves you the old desktop interface, even on mobile. i.reddit
serves you the very old mobile interface, even on desktop.

~~~
livre
i.reddit.com serves the old mobile interface but the very old mobile interface
is served at
[https://www.reddit.com/.mobile?keep_extension=True](https://www.reddit.com/.mobile?keep_extension=True)

------
alangibson
It's always interesting to see how the value of communities gets concentrated
and captured.

1\. Communities for around disparate forums 2\. Those communities migrate to
centralized service because of more eyeballs in one place, less work to
maintain infrastructure, etc. 3\. Centralized service captures increasing
amount of value by running more ads, closing off more open channels, etc.

This is clearly the lifecycle for Facebook, Reddit, and arguably Google. My
question is: what's step 4? Are communities going to start unbundling, or does
this trend just continue?

~~~
bleepblorp
Step 4 is that communities die.

Well over half of all web traffic is from cell phones, and the mobile-first
web is hostile to long text content. It is also _incredibly_ hostile to user-
created long text content.

With the exception of people who need keyboards for work (tech workers,
academics, journalists, writers, etc) there's no one left online to make
community content anymore. Hence, HN (a community for tech workers and
similarly minded people) and Twitter (where most _organic,_ non-public-
relations major players are journalists, academics, or writers).

What passes for web communities have almost entirely become playgrounds for
intellectual lightweights to spew memes at each other combined with a platform
for entities posting inorganic content that pretends to be genuine.

~~~
alangibson
> With the exception of people who need keyboards for work there's no one left
> online to make community content anymore

I was about to agree with you, then I thought about Instagram. It is truly a
passive consumption platform. Getting 10 comments on a post by a user with
500K followers is pretty normal.

~~~
ZephyrBlu
Wow, really? That would be depressing for me.

You have 500k followers and only 10 of them comment on your posts. That's
terrible engagement.

~~~
naringas
still beats the engangement of a TV advertisment

and that's what instagram is all about

------
jwr
This is a generally trending idea: make your users' experience miserable,
improve short-term numbers, lose in the longer term.

We're seeing the same pattern with ad-loaded sites, "Your ad choices" popups
with those terrible "Manage My Preferences" dialogs — I'm sure all those
result in quarterly bonuses for a bunch of managers. But they are not the
Right Thing to Do, and will come to bite back in the long term.

~~~
bleepblorp
Eating the future seed corn in the hopes of higher profits now has been the
business model of choice for most companies for the past 40 years, ever since
compensation for senior management became directly linked to stock prices.

Allowing executives to walk away with short-term gains but stick shareholders
(and/or the public) with long-term losses broke many, many things in corporate
governance and society in general. It's no coincidence that quality of life
measures began to stagnate when this became the normal way to do business.

~~~
lotsofpulp
How is compensation in equity short term? It usually comes with a vesting
period so that the reward is in the future.

[https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/stockcompensation.asp](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/stockcompensation.asp)

[https://www.equilar.com/reports/3-equity-vesting-
schedules.h...](https://www.equilar.com/reports/3-equity-vesting-
schedules.html)

The only thing that could incentivize more long term performance would be even
longer vesting periods, but that comes with downsides too.

~~~
marvin
In one sense it’s sort of a moot point, as companies that hire this type of
executive will in the long term be driven out of business by those who don’t.

But I don’t think you can properly incentivize people to avoid this class of
mistake (short-term thinking) unless top leadership are themselves long-term
owners.

Long-term owners would be very interested in avoiding this mistake, though.
But it does present a bit of a tax on e.g. public companies with fragmented
ownership.

------
simias
I echo the complains about the default interface becoming worse with every
update (especially on mobile, where it's borderline unusable) but I think it's
interesting to see where this trend is headed.

It seems obvious to me that Reddit is trying very hard to transition from link
aggregator to full blown social network. It's pretty wild when you remember
that the original reddit didn't even have comments!

But now they self-host photos, videos, galleries, chatrooms, custom user pages
etc... They're not a link aggregator anymore, they're trying to be Instagram
for people who think they're too cool for Instagram.

But if you want to become Instagram you need to be an app first and a website
2nd, so they're working very hard to kill the web.

I sorta sort of look forward for the day they kill old.reddit.com and
i.reddit.com, this way I won't have any excuse to browse the website anymore
which will free some time for more interesting things.

------
ffpip
I want to thank the admins that made the app and the web one of the worst. You
helped cure my reddit addiction. I now open it only once or twice a month.

You cannot view comment replies on the web. You cannot view any sub on the
web. You cannot even read full comments.

Seriously. Thanks. I even started studying for my exams!

~~~
kabacha
You can still browser old UI without any of these issues via
[https://old.reddit.com](https://old.reddit.com) AFAIK

~~~
fiblye
Then sometimes you click a link and it takes you out of old and into the
hellscape that is modern reddit.

Can't wait until some manager decides old needs to go. They'll end up losing a
bunch of long time users and some other site will finally gain traction.

~~~
alickz
If you're on desktop Reddit Enhancement Suite has an option for forcing the
old version. I've never been brought back to the new design.

But yeah, old.reddit.com probably won't be around forever.

~~~
CamelCaseName
In my discussions with Reddit admins, they've said that old.reddit.com will be
around forever. However, it won't get new features (or a very watered down
version of new features).

After all, .compact links [0] still work, and those are super old.

[0]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/hackernews/comments/imcl1h/reddit_a...](https://www.reddit.com/r/hackernews/comments/imcl1h/reddit_app_got_50m_downloads_by_making_mobile_web/.compact)

~~~
encom
Yea sure, and Oculus will never require a Facebook account.

------
varbhat
Use

[https://github.com/Docile-Alligator/Infinity-For-
Reddit](https://github.com/Docile-Alligator/Infinity-For-Reddit)

[https://github.com/QuantumBadger/RedReader](https://github.com/QuantumBadger/RedReader)

[https://i.reddit.com](https://i.reddit.com)

[https://old.reddit.com](https://old.reddit.com)

~~~
mouldysammich
there is also
[https://github.com/ccrama/Slide](https://github.com/ccrama/Slide) Its very
nice.

------
alangibson
Funny how many comments on that post say 3rd party apps are better than the
official one.

Reddit shuts down their API in 3, 2, 1...

~~~
ffpip
It'll be a shitshow if that happens.

r/Android and r/iphone will lock the sub in protest

~~~
alangibson
It sucks to say, but they'll get mad then they'll get over it. It worked for
Twitter, and it'll work for Reddit too.

> July 25, 2013 – at 12:00 PM EDT US, Twitter turned off API v1 which
> effectively shut down the Android, iOS, and AIR versions of TweetDeck.

~~~
mjhagen
It sorta worked for twitter, but not for me and others like me. I use Tweetbot
on iOS and a heavily customized (adblock, custom css, "suggest_"-filters)
version of the web site on Windows. If those were not options for me I'd exit
the platform just like I did Facebook.

------
noneeeed
The funny thing about this tactic is that it's put me right off the idea of
using the app. If this is what their engineering is like, why would I want
their app installed on my phone? My assumption is that it's a dumpster-fire of
trackers, dark UX patterns and be just poor quality.

I wonder what I'd do if someone from Reddit applied for a job on my team. I'd
certainly be _very_ interested in their thoughts on the Reddit approach.

~~~
reagent_finder
I actually got used to the mobile web, it's okay IMO. Certainly better than
the new web layout.

What's terrible is the beta tests they constantly run on small variations of
the populace, without your knowledge and without any way of giving feedback.
They honestly don't give a crap.

They also actively hide the ways to give feedback and ignore it when it's
given.

That said, it's someone's day job to clock in, fiddle with the mobile web UI
according to manager and C-level concerns and clock out, with the occasional
"So what is it that you actually do here?" meeting. I'd probably stop giving
two shits after a month or so.

------
esolyt
Reddit has some of the most obnoxious and shameless dark patterns I've ever
seen.

Even if you download the app, it constantly tries to lure you into logging in
by displaying a fake notification count. The good old "Hey you've got a
message, login to see it" technique. If you still refuse to login, the
notification count becomes 2, as if now you have 2 messages. It's quite
disgusting and makes me dislike reddit. Unfortunately, I'm guessing these
tactics work on the average user.

~~~
searchableguy
They all seem to be copied from Chinese apps though their implementations suck
more. Virtual currency, awards, and gacha style encouragement is very popular
in Asian countries for communication apps. That's how they extract value
because there are too many competitors and free apps.

Reddit might add shopping experience or real world items for purchase through
coins soon. It's too obvious to not do that.

~~~
mcintyre1994
Thinking about it I'm a bit surprised that Reddit never built a marketplace
product for subreddits. Looking back a few years I could see that actually
being a pretty good product for them which would have been cool. You're
definitely right that if they added it now it'd use their coins or do
something utterly insane to make it terrible.

~~~
ffpip
Subs are already selling merch.

Look at r/teenagers mods selling cheap printed shirts.

------
kristopolous
I feel like once you are on mobile you only have access to this aberration of
the internet called "The consumer web" where you're treated like a dawdling
toddler who taps on shiny colorful things and the service is trying to put on
a circus for you in order to get ad revenue.

This is essentially the experience across the board on all major web
properties. I have no idea why I use my cell phone to access websites so
frequently. It's a really terrible experience.

In fact, most of these sites are the candy and chips aisle for the mind - an
unhealthy diet of emptiness. It's such a waste of time.

------
Daniel_sk
Recently I noticed that using ad blockers on iPhone will break the reddit
mobile website - it will not allow you to scroll unless the annoying "use our
app" popup shows from the bottom and you must click no. Some blockers like
1BlockerX or maybe Wipr block these annoyances and will lead to a broken un-
scrollable reddit website. This started happening only recently and I wonder
if this was a deliberate decision to also annoy users of ad blockers.

~~~
ffpip
uBlock Origin can remove all those popups on Reddit, Quora, Instagram,
Pinterest.

Enable uBlock Annoyances in the filter lists.

~~~
MaxikCZ
And then the scrolling wont work, if I understand parent comment correctly

~~~
ffpip
It works.

~~~
Daniel_sk
It dependes on the adblocker. For example AdGuard had the same issue and they
later fixed it: [https://forum.adguard.com/index.php?threads/resolved-
reddit-...](https://forum.adguard.com/index.php?threads/resolved-reddit-
mobile-scrolling-issue.35669/)

~~~
ffpip
Yes. And it works in uBlock Origin, which is what i've been saying to enable
it in from the start. I didn't mention other adblockers

------
yuppiepuppie
I find the new reddit UI to be terrible, and still use old.reddit.com. I just
hope they continue to host it. If they shut it down at some point, I will
probably stop using reddit. And that will be a sad day.

~~~
dannyw
Moderator of a large subreddit here. In our traffic stats, we see 1 in 4
pageviews are from the old version.

~~~
bionoid
I assume that's total, including apps? Or are you saying that between old,
mobile web and new, 75% of hits are from new? If so that's quite different
from my traffic stats, copying a comment from older thread:

According to my traffic stats (moderating ~400k subscribers), old + mobile web
frontends make up about twice the traffic of new frontend. Apps are by far the
most popular, about ~3x of all web frontends combined.

------
harha
Sounds like good old corporate to me, the boss says you won’t get your bonus
unless there are x app installs, the product manager replies “hold my beer and
watch this”.

This is a serious issue for users though and should highlight the risks with
handing off control over important communication platforms.

------
freyr
Lots of justified criticism here about the mobile web Reddit, which is
horrible.

But the desktop web Reddit has become unusable for me as well. My laptop heats
up, the fans go into overdrive, and my browser slows to a crawl. It’s the
anti-HN.

~~~
reeestandard
I feel bad for the engineers because surely they knew the new site was
incredibly slow and poorly optimised, so it must have been pushed through by
management. It looks alright, but dear god the performance.

~~~
HumblyTossed
> ... because surely they knew the new site was incredibly slow and poorly
> optimised...

I wouldn't be so sure. It really depends on the quality of the engineers. And
if they're quality why are they working for Reddit pushing out crappy
software? Could be a case of resume driven development.

------
PopeDotNinja
For months I thought there was no way to collapse a comment thread using the
mobile site. Then one day I accidentally clicked on a comment timestamp and
the thread collapsed. Which makes sense, because nothing say “hide these
comments” like the text “17 minutes ago” :P

~~~
vidarh
The posting time is linked on HN too (shows that comment as root of a sub-
thread, and shows additional options)

~~~
ilogik
I expect that to happen. it's the same on twitter for example.

but I'm not expecting the action to be to collapse the thread

------
mads
And lost at least one user. I mostly stopped going to Reddit because of the
miserable mobile experience, which is how I would normally consume the content
there.

~~~
austhrow743
i.reddit.com

------
BelleOfTheBall
The Reddit experience overall is incredibly subpar. I can't remember the last
time I opened the site without using the unofficial Reddit Is Fun app or the
RES extension on desktop. They make the experience so much better and keep me
wondering why Reddit doesn't implement some of the features provided in those
extensions into the official version.

------
sanqui
The "dot compact" version of the Reddit website still has the best mobile UI
to me, though I rarely use it.

[https://www.reddit.com/.compact](https://www.reddit.com/.compact)

~~~
alborzb
Also loads by going to

[https://i.reddit.com](https://i.reddit.com)

------
crazygringo
Am I the only one who thinks it's fine?

Let's be real: the performance of Reddit's mobile app is quite good. And when
I compare it to _any_ other similar mobile _site_ feed, the sites are always
slow and janky, because browsers aren't great with handling infinite scrolling
full of hundreds of videos and tens of thousands of nested comments.

I know everybody here think's it's a "dark pattern" to get people to use
Reddit's app instead of site on mobile... but to me it looks like it could
also be legitimate performance concerns.

~~~
grumple
The site renders text and embedded images/video. That’s not something that
demands high performance.

They require the app purely so they can track you better and make more revenue
from you. It’s much harder to run Adblock in an app.

------
jonathanleane
For those sick of reddit, I offer the following link (with some unintended
irony):
[https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/cxb2xq/...](https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/cxb2xq/list_of_active_reddit_alternatives_40/)

Also: [https://ruqqus.com/](https://ruqqus.com/)

------
pea
Am presuming this is distinct from the problems with the main website (i.e.
they aren't trying to push people off of that too), but maybe related in the
sense that it seems the strategy is to turn the website into an app instead of
keeping it as a website. IMHO, this isn't a good fit for what I use reddit
for, which is a collection of linked documents - where 'normal' server-
rendered documents worked really well. It doesn't really need to be an app,
and building it as an app bloats it for my use-case.

I'm not sure if it's due to odd FE architecture choices or if this
specifically helps increase bottom-line KPIs, but there are some bizarre
things like the fact that clicking on the background of a post takes you back
to the subreddit via replacing history (?), which kind of breaks the idea of
how you expect a website to work.

What confuses me from an architecture POV is there are glaring high-value
things they could fix - like subreddit search, image hosting etc. - that get
left.

~~~
rozab
Most Reddit users now seem to think Reddit _is_ an app, not a website.

------
timdaub
I'm kinda surprised nobody has said this about Instagram.

Formerly, without an account, you were able to easily browse all content for
an unlimited time.

Now, after a certain amount of actions or time, it asks you to log in.

~~~
ffpip
If you use uBlock Origin, enable the 'Ublock Annoyances' Filter list.

Removes all the login crap on Insta, Pinterest, Quora and imgur.

------
me551ah
Reddit app on Android is one of the worst apps that I've ever used.

1\. It doesn't refresh content. A lot of times you need to manually swipe down
to force it to refresh,and sometimes even kill the app to get it to refresh.
Even if Reddit is using cheaper http 1.1 servers , they can use background
data notifications to force the app to do an update.

2\. Videos randomly switch to the lowest quality and stay there. I have a
300mbps fiber connection which can play YouTube and Netflix on 4k. But Reddit
gives me 240p at best sometimes.

3\. Worst messaging experience period. Not only is the chat pretty bare bones,
it doesn't even have support for images or GIFs. So usually once I find
someone to chat with on Reddit , I ask for their discord id.

~~~
nishanmiranda
I use Boost for REddit which is miles better than the original app

~~~
jankiehodgpodge
Boost is a brilliant app, never use the desktop site because it's junk in
comparison.

------
orangepanda
To be fair, desktop web experience isnt much better

~~~
colechristensen
old.reddit.com still works

~~~
PikachuEXE
Hope it won't be dumped forever

~~~
Havoc
They did say it'll stick around long term when the change was made. Whether
that's a promise that will be kept remains to be seen

~~~
vertbhrtn
The rule of thumb: if the corporate says something, they lie.

~~~
MagnumOpus
That goes double for the statements by the C-suite, and triple for Ohanian and
Huffman in particular.

There are numerous principled statements of theirs that were chucked to the
wayside when there was money to be made or power to be gained.

------
tjpnz
Those maintaining the web app must have a miserable existence. It's never fun
having your work undermined like this, especially when so much care has gone
into it.

------
mianos
It is ironic that reddit achieved much of its success on the back of the
complete failure of digg.com to recognise that the people who use your site
don't want a bunch of radical changes shoved down their throat. We will
probably see the whole thing happen again. Long live the new king.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
AIR: Slashdot redesigned, people moved to Digg, Digg redesigned, people moved
to Reddit (was MySpace in there too?), Reddit ... let's redesign (actually
they've partially reinvented themselves a couple of times to my recollection).

------
say_it_as_it_is
Reddit is the poster child of single page applications. It is slow, consumes
more resources, and is visually overloading. I'm not surprised that it has
difficulty with mobile browsers. It doesn't even do well with desktop ones.

------
mrjeremyt
I think it's funny how on iOS (at least for me) whenever I come across a
reddit link it'll ask me whether I want to continue to view in whatever
webView it's using or switch to the app. I usually prefer the app, so I click
on it and 9 times out of 10 it'll take me to the app store for the default
reddit app WHICH I ALREADY HAVE INSTALLED AND REGULARLY USE and it won't open
in the app no mater what I try. Like this should be pretty basic
functionality, especially if they're trying to drive users to their app, but
nope.

~~~
slow_donkey
Idk if this is necessarily Reddits fault because we've had tons of problems
implementing universal links on iOS both via 3rd party and natively ourselves
so I lean towards blaming the ios platform than the developer.

------
raesene9
Even when you get past the annoying pop-ups, reddit on mobile is still a pain,
slow and misses a lot of taps.

My solution to this has been to use old.reddit.com, which is (IME) a much
nicer experience, faster and more responsive.

~~~
gvjddbnvdrbv
I think reddit have forgotten about old.reddit.com. Maybe we shouldn't talk
about it in case they notice and shut it down...

------
anonzzz
I like reddit for the niche groups that center around some topic. I haven't
really found another source of this type of niche content. Maybe Facebook has
groups or whatever but I have never used Facebook so can't comment.

On Android, I like Redreader which, to my mind, is simple, open and free. It
was the my first experience using a mobile Reddit app and I really thought it
stayed out of the way and let me read and comment in various reddits. I
started using an iPhone and decided to give the official reddit app a whirl.
This app is clunky and confusing and doesn't feel simple in any way. I have
tried a few other apps (everyone seems to like Apollo?) but I haven't really
found my home yet. I still really appreciate RedReader for its simple
uncluttered ability to read and comment.

In the browser, I like using old.reddit.com. Their default version of the site
is horrible. I can't stand it. On a computer, my preferred way of browsing
reddit is using ttrv. It is the latest incarnation of rtv. It is command line,
which might turn some people off, but is simple and easy to setup. I use feh
to view pictures and mpv to view videos. I can comment using vim which makes
it very cozy.

I guess it is good that reddit provides an api that allows hackers to develop
alternative ways to access their site depending on their own personal
preference. For now, their mobile official app seems to comprimise in too many
areas to make it work for me. The new site (not the old.reddit.com) is pain to
use.

------
whywhywhywhy
Metrics driven design, if you hit your metrics even if the experience is
objectively awful you're still rewarded as an employee.

Thankfully this is the beginning of the end for most companies.

------
tenbino
I’d respect Reddit more if it simply said “Reddit on mobile is only available
via our app”.

At least then I wouldn’t feel in a world of sleazy manipulation.

------
derEitel
No one mentioning Facebook? Them forcing you to use the messenger app to be
able to communicate on the mobile is using the same strategy. I have to use a
different browser and use desktop mode to see messages. Writing then becomes
horrible too. Not using fb messenger at all anymore an complain to people who
text me on there.

~~~
c-fe
Just fyi, you can use mbasic.facebook.com ... Still horrible, but at least you
can communicate to some degree without any app, I used it for a month while
being stuck with an old phone.

------
gaudat
My preferred way of consuming Reddit content is now finding a mirror of the
sub on Telegram. [1] This greatly refined my experience by distilling the
endless pun chain comments and dramas away. If, unfortunately, the OP content
made me want to read the comments, I change the URL from
[https://reddit.com](https://reddit.com) to
[https://i.reddit.com](https://i.reddit.com) as soon as possible. Even though
I clicked it 5 seconds too late, the new smartphone site is so slow that it
was still a blank page.

[1] Here's one of the more used bot with a long list of interesting
subreddits.
[https://github.com/Fillll/reddit2telegram](https://github.com/Fillll/reddit2telegram)

------
nirav72
There are many better third-party reddit apps out there than the official
reddit app. Although seems like Android has more options than on the IOS side.
Apollo is the only one I found so far on IOS that is fairly decent and feature
rich matching the ones on android. Any other recommendations?

------
jbb67
I still use reddit but less and less than I did, and the main reason for this
is that the ui is getting worse and worse. I won't be installing the app as
it's pointless.

I probably won't choose to stop using it, but as I use it less and less the
gap will eventually reach "forever".

------
SPBS
Am I crazy when I say I don't see these popups on the mobile web version of
reddit anymore? I don't see what the fuss is about. It's pretty much the same
as what the gif in TFA is showing, except no blinking 'use app'/'open in
reddit app' buttons. No 'open in reddit app/continue with mobile site' popup
-unless- I end up on the AMP version of the reddit (by following a link from
Google search). And even then once I do anything on the AMP page (click on a
reply, navigate to the main page) I get redirected away to the normal web
version, which is less cancerous.

Someone please back me up or refute me.

Also I am logged in to the site, might make a difference.

------
thrownaway954
that's cause they push it like a crack dealer pushing crack.

wanna play a video, open it in the app. wanna look at risky content, open it
in the app.

and btw, their app IS THE WORST. my biggest gripe is that i CANNOT COLLAPSE
CONVERSATIONS grrrrrrrrrrrrr. i'm not gonna waste my time listing all the
other annoyances and bugs that are riddled through out the thing.

fact of the matter is that the reddit app is the poster child that just
because something has that many downloads doesn't mean it's a good product. i
would be willing to bet that 75% of those download are people uninstall and
reinstalling it because it LOCKS UP EVERY 5 MINUTES grrrrrrrrrrrr.

~~~
flatline
You can collapse conversations by clicking the small blank space to the right
of a user’s name at the top of the comment. Bad UI but it’s there.

~~~
thrownaway954
been trying that on the app and it doesn't work. works on the site but not the
app.

------
plasma
Surprisingly, its when I'm logged in to the mobile website that I wish the
'Open in app' button was there (to make commenting easier), but I'm only
harassed to open the app when I'm logged out.

~~~
random_visitor
While not exactly a fix for your case, Firefox on android has a prompt for
opening sites in their apps if it's installed on your device. Match that with
its extension support and it makes most of the mobile web far less obnoxious.

------
Causality1
Imgur, the Reddit image hosting offshoot, did precisely the same thing. They
slowly began stripping features from the site starting with direct messaging
and eventually prevented mobile users from logging in at all.

~~~
avian
What is Imgur’s business model these days? The app doesn’t have any (obvious)
ads. There’s a small banner on the bottom, but for me it’s always just
advertising Imgur’s own features. There was a time when they were pushing ads
heavily on the app (like full screen ads you had to swipe away), but that
apparently didn’t work out.

~~~
Nextgrid
"Growth and engagement" is the "business" model. I'm assuming they're pushing
their own features to inflate their subscriber numbers so they can try and
sell out to a bigger fish.

------
dt3ft
This is exactly why I started working on 20-things.com with a firm stand on
not doing what Reddit has been doing - pushing people to mobile app in order
to be able to track and show them ads (adblockers won't work in the app of
course). How can I achieve this? By limiting the community size to a certain
number of people so that it can stay self-sustainable. This could be a few
thousand users, and then the door gets closed to new registrations.

~~~
rawoke083600
Seems down for me ?

------
dewey
If Apollo on iOS wouldn't be around I'd just not use Reddit. I'm not even
logged in in the browser as just opening the website makes my fans spin.

~~~
jamil7
Apollo is fantastic and the only reason I still read reddit. If they try to
shutdown the API or try to acquire it and kill it (alien blue) I think I'd
lose interest.

------
Havoc
old.reddit.com all the way. Everything they've changed since that "upgrade"
has been user hostile cancer.

They're at real risk of becoming another digg I think

------
14
I haven’t used the Facebook app either and now they are going out of their way
to make the mobile experience miserable. Facebook now looks like reddit and
the marketplace is now pushing unblock able ads mixed in with the listings.
Also marketplace took away the ability to sort items from lowest price to
highest so you have to search through many listings to find what you want. The
experience is worse every day.

------
LordAtlas
Sometimes I wonder what the Reddit dev team even does.

Their search is crap, their app is crap, their new design is crap, their home
page algorithm is crap that keeps showing stale content, their video player is
utter crap that shows you 144p videos even on 100 Mbps connections. It's like
they stopped giving a shit a long time ago.

(I use Reddit for 2-3 hours every day, despite all that. But of course I use
RES and the RIF app, and stay away from politics subs. There's a lot of
interesting communities that I learn from.)

------
pluc
That app is the worst. As a mod, I need mod features. The official app doesn't
have enough mod features to be useful.

Reminder: every mod works for reddit for free.

~~~
gkilmain
How much time do you spend being a mod / working for free? Genuinely curious.

~~~
pluc
Sorry didn't see this. I don't really see it as time spent being a mod, it's
time spent "being on reddit". Instead of just looking at the latest posts, I
get to act on the ones that break the rules. When reading comments, I do the
same with comments. It's just a parallel cycle to consuming it, I think. And
we're talking of one click to remove things here, not a complicated workflow.

------
brailsafe
Not only are the obvious things miserable, but they also introduced a memory
leak to their post/comment creation interface (I did report, ironically using
the same interface). Today I discovered that the website will crash in Firefox
if you try to find in page—presumably after a certain point it triggers a
conflict with their infinite scroll implementation.

------
ashtonkem
I’ve stopped using Reddit. The inability for the web interface to actually
play videos reliably was a deal breaker in retrospect.

------
MaxBarraclough
An unfortunate U-turn. For a long term they declined to offer an official
mobile app, and were purely focused on the web.

------
rcarmo
I largely agree with this. On iOS, I can’t actually get past the pop-up on
their homepage, which (infuriatingly) prevents me from scrolling.

It might be my adblocker, but IMHO whomever did that to their mobile homepage
ought to be given at least a very stern talking to.

And whomever got them to code it ought to be fired.

~~~
Daniel_sk
Yes, it's the adblocker. I had the issue with 1BlockerX - I had to turn it off
for reddit on iOS :-(. Other adblockers either have the same issue or the
developers added specific code to battle this (e.g. AdGuard
[https://forum.adguard.com/index.php?threads/resolved-
reddit-...](https://forum.adguard.com/index.php?threads/resolved-reddit-
mobile-scrolling-issue.35669/)). This must be a deliberate tactic from Reddit.

------
knorker
I thought this article would be about the desktop UI's infinite scroll.[1]

If they ever remove the ability to opt out of infinite scroll I'm out. There
has to be that natural stopping point or know I can't even start.

[1] well, and everything else that makes the new design absolutely unusable.

~~~
MaxikCZ
tbh, I never understood the hate for the infinite scrolling in a domain of
natural stopping point.. I have this problem with pages too.. "Just one more
page..."

My main issue is when I accidentaly dont open link in new tab, and pressing
back makes the page reload and I loose my scrolling progress..

~~~
knorker
Yeah, it's awful for multiple reasons.

------
dimillian
Native app are better than mobile web for complexe application / website. Get
over it.

------
crakhamster01
I actually like the Reddit app, but its search engine is so awful that I
almost always start on Google/DDG and refine my results through there. If they
could improve their search experience I would be all in on the app.

------
hn3333
LinkedIn makes communication between users miserable unless you pay. Copyright
holders make distribution miserable unless you pay etc.

Not judging any of those as bad, just saying that it's not uncommon for
providers of products or services to limit them.

~~~
teddyh
“Here is another point that helps put the problem of proprietary information
in a social perspective. Think about the liability insurance crisis. In order
to get any compensation from society, an injured person has to hire a lawyer
and split the money with that lawyer. This is a stupid and inefficient way of
helping out people who are victims of accidents. And consider all the time
that people put into hustling to take business away from their competition.
Think of the pens that are packaged in large cardboard packages that cost more
than the pen—just to make sure that the pen isn't stolen. Wouldn't it be
better if we just put free pens on every street corner? And think of all the
toll booths that impede the flow of traffic. It's a gigantic social
phenomenon. _People find ways of getting money by impeding society. Once they
can impede society, they can be paid to leave people alone._ The waste
inherent in owning information will become more and more important […]”
(emphasis mine)

— Richard Stallman, 1986 [https://www.gnu.org/gnu/byte-
interview](https://www.gnu.org/gnu/byte-interview)

------
dghughes
I don't like the new reddit I always use old.reddit and I see no reason to use
the app. I hate now that all link load in new reddit. It's a hundred cuts of
annoyance.

As a longtime user (13 years) I get the feeling reddit is being Digg-ified.

------
tifadg1
Horrible reddit behavior fixed my reddit mobile browsing addiction.

Horrible firefox update fixed my hn mobile browsing addiction.

Forced slowness on my phone fixed my addiction to play games there.

Forced windows updates fixed my laziness to switch to linux full time.

------
wildpeaks
My worry is that some exec will think of this as a success story, that making
the web experience miserable is a totally fine way to drive engagement on
their mobile app and will push other sites to do the same.

~~~
WULB_HELL_
They absolutely will. They will also look at the interaction and engagement
rates on those awful popups and nag messages and consider them a huge success
too.

People clicking on those garbage dialogs either by accident or to try to make
them go away = Number Go Up = Users must like this UI element.

------
pietrovismara
The mobile web experience is so intentionally bad. Yet I refuse to switch to
the app and play their game. When needed I request the desktop version mobile
to fill the missing features and that's it.

------
gadders
I see the title has been re-written. Got to protect that YC investment.

------
rickdg
Apple has taught us well.

------
m3kw9
I mean I have a 3rd party reddit app so it should bounce me to that app, but
the UI pops up still it wants me to use their app only. So that’s a move that
made me use it less.

------
adamzapasnik
Reddit has become pretty terrible.

I'm gonna call it, that's a perfect opportunity for other projects to arise
and take Reddit's share of users and IMO it's gonna happen.

------
hocuspocus
The worst thing is that the official app isn't even that great, at least on
Android. Every time I try it, I quickly go back to a 3rd party (Boost at the
moment).

~~~
pilif
if it was great, they wouldn't need to push for it this much.

This is about getting access to more tracking and more immersive ads than what
a web browser allows, not about offering a good user experience.

------
racl101
Yeah, by making the browser experience awful.

No thanks.

I'm weary of installing apps for things I should simply be able to view a
browser.

I learned my lesson with Facebook and all the shady things it does.

------
Jnr
In my opinion Reddit UX is miserable even on desktop. Whenever I see a Reddit
link in search, I try to avoid it. It is in a way similar to Pinterest
experience.

------
thinkingemote
Firefox on android had a plugin that would remove the nags and redirects which
made reading Reddit acceptable, until Firefox removed all (but 6) plugins.

------
cm2187
Am I right to assume that the reason developers prefer users to use apps vs
websites is because there is no adblocker there and no way to flush cookies?

~~~
searchableguy
Yes, part of it. Web is more constrained environment than native. Many
seemingly normal APIs and features aren't available. Apple is hostile to web
as well so you don't even have features from the standards such as push
notifications.

------
TomGullen
I like the new Reddit. Originally I kept using the old style, but was semi
forced onto the new design and now am used to it and quite like it.

~~~
optimalsolver
Yeah, I complained about the redesign at first, but now I can't go back to
using old Reddit.

------
jarym
Well it worked - millions of people could be bullied into downloading an app
for a website like this. Why wouldn’t companies do what works?

~~~
read_if_gay_
I would think those who create the content reddit is living off are less
likely to get bullied into downloading an app. Long term, the content becomes
garbage and the regular users leave too.

------
treelovinhippie
Post title before the mods inevitably change it: "Reddit app got 50M downloads
by making mobile web experience miserable"

~~~
treelovinhippie
Oh look at that... the title changed. How predictable.

------
golergka
I've recently got a new MacBook. Top of the line, i9 cpu, 64 gbs of RAM.

Reddit desktop site still lags on it, client-side.

~~~
jamil7
I wonder when the reckoning for poorly built single page javascript apps will
come. Or are we already seeing it with users switching to native apps for
social media?

------
INTPenis
That title is wrong for at least one user, me.

I think the mobile app is great, if you only look at its features and its
ability to deliver Reddit content and discussion.

I volunteered for the Reddit beta, even though I am a proponent of
minimalistic and simple websites.

To be honest it is very resource heavy. Even selecting text has a 1.5s delay
in the WYSIWYG editor.

But overall it's not much different than other content heavy websites online.

~~~
brailsafe
I did some digging into the WYSIWYG editoe and found a memory leak they
introduced. This was quite a while ago, but there's a good chance it's still
there.

------
billman
Facebook is going down the same road with forcing you to install messenger if
you have messages.

------
a1exus
Reddit app stopped working for me long time ago, I wrote to devs, but no luck
(

------
donatj
I just use old.reddit.com on my phone. I find the experience much better.

------
redwood
I really do find it infuriating. Some of us just hate mobile apps

------
timvisee
It is insane how bad the web interface is for something this big.

------
joelthelion
Maybe users could retaliate by giving the app horrible ratings?

------
cybdnb
Reddit was never good

------
thinkloop
Why exactly do they care whether you use the web or app?

~~~
txsoftwaredev
My guess would be they have more access and control of you on the app. They
can prevent you from blocking ads, for example.

------
kimjongtrill
I just use old.reddit.com. Yes my eyes hate me.

------
valuearb
Proof Google Play doesn’t check for malware.

------
fareesh
Bacon Reader is a good app for their platform

------
SXX
RedReader is much better experience though.

------
ppod
What are the best third party reddit apps?

------
ShradhaSingh
Any subreddit suggestions for AI and ML?

------
asah
LinkedIn and Yelp: hold my beer.

------
DarthGhandi
Redreader for Android. Free and Open Source. It's on fdroid and playstore

~~~
notRobot
I don't want an app for Reddit. I don't care which one it is. It's a simple
website, let me use it in my fucking browser.

Lightweight! Easy to block ads and tracking! Multiple tabs! You can leave
pages open in your browser and read them later! Bookmarkable! No proprietary
app! No app updates! No spammy notifications! No use of Google Play Services!
No taking up of dozens of GBs on my phone! RES!

~~~
nindalf
> dozens of GBs

Hyperbole detracts from the point you're trying to make. Everyone reading your
comment knows how much space apps take on their phones.

~~~
mschuster91
> Everyone reading your comment knows how much space apps take on their
> phones.

The problem here is caching, as in-app caches have different caches than the
global system.

------
50ckpuppet
what's reddit ?

------
t0mmyb0y
Antitrust anyone?

------
ricardobeat
Why has the title been editorialized? The "mostly by making the mobile web
experience miserable" part is the focus of this report (and true).

~~~
alborzb
It wasn't by me!

Maybe it's over a character limit for titles?

Maybe done by mods.

~~~
leetrout
Yes. Tons of titles are changed all the time.

[https://hackernewstitles.netlify.app/](https://hackernewstitles.netlify.app/)

~~~
dvtrn
I understand mods edit titles and have said so to “de-
editorialize/sensationalize” them but I’m seeing a lot of purely style
changes; capitalization removal. Some are changes entirely from perfectly fine
and comprehensible titles that aren’t even sensationalized headlines

Others still add or remove a word that don’t really do anything for the title
except change the inflection slightly to one the author may not even _want_
perceived from their writing.

Whom does that sort of edit serve? Merely curious.

~~~
aspenmayer
It serves the will of HN according to justifications I’ve seen. It’s debatable
if it is always is helpful in any individual instance, but it’s usually well-
intentioned from what I can tell. Yet it also seems to turn the volume down on
topics that are of outsize influence or import on society, to my reading. It
second-guesses the intent of the author, and second-guesses the reading
comprehension of the reader. It treats us all like clickbait vote bots.

~~~
qwertygnu
I'm seeing things being changed in a lot of directions here:

It’s not just cars that make pollution. It’s the roads they drive on, too

↓

Study suggests that fresh asphalt is a significant source of air pollution

and

Atul Gawande on COVID and healthcare logistics

↓

We can solve the coronavirus-test mess now if we want to

and

The problem with C compatibility in C++

↓

The problem with C

\---

(Sorry for formatting) Idk it seems a bit more than trying to de-editorialize.

~~~
dvtrn
These edits are especially weird to me:

20:30 A woman who gave the world antiviral drugs

↓

21:40 Gertrude Elion, a woman who gave the world antiviral drugs

↓

22:40 The woman who gave the world antiviral drugs

Like, at what point is well enough alone for a headline that was already
succinct, descriptive and well formed and why keep coming back an hour later-
after presumably more people have seen the article and may want to come back
later-to change the title _again_?

@dang (if you come across this): is HN remotely interested, for the curiosity
satiating edification of the community-if no other reason-in sharing the
decision calculus for these kinds of title edits?

~~~
dang
But you've omitted the last title in that sequence, which is the one we ended
up with (Gertrude Elion's “antiviral odyssey”). There's a partial explanation
here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24359017](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24359017)

What you're seeing in that sequence is trial and error. Sometimes it takes a
few tries before we find a solution that feels like it balances the different
concerns. That's not particularly common, though, plus most of those
exploratory edits are quickly overwritten by later edits, so Peter's app
doesn't pick them up.

I'm happy in principle to satiate anyone's curiosity about this kind of
thing—the only trouble is that it takes a surprising amount of time to write
out such explanations in details, and unfortunately that time is just not
often not available. What I can tell you is that (1) there is nearly always a
specific reason for every title edit we do, and there are probably at least a
hundred different considerations that come into it, based on 10+ years of
experience at this point—this is a surprisingly complex subdomain!, and (2)
we're highly responsive to user complaints about titles (or mod edits) in
specific cases. Not just because we want users to be happy, but also because
this has proven to be the only way to minimize the dreaded title fever
([https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22title%20fever%22&sort=byDate&type=comment))
—which, btw, has had an outbreak in this very thread.

I've written longer explanations in the past about how we approach title
editing in general. One is
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20429573](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20429573).
If there are questions I'd be happy to answer them—but again, the more general
the question, the more time/energy it takes to answer, so I may not be able
to.

Actually I enjoy engaging with users about HN title edits because, of all the
things we do, it's by far the best worked out. It's far more consistent than
people think it is. Why does something consistent appear so inconsistent?
Because it's more complicated than it seems. Why is title editing so
complicated? Because titles are the biggest single influence on the site, and
users are astonishingly passionate about them.

~~~
dvtrn
Taking all of that in-and thank you for offering what you’ve been able to this
far-will HN moderation team consider making time to the community for a “town
hall”/“AMA” going over some of the more opaque or otherwise commonly
misunderstood elements of what informs the moderation strategies and tactics
deployed in the community?

Given that you’ve stated doing so presently would be an unwieldy and rather
involved affair, opening the opportunity for such a transparent display of
community engagement at a later date seems like a charitable ask of you?

~~~
dang
Such meta threads tend to be rather blah. Also, when dealing with large
internet audiences you eventually come to realize that _everything_ is
"commonly misunderstood", because no matter how often or how thoroughly you
explain things, the vast majority of users don't see it, and the percentage
that did see it shrinks over time as new users flow in. So the idea of
explaining things to the bulk of the community is sort of a fantasy. The sum
of all explanations has measure zero. I'm not happy about that but it is as it
is.

I'm happy to answer questions and do it every day, but it's better to stick
closer to where actual examples come up. What else do you still want to know?

------
vertbhrtn
Before you comment on technicalities, remember that reddit's management
consciously caters to the emotional people, and managing such a platform is
very different than HN. I'd even admit the possibility that the plain and dry
UI of HN would look unappealing to the reddit folks.

~~~
yes_man
Being interested in tech and startups probably doesn't mean you are less
emotional than people who aren't

~~~
vertbhrtn
Well, it does. If we make a random sample of 1 million people that are
interested in tech and startups, then another million of those that aren't,
measure the average "emotional charge" of both groups, we'll notice a huge
statistically significant difference between the two averages.

~~~
yes_man
Can you back that up with some research or are you just basing that assumption
on your emotions? What even is "emotional charge"? I bet that emotional
capability of people isn't tied to their interest in startups and tech

