- cross-posted to:
- reddit@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- reddit@lemmy.ml
As quoted from the linked post.
It looks like you’re part of one of our experiments. The logged-in mobile web experience is currently unavailable for a portion of users. To access the site you can log on via desktop, the mobile apps, or wait for the experiment to conclude.
This is separate from the API issue. This will actually BLOCK you from even viewing reddit on your phone without using the official app.
Archive.org link in case the post is removed.
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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.
Same! I deleted my 10 year account. Kinda not even sad. It was going downhill for a while now. But hey I just created my own instance for gardeners called thegarden.land so now I have a new home to grow roots and thrive!
That’s awesome! It’s nice to see that people can actually try things here without getting downvoted to hell like on Reddit :)
Fellow plant enthusiast here, thanks for the link to your instance!
Fellow account 10+ year deleter checking in! It sucks but reddit doesn’t care about any of its users despite us being the only reason it exists.
I’m pretty sure I’m going to delete my three year and ten year accounts and just walk away for good. Honestly I was a little sad all day today, because I have a few hobbies I’m really crazy about and the cooking, baking, gemstone, and gardening communities have felt like home for a long time…but just using lemmy for a tiny little bit, I’m actually really excited! I’m having a much simpler experience here that’s refreshing. I like the content I’m reading.
Nice new instance! I’ll come check it out and subscribe to a community. I just made a new one yesterday too, Lemmy.pro
Nice! Just joined 🤓
Hey from the Garden! We had to restart the site last night. Having some difficulties getting off the ground. I think we lost all our users! Were you one of them? Could I ask you to try there again and tell me if things are working okay, if you still are logged in, etc ? I Appreciate the help. Thegarden.land
Is there a way to follow this instance directly from the Jerboa app? Sorry to be daft, clicking the link seems to take me directly to a chrome tab :(
You should be able to add it as an account, I think from the top left when you are the main feed.
Edit : went and checked, there’s a down arrow next to your name when you hit the menu icon, hit it and you should be able to add an account on a different instance
All working fine from my end 🙂
Great! Thank you
They’re not gonna repeal anything. The only thing that will stop this is by Reddit dying and becoming a part of web history, which is hopefully on its way to happening.
And even if they do back down this time, the next lamebrain attempt at the same thing will be brewing. Let it burn.
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.
Stages of grief Speedrun any%
It’s getting worse by the minute. I really really hope Lemmy usage picks up.
It seriously is. I’ve been on the site for all of 30 mins now and I am loving it so much more than reddit
Why? It’s a less mature platform with less features and not enough content. I get the idea of it being attractive but it’s like Mastadon without the content you’ve got an uphill climb.
The main reason is that although the concessions we make may seem ever so insignificant, they pile up and dettach you from what you were looking for in the first place. You barely see your acquaintances posts on instagram or facebook anymore. Twitter is on it’s way to become a cesspool. Every new Reddit “feature” jist makes the experience worse. It won’t be long for those platforms to all converge into a big mind grinder for propaganda.
In fediverse there is no valuation seeking to ruin things, and there won’t be for the foreseeable future, so it’s good ground to build upon, it’s just good sense.
Take the content problem for example. You can think of that as an opportunity to be the content you want to see.
Well, for startes, the mobile web version does not sucks balls, I don’t see that as baby steps tbh.
It feels a lot more snappy, clean, and modern. I think most of that is because it hasn’t accumulated a lot of the bloat and feature creep that Reddit has over the years. The biggest downside, though, is that the community is much smaller and there isn’t a lot of the niche content that Reddit is so good for.
As soon as more of those niche communities start to pop up, there won’t be much reason not to use it over Reddit. It’s like a back-to-basics version of Reddit.
Exactly. Every advantage I hear that Reddit has over Lemmy comes from the community, not the platform. Add or move those communities to Lemmy and I don’t think people will see much reason to use Reddit.
The struggle is going to be getting the community to actually move over here.
Like it or not, Lemmy takes work to use and understand. It’s not the best metaphor, but Lemmy is a custom built PC whereas Reddit is a plug-and-play console. Mix that with the growing pains new platforms need to go through, and it’ll be tricky to pull new people in.
It took me about 20-30 minutes to get a handle on what’s going on, and hopefully it gets simpler as more people join!
Maybe I already had the right models in my brain, but for me I just created an account and started using it like reddit. Only thing different are the different servers.
Yeah but, referencing your analogy, if you want knowledgeable and informative conversation, you want to talk to your custom PC buddy, not the friends who only know how to plug and play. The comments sections on Lemmy are not dumpster fires like on Reddit
I hope so, I just hope that it actually gets some traction in the wake of all this instead of getting a modest bump and then mostly dying out again, which is what seems like the most likely direction. I have faith though
I should say that Reddit without RES would probably be much closer to what I’m seeing on Lemmy now.
that’s fair, I exclusively used old reddit but I never touched RES for whatever reason
It’s a less mature platform with less features
That’s why I like it. It literally has every feature I used or wanted on reddit already.
And there was a time when the same could be said for Reddit. Is Lemmy perfect? Of course not, but at least we have the ability to build something better instead of making the hippo dance to our beat, as it were.
Not to mention there’s a lot of those features that have been added over the years that we could do without. Nobody’s clamoring for an RPAN clone over here (I hope), or for three different ways to DM/chat with people.
Because it doesn’t actively try to make your experience worse
The problems with lemmy are actively trying to be solved, the problems with reddit are artificially created in order to make the user miserable.
It’s a less mature platform with less features and not enough content.
Well… that’s kinda why I like it lol
Yeah, there’s a really nice feel to when dealing with something simply.
spoiler
plus, instead of remembering all the key combines, you can click below which is diff from reddit app. Finally, accidental spoilers are no more!
Less mature and much less far along (and susceptible to) the enshittification curve.
I’m loving it, there isn’t half as much karma farming bs and pointless arguing in any of the subs I’ve joined. The content will come if folks don’t give in and go back.
Lemmy is better than mastodon, for me at least. There was nothing interesting going on at mastodon, but Lemmy is thriving.
What sort of content do you want? I’m fine with what’s her right now, but I’m more about discussion and knowledge.
So far it seems like a lot of the non technerd side of reddit is missing, things like diy ore Brewing dont seem to be hear yet (or i just didnt find them)
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.
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.
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?”
People need to understand that this is about tracking your eyeballs. Reddit viewed on a webpage does not provide the metadata they want. What metadata does the app provide? Things you wouldn’t think about wanting as a human, but the aggregate is very valuable.
Stuff like how long did you watch that video Ad? Where did you click on screen and at what time? What content were you viewing and what course of action did you take to get there? Web viewing only shows the landing page you arrived on reddit from and the exit page that took you away from reddit. Performing these actions in the app provides metadata cookie crumbs like a trail of roach shit to every single thing you’ve done on reddit in micro activities.
I’m not sure. I’ve worked at companies using amplitude and hotjar that can record all click event and sessions on web
Users can block those with extensions so the data isn’t as reliable
That’s probably a big part. Web browsers can do ad blocking. Within the official Reddit app that’s way more difficult.
It is not super difficult to do the same type of blocking with a router on software like OpenWRT. This can easily block all of the 3rd party ads type junk. The thing I can’t quite figure out is what they are able to do on their server connection. It seems like they are able to setup their own proxy and impact other traffic on the same network when they should be far more sandboxed, but I can’t prove that.
Someone REALLY needs to make fully open source and transparent mobile hardware and put Qualcomm under the bus… on a high speed looping track. We have no idea what is really possible under the hood on any existing mobile device. Both the processor and the modem are mostly black boxes. Even with the best custom ROMs like Graphene OS, the whole premise is based on developing a verifiable chain of trust on top of untrusted hardware we don’t control.
The thing people fail to put together is that this is an issue of ownership; theft of ownership. Now we are seeing the first layers of neo digital feudalism emerging as a result of the theft.
It is not super difficult to do the same type of blocking with a router on software like OpenWRT.
that is not something average people even know about, or would have the skills to attempt. not even close.
The thing I can’t quite figure out is what they are able to do on their server connection. It seems like they are able to setup their own proxy and impact other traffic on the same network when they should be far more sandboxed, but I can’t prove that.
I noticed a while ago that my Asus WRT with a custom hosts file wasn’t blocking ads anymore, too. I’m betting your assessment is correct. Shit sucks. Fuck ads.
I run a whitelist fw for my workstation, and have developed that list for years. Yes, it has been a major PITA. They can never get around a whitelist unless they self host all the ads. I imagine their servers will burn down in a day if they allow that kind of access. Plus who would pay these clowns to unverifiably show the ad in the first place. Then all the ad mongers won’t be able to mine data on their servers too.
The loss of net neutrality is still only beginning to show its impact. I think we are on the verge of an internet parallel to the Star Wars death of the Old Republic and beginning of the Rebellion. The Chrome browser is the dissolution of the Senate via Web 3.
If I am correct, welcome to Hoth. Mind your battle stations. Imperial Walkers will likely show up at any time.
I pay for adguard DNS. Rather than use an app on individual devices, I just put the official DNS into my router and problem solved when I’m at home. Works like a charm.
Funneling the herd into the slaughterhouse.
It sure seems like half the herd has wandered off.
Users can block those on desktop without issue. On mobile it’s a bit harder so most people I know don’t even if they use ublock or something on their PCs/laptops (though that is of course only anecdotal).
So if anything if that was the issue they should’ve shut off support for the desktop version LOL /s
It’s not as common to push users to apps on desktop, but its a tried-and-true practice on mobile. I’m sure companies would do it if they could, but app stores and app lockin aren’t as strong on desktop as on mobile
Sorry that that wasn’t obvious, but the desktop bit was mostly a joke!
But yeah; on desktop extra applications you have to download are definitely a hard sell.
I would assume a good amount of the reason has less to do with tracking [though I’m not denying it’s a factor], and more with other stuff such as it being an icon on your phone etc, apps just have a different “feel” than websites ultimately imho
It’s a bizzare move though, given that basically every other social media in the world doesn’t block mobile browsers.
Facebook infamously does for Messenger. But yes, I think it’s a sign of their desperation.
Not blocking but LinkedIn pushes mobile browsers towards their app.
It’s so completely wild and backwards. Imagine your not a reddit user, but a search leads you to a reddit link, and you’re on your phone. You see all this stuff about downloading the app instead, and you’re just going to bail, never reading the post. If there was no friction, they may have converted a new user.
They act like everyone already uses reddit and the users are so addicted they’ll put up with anything.
The more I look at this mess, the more I see elements of speedrunning. Reddit is really trying very hard to loose as many users as possible as fast as possible. It’s as if there’s a competition between Reddit and Twitter.
I wonder if some of it is fluffing the metrics too, like “Since we announced that third party apps are going away, we’ve had X thousand downloads of the official Reddit app” (meanwhile not mentioning that they’re forcing a majority of mobile users away from the mobile website)
Bruh, I agree. I’m super interested to see the fallout of the community from this. I know it’s super easy to say “fuck /u/spez”, but how many people will truly pull through to delete their accounts and/or stop using reddit?
The whole blackout thing is super interesting, and to my knowledge it’s the biggest protest of it’s kind since Reddit hit the mainstream. I can’t imagine it kills Reddit soon though. It’s just the start of a brain-drain that will make Reddit lose relevancy over the next 5 to 10 years, and they’ll wonder where they went wrong. Even I’ll probably keep my alt account there, but the days of actually contributing will end for many.
But also fuck spez ;)
Already deleted any accounts I had. Overwrote all comments with this tool too.
Make sure it actually overwrote all your comments. PowerDeleteSuite doesn’t respect the edit rate limit. I used a fork which runs much slower but respects the limit.
Also, it’s a good idea to wait several days between the editing and deleting your account. Many users on reddit were suggesting that reddit holds on to pre-edit text for a while. Obviously archives hold onto it forever, but if your goal is to deny your content to reddit, that’s orthogonal.
I did this as well. Sad to see the content I created disappear, but at least now I can start reposting to a whole new fediverse 😅
That’s a positive at least. I’m still ripping data from my accounts, but afterwards bye bye!
Gotta weigh in here and say overwriting comments like that can hurt the end user more than it hurts Reddit. A lot of traffic to Reddit is intentional, with posts and comments showing up in search results from ddg/google. I know I’ve found my own posts from troubleshooting the same issue years later. Sure, delete/overwrite comparatively useless comments and posts, but leave up other useful content and use an ad blocker instead. That will hurt them more than deleting content, but still allow others to find the info they need.
It’s true that it will hurt people long term but it will drive traffic away more than deleting the inane stuff. No website like that should be such a central repo when it’s unstable like this. The internet has survived link rot and info loss before.
deleted by creator
I deleted my 10 year and 5 year old accounts. I didn’t purge my posts and comments, as I doubt they’re truly deleted from the database and I wanted to leave that content for people who aren’t reddit. I’ve moved to the fediverse, andi think I’m here to stay.
There’s some communities on Reddit that don’t yet exist in other places; so I’m going to continue browsing those rarely; but once they move somewhere else I’m moving with them.
I thought I’d be making a long-tail exit as well, but I’ve been looking at my feed of mostly niche subs with an especially critical eye this week and concluded that even there, the signal-to-noise ratio had hit the point the web did as a whole that initially drove me to Reddit.
I’ll still use it to declutter Google results, but I expect that utility to decline as helpful, detailed posts become fewer and fewer. There’s still some distance to Facebook-level network lockdown.
Spez must have seen that “reverse funnel” episode of IASIP and thought it was an idea worth stealing. “We’ll just funnel everyone into our broken app and then endless profit!”
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?
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.
They were always going to. The pre-enshittification stage of a modern capitalist website consists of burning VC money to collect users to later exploit.
Well said.
Twitter probably opened the floodgates when they managed to shaft users and cut API access without outright killing themselves. Now everyone else is emboldened to ask “why can’t we do that too?”.
*without outright killing themselves YET.
The thing that made me saddest about Twitter is how they shafted their own people.
I know Netflix has been enshitifying for a while now but that’s accelerated a bit this year too. I work in tech and it’s been happening everywhere.
Forgot about Netflix! Yeah they’ve got to be pretty close to late-stage enshittification at this point. They can only raise their prices so much while simultaneously removing content before they completely lose their users.
Their approach here seems inherently broken. People aren’t going to use the app they don’t want to use.
As a sysadmin - I sort of welcome every dumb thing reddit does. I’ll get more sign ups on my Lemmy instance :D
That’s the boat I’m in, so to speak! If you know of any good sysadmin or IT related communities out here, I’d very much so appreciate some recommendations!
I’ve gone through some list before and federated to what I felt like might have a chance of being useful. It’s mostly not IT related, though :D Full list that gets sorted by users/month metric.
In regards to some specific IT places - I quickly scanned the list and found a couple:
I’ve tried a few variant of link creation, not sure how to force the UI to adapt the links to your local account instance.
I’d be appreciative of the community link, as well
I’ve replied 1 level up
Thank you!!
The more they push their shitty mobile app, the more people won’t use it.
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.
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.
The small videogame dedicated subs are the reason I’m still hesitant about leaving Reddit completely, but on the other hand, it would be entertaining to watch
another big site burnlemmy grow, and it’s not like I contributed much besides occasional comments. I might browse by top every few months or so to see what I missed.niche hobby subs are absolutely why i suspect i’ll not truly be able to leave, unless they were to migrate to lemmy or somewhere else. though hopefully i’ll be able to move my general browsing here instead, it can be hard to find those same like minded people on a whole new platform :/
Yeah, I have put in a lot of time in some of the communities over there and would be sad to leave, but I refuse to continue to drive conversation and generate the content for a site that has such low regard for their users.
We’ll see how it develops, but I am sad to say that it looks like the writing is on the wall.
