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A comment on Reddit experiments on users, forcing them to install app or else not use Reddit. Parent comment

Re:Reddit experiments on users, forcing them to install app ... by lozenge on Monday June 12, 2023 @07:14AM (#36291635)
If the user follows a link to an article or video, there's a high chance it'll be the end of their reddit session, due to distraction or back button capture. There's also a high chance the browser will unload the reddit page causing a flash of no content and potentially losing the user's scroll position. After a few rounds of this the user will leave in frustration.

Now they could use the tabs feature, but this is again a lost opportunity to have them browse some comments etc. Plus, if they need to browse for another purpose, you'll just be one or ten of a hundred open tabs instead of one of the couple of recent apps.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Reddit experiments on users, forcing them to install app ... by devnullbrain on Monday June 12, 2023 @07:31AM (#36291808)
>If the user follows a link to an article or video, there's a high chance it'll be the end of their reddit session, due to distraction or back button capture.

Ironically this is made worse by apps teaching users not to multitask. You can't open a tab to read later.

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Re:Reddit experiments on users, forcing them to install app ... by kitsunesoba on Monday June 12, 2023 @09:16AM (#36292920)
> There's also a high chance the browser will unload the reddit page causing a flash of no content and potentially losing the user's scroll position.

The funny thing about this is that this misbehavior is mostly exclusive to badly written SPAs and other heavily-JS’d sites. Plain old rendered HTML sites like old Reddit don’t flash blank and restore scroll position fine.

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