
An account is now required to read Reddit comment threads? - m0ck
https://old.reddit.com/r/mobileweb/comments/e7yivg/join_reddit_to_keep_reading_an_account_is_now/
======
CM30
Hmm, I just checked myself, and I was able to read comment threads perfectly
fine without being logged in, on both a desktop computer and a smartphone.

Obviously old.reddit.com doesn't have these issues, but I'm pretty sure the
session on smartphone used the new site, and that let me keep reading without
any interruptions too.

Either way, if Reddit does this, that's it. Not returning to the site. The
internet doesn't need all these walled gardens, and it's worrying how this is
going to affect how info is preserved for future generations.

~~~
paganel
Unfortunately the way things are going I can see them getting rid of
old.reddit.com and i.reddit.com, at which point I think I'll also stop
visiting the website (the mobile website is atrocious and I'm not going to
install a dedicated app in order to read a forum).

~~~
johnnycab
>I'm not going to install a dedicated app in order to read a forum

Apollo (iOS) provides a nice and clean design, as does Joey (Android) which
copies the style of the former. Even on the desktop, the experience is smooth
and manageable, by using uMatrix and RES, whether you are browsing old.reddit
or not. I don't understand the hesitancy in using these _enhancements_ to
enrich your user experience.

~~~
pritambaral
> I don't understand your hesitancy in using these enhancements to enrich your
> user experience.

Not your parent, but I know of no mobile app that allows me certain
enhancements that are simply standard on my (mobile) web browser: tabs, ad-
blocking, & accessibility.

Tabs: because I multi-task, and I compartmentalise my reading. If all I have
is an app, then the app either needs to re-invent tabs within it (none I've
found so far) or I am forced to have at-most one post/thread I could be
reading. The latter is particularly bad. Extra bad when it happens
automatically: say I pause reading a post, go to a different app/website, and
click on a reddit link there.

Add Firefox's Containers to the mix and the 'Tabs!' benefit becomes even
better.

Ad-blocking: Need I say more? Well, more than blocking ads, the general
ability to block annoying (highly so in the case of reddit) elements of a page
using uBlock Origin or uMatrix. RES doesn't yet work on the mobile web (likely
due to the lack of popularity of mobile browsers that _do_ support add-ons),
but if it did, I absolutely would use it.

Accessibility: I can print, copy, link to, search in, or have read aloud any
page or part of any page on the web. I haven't yet seen a Ctrl+F equivalent in
a reddit app, but my mobile browser has Find In Page.

~~~
unethical_ban
"reddit is fun" for android has few ads (text only, obvious difference from
content) and has an easy way to copy, share, find in page, find on site, etc.
And if you have a reddit account, you can save pages ala HN to quickly go
back. Not as good as tabs, I get it. RIF is of the few apps I have for
content.

This is compared to the Washington Post mobile app, which is essentially a
wrapper around the mobile site that _prevents_ copying text, has annoying ads
despite being a subscriber, and has no redeeming functionality.

------
Someone1234
This is classic shortermism.

Reddit is, in the short term, driving more external users towards creating
user accounts while in the long term removing one of the major value funnels
for why they would (i.e. the quality of comments, particularly in certain
niche communities/about niche topics).

This will give them a short term "bump" at the cost of the site's long term
relevance (as it falls down Google's search results rankings, due to loss of
clicks as people stop looking to Reddit as a source of info). Most of the
recent moves on Reddit are like this, it feels like the entire site is being
turned into a pump and dump scheme.

~~~
jackcosgrove
Nothing lasts forever. Reddit is 14 years old. They've had a good run.

I think there is a general trend away from user-generated content as a
business model, because that content can be a bit salty.

Reddit might just be cashing out because the wave they rode has already
crested.

~~~
slothtrop
What comes next? Don't say Discord.

~~~
0xffff2
Does anyone give Discord as a serious answer to that question? I'm really
struggling to figure out how a glorified IRC replacement is going to fill the
same niche as Reddit.

~~~
hanniabu
I think Discord is great for chats. They've been adding a lot of improvements
and features recently. The only thing I wish they had was an IP ban.

However, this is by no means a replacement for reddit.

------
dougmwne
I deleted my Reddit account recently in an effort to curb social media. I've
still been checking r/all and some favorite subreddits. Thank you Reddit for
further breaking the site and making it easier to ween myself off of. Thank
you HN for the addiction block contols on the account screen.

~~~
harshalizee
Exactly what I thought! I deleted the Reddit Apollo app when I realized I was
using for over 3 hours a day. Now I catch myself sometimes using the mobile
version. But the fact that they keep going out of the way to make it work and
worse everyday means I actually get to stay away from it.

~~~
aschismatic
What are your favorite alternatives to stay in tune with what's happening now?
I browse r/all multiple times daily for a bit. I don't get a lot of need-to-
know information from it, but some things I like to see are movie trailers,
big tech announcements (Xbox Series X yesterday), and in general, things that
everyone seems to be "in the know" of. It's my main pop culture news outlet,
but I feel like it shouldn't be.

~~~
olyjohn
I think you'll find that if you just quit worrying about "what's happening
now," you'll find that you aren't actually missing anything.

~~~
aschismatic
That's a pretty good point. Thank you.

------
Havoc
They've been making increasingly more user hostile choice lately.

Digg lessons weren't apparently not learned

~~~
mFixman
Digg failed because Reddit existed. There's no similar social media for Reddit
refugees to go to.

~~~
dagurp
Reddit had existed for a while before Digg saw a mass exodus. I used both at
the same time until Digg pushed a big update that broke the site.

~~~
dariusj18
Yeah, for a while, Digg and Reddit were very similar, so Digg thought, "Hey,
let's differentiate ourselves from our competitors." They then proceeded to
ruin themselves by trying to become something more like a news aggregator,
when what users really wanted was what Reddit remained.

~~~
Loughla
And this was at the same time, or roughly the same time, that slashdot started
making 'improvements'. I dumped both slashdot and digg to go to reddit. And
now I'm starting to look for somewhere else to go.

~~~
thedaemon
You have succeeded, you are on HackerNews. Isn't this why we are all here?
HackerNews is kind of like what Slashdot,Digg and Reddit were originally; that
is "news for nerds".

~~~
Loughla
Yeah, but I still love dank memes, is the issue. I have just enough childish
mess inside me that I want some deep fried memes or somethings like that. For
example, one of my most frequented subreddits is r/Im15andthisisyeet.

Absolutely no value for the HN crowd, and it would piss me off to no end if
that sort of thing came here, but I still want it occasionally.

------
dghughes
If you have a reddit account and go to the site not logged in the site looks
like trash. The articles seem worse than what you see when logged in. Similar
to YouTube if you aren't logged in you see the trashiest videos on the
"unlogged in" main page.

I don't know if that's on purpose or it's just like that. But there seems to
be a big difference in the quality depending on whether you are logged in or
not.

As for the reddit site itself I wonder what is the ratio of old.reddit viewers
vs reddit viewers are. I've used reddit for over a decade and absolutely hate
the new style I only go to old.reddit if that changes and only new reddit is
available I'll abandon my account (or sell it to Russians ha! Kidding.).

~~~
XaspR8d
> As for the reddit site itself I wonder what is the ratio of old.reddit
> viewers vs reddit viewers are.

I moderate a top 100 sub and if the built-in stats are to be believed, the
recent breakdown is something like:

= Pageviews =

40% apps

28% old reddit

17% mobile reddit

15% new reddit

= Unique visits =

41% mobile reddit

27% new reddit

24% apps

8% old reddit

This doesn't really capture the ratio of _contributors_ who use each (or
perhaps, more interestingly, number of _contributions_ per platform), but it's
hard for me to guess that accurately since new-reddit detractors are a very
vocal group.

~~~
kibwen
I moderate a rather popular programming subreddit (whose users you would
expect to be more conscious of newreddit vs oldreddit), here's the eyeballed
breakdown of our stats:

\--- Monthly uniques (200k total):

New Reddit: 55%

Mobile Web: 20%

Reddit Apps: 15%

Old Reddit: 10%

\--- Monthly Pageviews (3M total):

New Reddit: 30%

Mobile Web: 10%

Reddit Apps: 30%

Old Reddit: 30%

So in our case, while the ones using Old Reddit are the fewest in number, they
are also the most engaged.

~~~
Rebelgecko
I wonder how many of those "new reddit" hits are unintentional (like someone
who doesn't want to log into reddit on their work computer, so the setting for
"old" reddit doesn't stick)

Edit: Just for comparison, I moderate a medium sized sports subreddit. Traffic
waxes and wanes a bit based on when games happen, the memeability of recent
events, and the activities of Donald Trump. We see a lot more app traffic, and
new reddit is about as rare as people using mobile browsers.

Our ~416k page views are distributed like this:

Apps: 62%

Mobile browsers: 7%

Old reddit: 25%

New reddit: 6%

For a month of uniques (48k):

Apps: 54%

Mobile browsers: 12%

Old reddit: 21%

New reddit: 12%

------
harimau777
It feels to me like social media has been imploding recently. It seems like I
am seeing more and more efforts to overtly force people use an app, associate
browsing with an account, and link their account with a real world identity
(e.g. via phone number). This in turn makes the platforms less useful and more
hostile to users and presumably at some point that will cause users to leave
the system.

It also feels like social media platforms are starting to die faster than they
can be replaced. In the past MySpace died but people could move to Facebook,
Facebook shifted to emphasizing the feed over groups but people could move to
Reddit, but I'm not sure what people could move to if Reddit becomes non-
viable.

Is this just me?

~~~
coldpie
It's the same thing that happens to all "free"/ad-sponsored/VC-backed
services. Unless you're FB or Twitter or YouTube, your ads aren't profitable
enough to run your business. The business model is unviable unless you get
that big. So you lose a bunch of money until you find a way to monetize or
close. This always takes the form of user-hostile anti-features. Currently
that's forcing users into your special apps, where they can't install an ad-
blocker. Historically it's been stuff like increasingly scummy ad behavior,
and/or requiring paid accounts to access features that used to be free. Your
platform gets less useful and gets replaced by the next "free"/ad-
sponsored/VC-backed money loser and the cycle repeats.

It's happening to imgur and Reddit now. Time to find the next big thing.

~~~
msluyter
I call this the _dismal equilibrium_. Anything free that provides value is, in
brute economic terms, mis-priced. Thus, it tends to degrade due to attempts at
monetization until a balance is reached between its inherent value and the
pain one must endure to use/access it.

~~~
noir_lord
> Anything free that provides value is, in brute economic terms, mis-priced.

Damn, that's a good way to put it.

I assume value includes non tangibles, otherwise open source wouldn't work.

~~~
coldpie
> otherwise open source wouldn't work

This is more a case of non-open-source software trying to force physical-world
business models into a world where physicality has no meaning. Most open
source development is paid for by paying _for the work to be done_. In other
words, much open source software is not free; rather, it's already been paid
for.

------
eric_cc
Are there any good alternatives to the reddit platform?

I've been a user since 2006. When reddit blew up in popularity, many subs
massively declined in quality as is to be expected. Niche subs, however,
remained pretty great.

But reddit as an organization is beyond repair at this point. Changes like
this are now par for the course.

Worse even, reddit is now engaged in censoring subs. The most obvious and
possibly most disturbing example is the quarantine of r/the_donald on
political grounds.

~~~
trianglem
r/the_donald has many many posts advocating for violence against certain
groups in clear violation of policy. These posts would stay up for days or
weeks. In my opinion quarantining them was basically a slap on the wrist.

~~~
mrlala
>In my opinion quarantining them was basically a slap on the wrist.

I mean, I agree they should have been banned from day one basically.. but to
say it's a slap on the wrist is odd because absolutely no one has to read any
of their trash unless you specifically go there. Most random reddit users
probably don't even know of td, let alone would actually go there voluntarily.

That being said.. I think it's unconscionable that reddit allows that
subreddit to exist.. it's literally a breeding ground for violence and hate
thought/speech.

~~~
Starkus
That is totally false to assert. So basically you're saying to 'ban them from
day one' because...you don't like their politics?

and no, they are not a 'breeding ground for violence and hate thought/speech'

Reminds me of 'wrongthink' and you're advocating for its censor?

Censorship is evil, censoring that sub was evil to supress information

~~~
mrlala
Ok td shit poster.

~~~
Starkus
Classic, well thought out response. lol...

~~~
mrlala
What's the point in actually debating with you? You condone how r/the_donald
behaves, so you are beyond help from an internet stranger.

~~~
Starkus
Well... by first trying to point out a little ignorance coming from your
comment. Second, maybe add in some hypocrisy from your comment. Third, it is
really not about how a community 'behaves' because that is beside the initial
point of you advocating for censorship based on political opinions when you're
referencing Reddit.

That community does not directly behave in violence, hate, etc. How ridiculous
of you to make that assertion. You're likely buying into the bullshit about
the excuse Reddit made to censor them to begin with..."Anti police rhetoric"
...it is laughable that you're buying that.

End of story: Political Censorship

------
dmix
Did all of the founders leave Reddit or something?

This is totally backwards. Valuing pure signup rates over the user experience
of hundreds of millions, who may already have accounts but dont feel like
logging in, or just simply want to read content and sign up another day, is
what happens when marketing/business people hijack a business over product/UX
people.

This is a very obvious vanity metric issue to anyone who has run a popular
website. And most people do it to appease VCs/investors... Reddit is already
mature, so there's no justification to artificially increasing growth at the
expense of the wider product.

------
cryptos
I'm on Reddit, but I would probably have never signed up if I were not able to
read comments without login.

~~~
elweston2
I am not on reddit. But I do read it a lot. I usually spend a couple of years
before I make yet another account somewhere. Because most of the time other
people have made my point and I do not have anything to add. At this point it
has saved me many security breaches. As at some point the company almost
always loses control of its password database for some reason.

------
cies
Time for a new type of social. That FB users do not move for something less
slik-polished-and-widely-used is understandible. But I believe a large part of
the reddittors is more keen on privacy, openness, ad-free experience,
uncensoredness, etc.

I like this one:

[https://github.com/dessalines/lemmy](https://github.com/dessalines/lemmy)

~~~
kevinali1
I think quality of the conversation will always trump "privacy, openness and
ad-free".

We have to pay for quality. If we're not going to pay with dollar bills, we
pay with privacy.

~~~
cies
Until you are like in HK and need to organize yourselves for some reason.

> If we're not going to pay with dollar bills, we pay with privacy.

Paying with ads is also possible.

~~~
WhompingWindows
But if you pay with ads, don't you need to see a LOT of ads, unless your
privacy is compromised and they use trackers about you to give you targeted
(i.e. more lucrative) ads?

~~~
Karunamon
I don't see why topic-based ads based entirely on on-site participation would
be a problem. No need for any user-hostile garbage, bucket your communities
into topics, and let advertisers target the topics or the intersections
between them. Ads are sold on-site, not via third party networks.

Reddit does this, but no idea how successful it is.

------
remote_phone
Reddit is the Uber of social media.

All of the hard work is done for free by the mods of each subreddit. But they
have no piece of the pie when Reddit goes IPO. The entire value is predicated
on an Army of free workers that get nothing when the site IPOs.

~~~
loceng
Geocities was first platform that was successful due to this community
moderation model - they did however give payout to moderators when they IPO's;
I think it was $1,000 USD?

------
testis321
Googles algorithms should penalize them hard for that... but they probably
wont. Random users clicking a reddit link in search results, and coming back
after two seconds and clicking on another result, should bring their "site
score" down.... but considering it's google .. and it's reddit.. it probably
wont.

~~~
apacheCamel
This would be very unfortunate for them since their own inner search system is
very rough around the edges. I almost always have to search for a Reddit post
via Google instead.

------
ablation
I'll pass, thanks. It didn't work for me when Quora did it, it won't work when
Reddit does it.

~~~
rusticpenn
It worked for me on quora, but that will be the last time.

~~~
virgilp
For some definition of "worked" ... sure, you signed up. Then what?

I already had an account when Quora did it, and that made me use it less
(wasn't always signed in, wasn't always willing to sign in - e.g. incognito
sessions). For a long while, I started going back less and less - was only
brought back occasionally by their emails which were still pretty good.

Recently the emails got so bad that I unsubscribed (I kinda expect to stop
visiting the site completely). So I'm guessing I'm not alone in reducing my
engagement - the quality of the whole site seems to have gone dramatically
down.

~~~
52-6F-62
The thing that slowed my usage of Quora down to basically once every few
months is so many of the answers to sincere subjects are promotional for some
product someone's pushing—even if it's actually off-topic but some damned
keyword aligned!

I liked it before that kind of activity proliferated the space.

------
kresten
I eventually conceded to Medium’s constant harassment to sign in for free.

Now it demands I pay.

I wonder if there is a way to permanently exclude medium.com from all my
search results.

~~~
onychomys
There's a way to do it for google:
[https://support.google.com/customsearch/answer/4513886?hl=en](https://support.google.com/customsearch/answer/4513886?hl=en)

------
gomox
A few years ago I deleted the reddit app because I felt I was spending too
much time on it. I would then use the web based version when I felt like
wasting some time.

A month ago I ended up getting the app again because the web version became
essentially unusable (they did some strange change where clicking on a link
gave you the top three/five comments and then other posts from the same
subreddit, wtf?).

I wonder what short term pipe they're smoking in the product department.

~~~
swarnie_
A lot of your issues are mixed by opting out of the beta layout (account
preference setting) and using a plugin like RES.

Vanilla reddit is unusable.

------
bovermyer
So, who's up for going back to forums with small but active communities?

~~~
coldpie
(Psst, come try the Something Awful Forums :-) )

~~~
gnome_chomsky
Truth, I remember reddit cratering the active user base there ten years ago,
but I've found myself going back again over the past few years again, craving
the type of community there vs the lowest common denominator and ad filled
garbage that is reddit.

------
detritus
Ooh, so it's becoming another walled garden? Just what the internet needs!

------
mattchew
I'm hoping one of the ActivityPub Reddit-like projects takes off.

(yeah, I know, someone else make what I want . . . )

(or, we should have just fixed spam on Usenet . . . )

~~~
howard941
Spam wasn't what killed netnews, big ISPs didn't want to serve it up for free
anymore. Perhaps that wasn't what you were implying but in case it was, spam
ain't what done her in.

~~~
mattchew
I've always assumed it was mostly spam, and the bulk of new users preferring
other discussion formats.

I appreciate the correction.

------
welly
I'm not experiencing this on either desktop or mobile. I'm not a member of
reddit so am not signed in. I can view comment threads and other content
perfectly fine.

------
ryanmercer
I wonder if this has anything to do with them trying to catalog subs. This
thread and what I'll share below lead me to believe they may be attempting to
curate content.

For context on them attempting to catalog subs about a month ago a Reddit
admin messaged me unsolicited (apparently a lot of people). I have no problem
sharing this since they randomly contacted me via the site, I've never done
contract work for them, and there was no request to keep it private (and
apparently hey just randomly mass messaged people):

>Hey there! I work at Reddit and I’m reaching out because we’re looking for
experienced redditors who might be interested in taking on some paid contract
work for us. I have no idea if you’d be interested, but I figured I’d drop you
a line.

I replied requesting more info

>Great! Essentially, this work would be reviewing lists of subreddits to help
categorize what they are about and what content is in them. This would
probably be maximum 10h/wk (no minimum) over a couple of weeks, though if it
goes well there’s likely to be more. It pays $15/hr.

I said sure and was told this

>Can you send an email to _redacted_ @reddit.com with your resume and your
experience on Reddit and we can work on scheduling a time to chat about the
opportunity? (No worries if your profession or line of work isn’t related to
Reddit. We're looking for reliable people with existing Reddit knowledge;
reviewing your resume will help us better understand your background.) Upon
reviewing the resumes, we will schedule 30-minute phone calls with selected
candidates to share details on the project work and conduct interviews.

I did about 20 minutes later and within an hour got an email saying thanks but
no thanks, there were tons of people interested and they're already full.

------
Fnoord
I guess there will be accounts which are shared just to read the content.
Although it requires 1 malicious user to get such account closed, it makes the
profiling much more difficult.

That, or impersonate a search engine to access. They wouldn't block that,
would they?

------
blunte
It's not a new pattern. And like MySpace, Yahoo, Digg, and so many others,
Reddit will eventually fall out of favor and be replaced by a new better, less
corporate system.

And that system will also follow the same path (unless it is started by an
already-very-rich group of techies who value status more than money).

Just think: if you were fabulously wealthy, then burning a few million a year
to have a completely free, non-commercial social site would be perfectly
reasonable. Of course, eventually you would die and someone would then begin
the usual path with your legacy...

------
Irishsteve
They are pretty aggressive with trying to push me to a native app or signup.
Guess it’s related to the possible ad dollar

------
tsukurimashou
R.I.P. not that there was much left to save

------
trophycase
As someone else mentioned in the thread. Viewing NSFW content now requires
signing in as well.

------
cmtRed
I'm creating a new project that allows you to create a new Reddit in seconds:
[https://www.community.red](https://www.community.red)

------
schlupfknoten
This currently only affects the mobile version of the site.

------
samantohermes
So is there any third-party frontend for Reddit, like Invidious for YouTube
and Nitter for Twitter? old.reddit.com may go to hell soon.

------
butterfi
Is anybody else actually seeing this? I'm looking at Reddit right now and see
comments just fine.

~~~
butterfi
on second pass, I'm thinking they mean the mobile app now requires you to
login, not the website. Thats a slightly different scenario.

------
nyolfen
reddit should be a protocol

~~~
crankylinuxuser
It was. It's called Usenet.

And Usenet even included posting a single message to multiple groups, and
people from both can respond.

~~~
jandrese
I would be thrilled if the followup to Reddit is Usenet but with working
moderation.

------
nbrempel
For those who enjoy the Reddit format but don’t enjoy Reddit itself, I
recommend taking a look at Tildes. It’s a much smaller community, of course,
but the discourse is decent and it’s open source and not for profit.

[https://tildes.net/](https://tildes.net/)

------
rchaud
I noticed this occurring on Android Firefox with Ublock Origin enabled. Not
sure if that's related, but I'm not about to disable it just to see if that's
the distinguishing factor.

------
Shivetya
this appears to be limited to mobile?

I am able to read threads just fine without an account, in this case safari on
my Mac. Safari on the iPhone is fine too.

------
fjabre
What if Google required signing in to search?

~~~
tumetab1
Already is(G).

(G) Google way to restrict search to signed-in users: If you're on Chrome
(biggest market share) and you're signed into Chrome (big share also) then you
auto-sign into your google account. PS: Not sure if they rollback on this
change.

Why the (G) way works? Because it's non-obtrusive way to force user to login.

------
zmzrr
Only in mobile. I never do any serious web browsing in mobile, so...

------
Nokinside
Back to /.

------
idclip
So this is how liberty dies.gif

------
stratosmacker
old.reddit.com

~~~
dredmorbius
While it works.

And:

1\. If you don't mind being constantly redirected to www by arbitrary links.

2\. Having old blocked by robots.txt from search-engine indexing.

3\. The likelihood of old disappearing at some point in the future.

I saw that future a couple of years ago and noped the heck out.

------
bitwize
Hackernews told me old-school distributed services need to die because
centralized services have better UX.

UX is everything, Hackernews told me.

Where is your god now?

