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Re:Reddit gets its app to 50m Play Store downloads by jchw on Thursday September 03, 2020 @04:16AM (#24361862)
I can only imagine half of the downloads came from people trying to select the “web” option on the popup and missing.

On a serious note, it must really be a good strategy to utterly ruin the web experience, if you want to get more people on your app, because its been the hot new thing for a while. At least with Reddit, third party clients are well-supported, unlike say Twitter. I use Apollo on iOS.

Re:Reddit gets its app to 50m Play Store downloads by thewhitetulip on Thursday September 03, 2020 @04:52AM (#24362065)
I've totally stopped using reddit. It is incredibly annoying that every single page has that annoying popup.
Re:Reddit gets its app to 50m Play Store downloads by strombofulous on Thursday September 03, 2020 @04:53AM (#24362070)
Change the www in the url to an i
Re:Reddit gets its app to 50m Play Store downloads by redd1taway on Thursday September 03, 2020 @05:01AM (#24362123)
Or an "old".

You can use "old.reddit.com" instead of "www.reddit.com", but you might get an SSL error if you try to use "https://www.old.reddit.com/...".

Re:Reddit gets its app to 50m Play Store downloads by thewhitetulip on Thursday September 03, 2020 @05:07AM (#24362159)
I did not know the i.reddit.com, I did know the old one but it is not of much use on a mobile phone
Re:Reddit gets its app to 50m Play Store downloads by gpderetta on Thursday September 03, 2020 @05:19AM (#24362228)
there's a firefox plugin for that :)
Re:Reddit gets its app to 50m Play Store downloads by mcjiggerlog on Thursday September 03, 2020 @05:23AM (#24362260)
Re:Reddit gets its app to 50m Play Store downloads by jay3ss on Thursday September 03, 2020 @04:34PM (#24368575)
I made an (experimental) extension for Firefox that lets you choose which version of reddit you want to use

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/reddirect-new...

Re:Reddit gets its app to 50m Play Store downloads by nanagojo on Thursday September 03, 2020 @04:43AM (#24362009)
The twitter dark pattern of forcing you to refresh is so stupid
Re:Reddit gets its app to 50m Play Store downloads by fouc on Thursday September 03, 2020 @04:52AM (#24362062)
What is that all about?!

I've been wondering, every time I click a twitter link in iOS from say slack, I get the stupid partial load and then the refresh message.

Re:Reddit gets its app to 50m Play Store downloads by guessmyname on Thursday September 03, 2020 @04:58AM (#24362100)
Twitter UI uses a token to authenticate all operations with their own API.

When you use the mobile application the token is refreshed automatically.

When you use the web version it does the same but only if you are logged in.

It happens to me all the time. I don’t use Twitter myself but many people in my circle of friends and colleagues do. They constantly share stuff that is posted on Twitter and almost every time I click these links I get the error message because the token in my web browser storage has been invalidated, so I have to reload the page one or two times to force the UI to request a new token so I can see the content and then forget about Twitter for a couple of hours until another friend or colleague shares another link and the circle repeats again.

Re:Reddit gets its app to 50m Play Store downloads by ycombinete on Thursday September 03, 2020 @04:56AM (#24362088)
I think it's designed to frustrate you into downloading that app
Re:Reddit gets its app to 50m Play Store downloads by jeroenhd on Thursday September 03, 2020 @06:51AM (#24362715)
What pattern is this? I use the PWA with Firefox and I haven't encountered any dark patterns involving refreshing myself.
Re:Reddit gets its app to 50m Play Store downloads by rossvor on Thursday September 03, 2020 @05:00AM (#24362107)
Try using nitter -- a no js twitter interface. Reading UX is so much better with it.
Re:Reddit gets its app to 50m Play Store downloads by ignoramous on Thursday September 03, 2020 @04:34AM (#24361959)
> it must really be a good strategy to utterly ruin the web experience

Aggressive stance by Safari and Firefox isn't helping online businesses reliant on extensive user-tracking.

Apple controls the AppStore so it is more likely that Apple devices would soon become the de-facto choice for people trying to evade surveillance.

Re:Reddit gets its app to 50m Play Store downloads by TechBro8615 on Thursday September 03, 2020 @05:38AM (#24362332)
Apollo is great. Reddit should be embarrassed that one solo dev can make a vastly better app than the Reddit team itself.
Re:Reddit gets its app to 50m Play Store downloads by WoefullyInept on Thursday September 03, 2020 @04:38AM (#24361985)
I'm genuinely surprised they haven't backtracked on this - it completely ruins the experience.
Re:Reddit gets its app to 50m Play Store downloads by rcMgD2BwE72F on Thursday September 03, 2020 @04:26AM (#24361917)
Slide on Android. Available in the F-droid store too.
Re:Reddit gets its app to 50m Play Store downloads by calciphus on Thursday September 03, 2020 @11:35AM (#24365042)
Personally a fan of Sync for Reddit. Multiple interface methods (list, card, full-page swipe) and other reader niceties.
Re:Reddit gets its app to 50m Play Store downloads by vultour on Thursday September 03, 2020 @05:18AM (#24362223)
Am I the only one that likes the official Reddit app? I used Alien Blue before, which has actually been replaced by the official app, and there's nothing I can complain about in either. The only regression is that now there are ads, but I find them so unintrusive I don't really care.
Re:Reddit gets its app to 50m Play Store downloads by sigsergv on Thursday September 03, 2020 @05:20AM (#24362234)
I like it too, it's clean and simple,
Re:Reddit gets its app to 50m Play Store downloads by garmaine on Thursday September 03, 2020 @04:20AM (#24361891)
I haven’t noticed any issues with Tweetbot on iOS.
Re:Reddit gets its app to 50m Play Store downloads by davejk on Thursday September 03, 2020 @04:51AM (#24362054)
There's a few things it doesn't support (like polls) because Twitter didn't add those features to the API.
Re:Reddit gets its app to 50m Play Store downloads by tiborsaas on Thursday September 03, 2020 @04:24AM (#24361909)
I don't think that the new UI is intentionally bad. I can't imagine the team that pulls it off. It must be hell to work there or it's a team of sociopaths. Imagine plannings with power points on how to mess with users.

I agree that the new UI is worse, I'm just baffled by the reasons why it's the case. Probably bad management / structure.

Re:Reddit gets its app to 50m Play Store downloads by dageshi on Thursday September 03, 2020 @04:30AM (#24361938)
I can say as someone who runs a small niche subreddit, users have been finding my sub at a much increased rate in the past 6 months, I suspect because of the "related subs" boxes that auto insert themselves in the new design.

If their aim was to improve the discoverability of smaller subs, they've achieved it.

Re:Reddit gets its app to 50m Play Store downloads by tiborsaas on Thursday September 03, 2020 @05:05AM (#24362143)
It's not all bad of course, it's a complex product so you can simultaneously delivery useful features while making the design / usability worse.