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.
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?”
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)
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.
It’s a bizzare move though, given that basically every other social media in the world doesn’t block mobile browsers.
I’m not sure. I’ve worked at companies using amplitude and hotjar that can record all click event and sessions on web
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.
They’re going to do the Instagram thing where you can view a teaser but then it forces you to the app.
Mean there were times when I was logged out of Reddit and was trying looking up something on mobile and the constant badgering to install the app just had me tell it to flip off and I looked elsewhere instead. Lot of people tend to do things based on how convenient it is for them and if they go ahead with this, sure maybe some will download the app but a lot of other people will just get fed up and stop, particularly if they were using the browser version so they didn’t have to deal with the app in the first place.
They act like everyone already uses reddit and the users are so addicted they’ll put up with anything. To be honest, this may actually be true for a significant portion of the userbase.
I would have thought so of myself, but yet, here we are
These federated let me things really really remind me of the way Reddit used to be about a decade ago. And frankly, now that I found the Jerboa app, I really don’t miss Reddit at all.
I just wanted to find a place where I could scroll around and chat with other nerds. And that’s basically what Lemmy is.
They act like everyone already uses reddit and the users are so addicted they’ll put up with anything.
It seems like a lot of users are. I deleted my Reddit account (for whatever good that does) but have gone back to peek a few times - very few people seem to care. The black out, the app shenanigans, the power-mad mods; it’s just a minor inconvenience. API, IPO, VC, what’s that? Just gimme my crude humor and canned outrage!!
Most active users though are lurking voters only, or not logged in at all, and don’t comment/post. When they leave, it won’t be as obvious. And the more contributing users leave, the more the only ones left and talking will be the ones who don’t care.
I think a lot of people are riding the sinking ship all the way down and planning to bail on the 30th, when the apps are actually banned, too. Probably enjoying the drama of it and not realizing they could be enjoying the drama of it from, like, over here on dry land instead.
But yeah. There’ll be people who put up with it for now, or who join after and missed the whole controversy, or who straight up don’t care at all.
I think there’ll be these initial waves of people who can see the writing on the wall leaving, then after that there’ll be a steady trickle of people abandoning ship over time, with spikes whenever the next outrageous thing happens, and the whole thing will collapse gradually, perhaps over years.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 😅
