Reddit is just as guilty of this. If you want to see all the comments on a thread on their mobile site, you're pushed to install their official app and presumably create an account when doing so. As far as I can tell, the best workaround is to use the desktop site.

And on iOS at least, whenever you visit the site you'll get a popup that blocks the page with two options: continue in mobile app, or continue in safari.

It's basically "install our shitty app, or keep using the web version?", except it's worded and displayed in a confusing/misleading way with what seems to be an attempt to mimic a system dialog.

Not to mention how awful their AMP pages (redundant, blame grammar) are already. Searching for topics on Reddit is a nightmare, you’re stuck with their awful native search, their awful mobile app, or the awful mobile site.

And yet through the miracle of scrolling and screen zooming I’m somehow able to use old.reddit.com just fine even on my relatively small iPhone X

i.reddit.com FTW!

Not just the website, but the old.reddit version. The new Reddit design is a disaster in terms of usability.

I also disable all custom subreddit styles, because so many of them are horrible.

r/mildlyinfuriating's custom style is a work of art.

For iOS, I recommend Apollo (https://apolloapp.io/). A reddit client that isn't from Reddit.

Thank you! I almost universally use the mobile website but it just keeps getting worse, presumably on purpose. I installed the official app but it’s very bad. I’ll download this one now!

You will still have the annoyance of search results only opening the official client but Apollo is a great app made by a single developer who has put a lot of time and effort into the app. He (Christian) is also very active on the /r/apolloapp subreddit and communicates upcoming features/bug fixes. Apollo does have an option to scan your Copy/Paste buffer so when you open the app, and if there is a reddit link in your buffer, it can open it for you. The downside is you will always see "Apollo read the clipboard" (or whatever the iOS message is) when you open Apollo. Another workaround is to create (or use an existing [0]) iOS shortcut. The way this works is you will pretend you are sharing the reddit page and then click on the shortcut and it will launch Apollo and open the page you are on. The shortcut is pretty basic, just uses some string replacement and Apollo's url scheme to achieve it.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/9ijiji/siri_shor...

Just to add to this: I can highly recommend Apollo as well, it's the official app in my mind. Nothing else even comes close. Also, there is no need for a shortcut. If I open the sharing menu, "Open in Apollo" is already present and I never needed to add the shortcut.

Can confirm that you cannot use the app with logging in with a Reddit account.

Just yesterday, I got tired of the annoying "use the app or login" messages when tapping to view more comments on a post, so I caved and installed the app - given the language of the nag, I thought I wouldn't have to login, and the Reddit UX of constant full-page reloads just to view more comments is such a joke I figured the app had to be better.

But no, you have to login with a Reddit account to use the app :/

Also Zoom. Their web version seems to no longer work on Safari/Mac and Firefox/Mac, so they essentially force you onto native or don't use it.

I don't know about macOS specifically, but elsewhere it can be defeated. The link to join from the browser appears if you dismiss the initial offer to open the app and force a retry. It's absolutely disgusting. https://gauginggadgets.com/join-zoom-meeting-without-install...

Long pressing and opening in a new tab works for expanding child comment threads (but not for viewing all 500+ commends under a post).

Once that stops working, I'll have to always use old.reddit on my phone, which won't be great UI on mobile - but I suppose it can't be too hard to make a Stylus stylesheet to make it usable. And once old.reddit is gone, well, that's the end of Reddit for me.

i.reddit.com is the old mobile site.

Unfortunately it has no way to expand image/video previews without navigating to a different page. Makes it a lot harder to use for me.

On mobile, reddit.com/.compact is an option. It's pretty stripped down but has some solid pros: it's fast, it has evenly sized (height) posts, the comments are easy to view. The post links with in-reddit photos/video do direct to the bad site, unfortunately. Another con (or pro) is infinite scrolling.

i can recommend teddit, that's reddit without the annoying stuff: https://teddit.net/

I use i.reddit.com. I think it was their old mobile site. Works like a charm.

Has anyone else noticed reddit on mobile browsers being ridiculously slow? My experience is that the page loads fine, but then there's 10 seconds or so of loading animation before the page displays. Requesting desktop site makes it load immediately. I'm 95% sure they just have a timer they make you sit through in an effort to get you onto their app.

Just opened a Reddit page on Desktop and it has 7.77mb resources and 97 requests and 4 seconds till DOM loads. Its bloated, probably to boost app downloads. Imgur also features fighter plane levels of bloat to show an image and comments.

On Reddit's mobile web page, after clicking the 'continue in browser' button, go to hamburger menu -> settings -> "Ask to Open In App" and uncheck the checkbox. Removes all the 'reminders'.

After installing the official app I can’t remember why I was so resistant to installing it in the first place. Why do you resist?

I'm so thankful for the Reddit redesign, I had a serious problem spending way too much time on that site. Now it's almost completely unusable.

Same here! I deleted the app and use the web app because it so much more painful so I don’t spend near the time on it.

Now reddit have gone from blocking 'adult' content on mobile browser to flagging stuff as 'unknown content' and trying to force you to install app.

I was trying to research a vinyl cutter purchase instore with spotty coverage and every bloody reddit page would be blocked within seconds of loading with this stupid unknown content crap.

So is letting you know about old.reddit.com a bad thing?

if they removed old reddit i would stop using the site

So I’m in the same boat but I’ve noticed an interesting dark pattern they use now to discourage old Reddit.

I often land in a comment section of a specific post, and then want to see more of the subreddit by clicking the link of the subreddit in the top of the page. Since about a month now, every subreddit shows me it’s only available through the app. I used to then preface the url with old. however now they’ve somehow done it that I will see the specific (locked) subreddit page, but the url will just be Reddit.com with nothing else, effectively making it impossible to add the old. before the url.

On mobile old.reddit.com loads in desktop mode and is very hard to use.

Is there any way to get an old reddit experience on mobile? Custom CSS. Extensions. Anything? The mobile website for reddit is pure garbage.

https://i.reddit.com, or equivalent reddit.com/.compact

If they remove that then they'll finally have pushed me off reddit on mobile, but I think it's obscure enough that it'll stay in the near future

Same. It's impossible to use on a phone, so I haven't even logged in months.

Same here

Discord does this as well. If they detect a mobile user agent they disable the button to hide the member list which makes group chats unusable. If you just change your user agent the button re-appears and you don't even need the app unless your browser doesn't handle voice and you need that.

For reference:

https://i.judge.sh/hot/Flare/chrome_eC7WqUYKPX.png

https://i.judge.sh/mealy/Sparkle/chrome_5RItK5j3Yl.png

Edit: Doing some digging, on the iOS user agent, the `toolbar` portion is null, while with the Chrome windows user agent it's set to include the entire element:

https://i.judge.sh/flickering/Twilight/chrome_q978GUiwQ8.png

https://i.judge.sh/pleasant/Coco/chrome_cNh0eBIHQL.png

This looks to be the function that determines it:

https://i.judge.sh/qualified/Velvet/chrome_CxUBug0q1P.png

So it's just a 'if mobile' check - maybe it breaks on some mobile screens (on a iphone 5/SE you end up being unable to view the channel name, not that it's an enjoyable experience anyways https://i.judge.sh/brave/Flare/chrome_nW26bTRXDe.png) or maybe it's a motive to get you to use the mobile app. This is just the desktop UI with some `if mobile` checks probably thrown in by a small number developers that want to support mobile browser support but aren't getting paid to do it.

I'm just impressed how bad slack is on mobile. Either I'm getting messages on my computer and phone (on phone after I've responded on the computer) or not at all.

I've been having this problem with push notifications for quite a few apps, but Slack just seems to genuinely do whatever the hell it wants, regardless of whatever I've set preferences to.

Yeah I know what you mean. Like sometimes I'll get messages hours after they are sent. Even when my main computer is off so would be considered "away". Now I just have to frequently check slack and that in itself feels like a dark pattern.

Same here... no clue what's happened over the last few years. Slack used to be pretty reliable when I first used it.

Reddit does that too for the mobile website. So the job of some programmers is to literally provide a worse experience for their users. Sad life.

Can you explain why this is a dark pattern? How does slack benefit from you using the native app vs. the web app?

Slack app has 4 trackers, requests 21 permissions on Android. Harder to block trackers, while their more tech-oriented audience probably uses browser adblockers more often.

https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/reports/com.Slack/l...

Aha! This makes sense. So basically, on native, there's lessened ability to leverage browser extension ecosystems to block ads and tracker scripts?

As an engineering manager in an unrelated field... this could also be a way to not have to support a feature on X platform because I don't have the resources to make it work on every possible mobile browser. Or the mobile browsers don't support X feature and I don't want to (or can't) spend the resources to make it work there, QA it there etc. It's not something likely to be able to curb with regulations.

I do not think this is a dark pattern. I don't see any exploitation or misrepresentation.

I think we should be careful to distinguish between exploitation / malicious intent vs. airing of grievances of about UI/UX feature completeness.

I mean I personally keep Slack on my Dock since it's open pretty frequently. This integrates it even more into my workflow since I can quickly check and see if I have any unreads/etc. making it more grating to switch to another chat app. Maybe it's not a "dark pattern" but it certainly is a method to increase adoption.

You can do this with a browser like Chrome by creating a shortcut with "Open As Window".

One major benefit of native app over web app is their ability to send notifications to get the user's attention.

Web apps can send notifications just fine, even in the background.

This is not the case on iOS: https://caniuse.com/notifications

I don't know that they do, but they could potentially read your local files as part of telemetry, gps, nearby wifi network ssids and MAC addresses, etc.

Does this mean that all apps that can’t also be used via the web are a ‘dark pattern’?

I ask because I can easily imagine that if most customers are using apps, they might choose to remove functionality from the website rather than maintain it, just because it’s not worth it.

It can be used via the web, but it hides those features from you. If you're on a system where the desktop app cannot be installed, it reveals those features again. It's not that the features don't exist at all in the web version, they do but are hidden if you're capable of installing the app.

If that’s true, then I agree this is a dark pattern.

If it's something that makes more sense as a website, then yes. I would go so far as to say any app that doesn't work offline is likely a dark pattern

How is this a dark pattern? It really just seems like a design disagreement.

If we’re going to call any design we don’t like a ‘dark pattern’, then the term becomes meaningless.

I mean to many people here commercial software is all a ‘dark pattern’ because they prefer FOSS.

But this isn’t what ‘dark patterns’ means.

Generally it’s about tricking people into agreeing to things based on false beliefs, or making things hard to cancel.

I don’t see how it has anything at all with what features are placed in what products as long as there is no deception.

It's a dark pattern because the usual reason is to be able to gather more data from the user, and to limit user control. By that notion I would say any design decision that helps the company while harming the user is a dark pattern.

> It's a dark pattern because the usual reason is to be able to gather more data from the user

Is it?

This seems like something you can’t know without corporate espionage.

It really could be as simple as wanting to focus support on one platform.

I agree that data gathering and surveillance capitalism is pretty much evil.

However to just assume that’s all every decision is about makes us incapable of understanding the complexity of what is going on.

When the "app" in question is essentially a less accessible web page, then I think it's safe to assume something shady is going on.

To be clear, I'm mostly talking about apps that are just a collection of views for a remote API. The only valid reason I can think of for these kinds of apps is because you're an ios/android developer and you're not good at making webpages. In that case, the best tool is the one you know.

This logic doesn’t follow.

iOS apps that use system controls generally have far better accessibility than web pages do, indeed accessibility is a primary reason for creating a native app.

I only have some anecdotal data on this one, and maybe I'm comparing to apps that are not using system controls.

My mother struggles with any ios App because of how the zoom is implemented in the different apps. She can get by with the built in magnifier tool, but only when she already knows the app well.

Personally, I recently had nerve damage in my hands, and it was very difficult for me to enter text. There were many times in native apps where it would have been much better for me to copy/paste random text on the screen, but I was not able to. I know that some web developers like to try to block that too, but I would also consider that a dark pattern.

Yeah - I’m sure that would have been useful for you, but it doesn’t really compare to the wide array of accessibility options that exist across the system.

Also copying a pasting working across all text is often an anti-feature for accessibility too depending on what condition you are working with. For people who have trouble with fine motor control, it’s much easier to have only the content text selectable and not the controls.

There is no one-size fits all accessibility solution.

This seems to be a good argument for an accessibility option to make all text selectable, and nothing to do with dark patterns.

If they really don’t want people to use it on the web they should simply turn down the web site and tell people to use the app or GTFO. Instead they keep it up but cripple it and then repeatedly beg the user to something they clearly don’t want to do.

Companies discontinue or reduce support for products they don’t want to continue investing in all the time.

Some users are obviously going to be unhappy about this.

It’s not a dark pattern.

Slack uses Electron, doesn't it?

Oh so taken from the same page as the Reddit App it seems

Reddit wants you in the app, so it’s harder to block ads. Slack doesn’t make money from ads like Reddit. So while Slack might prefer you use the app and make the web version less appealing, I’m not sure this qualifies as a “dark pattern.” Certainly not one that should be regulated.