Major Reddit communities will go dark to protest threat to third-party apps

Re:Major Reddit communities will go dark to protest threat t... by Gareth321 on Monday June 05, 2023 @11:18AM (#36197456)

The design language follows all modern social media apps: engagement. Think TikTok. This means auto-playing videos, large elements instead of small elements (low information density) designed to draw attention, prioritising popular and contentious items in the feed instead of relevant items for the user, etc. This language is user-hostile. It uses psychological techniques to keep users on the platform for longer instead of presenting the information which they actually want.

There are technical issues too. Many users report issues playing videos and gifs.

Finally, the Reddit app serves ads.

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Re:Major Reddit communities will go dark to protest threat t... by 369548684892826 on Monday June 05, 2023 @11:32AM (#36197749)

> auto-playing videos, large elements instead of small elements

You can fix both these issues in the app settings. Turning off feed thumbnails is also a big improvement.

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Re:Major Reddit communities will go dark to protest threat t... by Gareth321 on Monday June 05, 2023 @12:14PM (#36198490)

> You can fix both these issues in the app settings. Turning off feed thumbnails is also a big improvement.

You cannot. The "classic" layout is still less information dense than Apollo, and disabling autoplay only disables autoplaying videos in the "card" layout. Videos still auto-play once a user taps a submission.

While we're here, I forgot how hostile their navigation menu is. At the bottom of the app Reddit has "Home," "Discover," "Create," "Chat," and "Inbox." The latter doesn't even take one to their inbox. It takes them to their *activity." These are clearly not the most used actions on Reddit. They're the actions Reddit wants to encourage.

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