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?"

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

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.

They've already made the "new" reddit web view unusable for any sub marked NSFW. I feel sorry for the web devs at Reddit that spent all this time making a responsive site that works on mobile, then to be forced to artificially block access to push app usage.

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.

Reddit is officially on a bankruptcy speedrun.

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.

"old.reddit.com isn't going anywhere"

-- a spez lie

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

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..

Wow..

Are they legally allowed to just do that? Just shadow ban certain users temporarily for an 'experiment'?

If so... Why is that legally allowed??

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.

Are they actively trying to make people stop using the site?

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

As if it wasn’t bad enough to ask if I want to use the default mobile app every time I go to a Reddit page on mobile. 😕

They're tearing it down one brick at a time!

They just keep digging

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.

They're really trying to speedrun killing their site lmao

Monetization at all costs it seems. They really want that IPO bag.

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

They already made the mobile site practically unusable by constantly reminding you to use the app. The mobile browsing experience was just terrible. They can just show the same adds in the mobile browser...

Not surprised. They need to milk every last drop of revenue from their users free content for the upcoming IPO.

I can honestly say since Twitter did this I’ve hardly ever used it

My mobile is experimenting with not visiting reddit.

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

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.

This is both informative and unfortunate.

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.

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?