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.
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 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!
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.
Fellow plant enthusiast here, thanks for the link to your instance!
That’s awesome! It’s nice to see that people can actually try things here without getting downvoted to hell like on Reddit :)
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
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’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.
It’s funny because this is a huge issue with Pinterest and googling images, so many people automatically add -pinterest to their search terms so it’s completely blocked from the search results. Wonder if someday that’ll be reddit too.
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.
It seems to me that they are telling the investors that they might shrink but what is left will be on a much more profitable basis moving forward.
Maybe they’re trying to get a poor valuation so they can reverse course afterward and get a boost.
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.
deleted by creator
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.
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 ;)
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.
I’ve heard editing comments is likely more effective, but it’s hard to say. I’m guessing they take regular backups anyway, so maybe that’s not really a thing anymore.
Regardless, I’m planning on replacing all of my comments with something like “screw you Reddit, use Lemmy instead” or something to that effect. I have a ton, so I’ll need a script to do that, which will probably get blocked anyway.
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.
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!”
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)
This is both informative and unfortunate.
I, for one, welcome my Louis Rossmann overlord.
I’m waiting for him to talk about this in a video now lmao
I love this trope.
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” 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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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)
Oh shoot, you’re right. :(
Lemmy is better than mastodon, for me at least. There was nothing interesting going on at mastodon, but Lemmy is thriving.
old.reddit.com isn’t going anywhere
– a spez lie
I honestly don’t think theyll remove it, since reddit relies on mods and mods really prefer old reddit than new reddit
But I wouldn’t be surprised if they did something stupid like limiting it to only mods
Mods also rely on third-party apps that use the API, and those are being shut down. I don’t think they care about the mods at this point.
“here’s your new mobile mod tools, peasants!”
– spez, probably
Stop blackmailing him.
It’s literally the same wording as that the API isn’t going anywhere, and the same reasoning as why it won’t go away. Reddit is definitely stupid enough to get rid of it
If it stays, I assume it’s because spez himself uses it
Having already rather violently shot himself in both feet, spez has started aiming for his other body parts.
Dollar-store Elon Musk is going full “fuck you” to reddit users.
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.
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.
Unbelievable. Are they actively trying to get as many people as possible to leave their platform all together?
Seems like it’s a race to become the most hated platform. Twitter started a bit earlier, but Reddit is catching up really well.
Facebook’s far worse than either of them, but as far as the Most Hated title goes, it will be fun (and grim) to see who wins that race. Although, I feel like Spez is simply selling out, and Elon is truly, more overtly, an evil fuckwit; who will keep screwing his platform out of spite far longer than Spez his out of Greed. Spez played one of the last cards he could, I think.
Yes, this exactly. Ole spez is blinded by the impending IPO and those dollar signs are blocking anything else in his mind. At this point I think he would drive Reddit into the ground just to try and get a payday. For Reddit to survive he needs to resign.
Reddit will survive. Boycotts don’t work anymore because people can never organize enough to beat out the massive reach of entrenched monopolies anymore.
I’m not discounting the possibility that spez himself is also evil — he’s certainly done enough shady shit. He was once a mod of r/jailbait, after all, and he (or Reddit staff) had given one of the sub’s founders a “Pimp Daddy” badge.
Holy shit! I did not know that!
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.
Honestly I’m tired of every website trying to annoy or force me to download an app. Mobile web design is perfectly capable of doing the vast majority of the functionality you get with an app. It’s all about gaining greater access to your device’s functionality and data.
If someone told me you’d be expected to install a separate piece of software on your device for each website you frequently visit back in 2010 I’d have said that sounds like a stupid idea and it’d never catch on.
Some of the Reddit community is outright hostile to the fediverse and decentralization in general. Apparently the lot of us are too nerdy over here.
I am absolutely fine with that crowd staying far, far away from us. If they like where Reddit is going, fine, by all means let them stay there.
A lot of people are, unfortunately.
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.
The more they push their shitty mobile app, the more people won’t use it.
Their approach here seems inherently broken. People aren’t going to use the app they don’t want to use.
Reddit’s unwavering stubbornness to continue spiraling is just plain sad. What a way to go.
