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.
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…
Ironically, I’d just set my browser to desktop mode, and use the old reddit desktop interface. The more they modernized, the more entrenched I become.
I’d guess they’re trying to proactively prevent people from using adblock on mobile browsers.
Precisely. They can only enforce ads on the mobile app
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 almost looks like Reddit is trying to commit suicide in the fastest possible way.
I still have an account there. But I will delete it the moment the Apollo goes dark.
Unfortunately, non of this will matter. There are too many mindless zombies OK with consuming garbage content.
That’s okay, kinda a fresh start for the rest of us who do migrate! It’s an evolution process and we are adapting and so hopefully reap the benefits of quality content and real interactions!
ahahaha the reason I finally stopped using Yelp was because their mobile site would only load part of a review and would force redirect to their app if you tried to expand on any reviews. Rather than download the app or change user agent, I just gave up.
every website and their mother wants you to download their app nowadays.
Reddit finding ways to actively make things worse, while lemmy rapidly improves.
Finding ways to shove more ads in your face and make tons of money. The issue is super simple at the end of the day.
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’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.
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!
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! 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
Fellow plant enthusiast here, thanks for the link to your instance!
Nice new instance! I’ll come check it out and subscribe to a community. I just made a new one yesterday too, Lemmy.pro
Of course they are, gotta make everyone use the shitty app to farm as much data as possible!
I literally just had an instance of opening a nsfw reddit link from a Google search and it informed me that I could only see nsfw posts in the app…
It has been that way for a while. Anything where you have to confirm you’re over 18 will not display unless you’re logged in.
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.
Funneling the herd into the slaughterhouse.
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 a bizzare move though, given that basically every other social media in the world doesn’t block mobile browsers.
Not blocking but LinkedIn pushes mobile browsers towards their app.
Facebook infamously does for Messenger. But yes, I think it’s a sign of their desperation.
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.
Quora, basically.
I don’t think I’ve ever successfully read one of those, because Google brings me to the site and then it demands I log in. They even go so far as to blur all the content. It’s really really stupid.
They’re going to do the Instagram thing where you can view a teaser but then it forces you to the app.
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.
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?
Already deleted any accounts I had. Overwrote all comments with this tool too.
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Not surprised. They need to milk every last drop of revenue from their users free content for the upcoming IPO.
It’s like they’re trying to kill the platform
They didn’t have a mobile app for the longest time, that’s why 3rd party became so popular. They just don’t seem to get how to run it.
Yeah, maybe it’s an exit scam. I bet some executive said, “I’ll give the higher up execs what they think they want (ADS) which is the opposite of what the users want, but we’ll all get bonuses just before the site dies.”
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.
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.
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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
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” just 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.
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.
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.
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.
Well, for startes, the mobile web version does not sucks balls, I don’t see that as baby steps tbh.
Less mature and much less far along (and susceptible to) the enshittification curve.
What sort of content do you want? I’m fine with what’s her right now, but I’m more about discussion and knowledge.
Reddit is officially on a bankruptcy speedrun.
The mobile browsing experience was a huge shitshow anyway. Randomly refreshing webpage, comments never posting or posting 5 times, expanding comments would work sometimes. They actively nuked it to make people use the reddit app. Fuck them
Well, at least you could send a link to a friend who doesn’t have a Reddit account and they could view it. Now they’d be greeted with a friendly “install the app or get out” screen, and let’s be real, they wouldn’t install a whole app just to view the occasional link you’d send them.
Randomly refreshing webpage
What is it with almost every modern website constantly refreshing until it errors out on my phone? I always just assumed it was because I blocked trackers and they just gave up trying to display their cancerous page.
Why make the mobile experience good when every single website wants you to download an app?
I can honestly say since Twitter did this I’ve hardly ever used it
