Sure hope so. I was deciding between lemmy, kbin and squabbles. Only lemmy and kbin are federated and kbin seems much less of a hassle to get started with.
Well fuck. Last time I visited deviantart must have been before the acquisition by Wix. Makes what spez et al are doing to reddit look better in comparison.
Is there a fediverse version of old deviantart yet?
Mobile browser access. Because otherwise people would be doing fun things like browsing reddit with an adblocker to get around the 3rd party stuff. I'm sure that will convince people, especially once old.reddit is no longer a thing. Not like everyone who uses that doesn't cling to it like a drowning man
I was trying to find out why I couldn't log in here, the only answer I could find was on reddit, I couldn't work out why I couldn't see the page without the app. This is a super dumb idea.
@Nepenthe man the only reason I installed an ad blocker was to disable the shitty nagging to install their app. They really really jonesing for app installs. That along with the API pricing paints a shit picture. They would do much better to develop an app people want to use instead of trying to force people on to it.
They would do much better to develop an app people want to use instead of trying to force people on to it.
You'd think, right? I never understood why so many companies got all pissy about their competition instead of just...analyzing what's being done right and doing that themselves.
Ex., Nintendo slamming their own fans for thousands of dollars in damages instead of just....hiring them. Or at least taking tons of notes since the fangame ideas are visibly more original than what the actual company is churning out.
They're literally telling Nintendo what they'd pay some serious bucks for without even being asked, but all they get is punished as the franchise flaunts yet another sentient, carnivorous shoe or whatever.
Reddit's site is such a steaming pile millions of people will voluntarily stop using it forever if they can't have the upgrades someone else developed in their spare time. It's been that way for years. JUST FIX YOUR STUPID SITE AND THEN NO ONE WOULD HAVE CARED.
I get that Reddit is dismantling all means of accessing the site without ads or forced frills like chat. But this “experiment” doesn’t even make sense. The only users that will even experience it are mobile users trying to avoid using the crappy app. There is no feedback report or anything. Just locking out some random users.
Probably not a good time to do so though as some users switch from their current app to the reddit one when they hear it will stop working... Unless they're trying to justify getting rid of mobile browsing and want to over-inflate the conversion rate.
The posts in the picture are at least a month old, and I seem to remember this happening much longer ago than that. Unless someone's heard otherwise, I don't think they're doing this right now.
Yeah, they can’t even pretend that current mobile site users don’t know about the official app, because basically every page you click on mobile Reddit does a full screen “Heeeeeey why don’t you view this on our APP!!!” that you have to click through. So anyone using the mobile site is doing so veeeeery intentionally.
Exactly the users they want to get rid of. That’s what people are missing about these recent moves by Reddit: it’s all about clearing house of undesirable “technical” users in favor of the low-information masses, like those who populate TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, etc. Why? Because they’re easier to dupe for advertisers, and are therefore more profitable.
Technologically and sociologically literate users are hard to make money off of. Rubes are easy. Hence the push to depower and marginalize literate power users, since they are a threat to their advertising revenue.
Yep presume they just want people who are happy to be inundated with ads they can't block whilst reading fake corporate shill posts from PR companies hyping products.
Seems like they're gonna shoot themselves in the foot though. The technologically and sociologically literate users are the ones that are most likely making the best content. Even if they're not seeing the ads, they're bringing in the eyeballs that do see the ads. There's a reason that you have to append site:reddit.com after just about every google search to get anything good. That might not be the case going forward.
Even some nsfw that post for fun have said they aren't going to post anymore because they use 3rd party apps to post. Theres a chance that a lot of NSFw posters use 3rd part apps. How else can they post to 10 subs in one go?
Everyone wants simple dead brain content from time to time, but there's a ton of sources for that other than reddit. If I'm not on reddit in the first place, chances are I won't go there just to look at cat videos and memes that I can find elsewhere on the internet without jumping through reddit's new hoops.
As someone here for mostly brain-dead entertainment, I have to say, I'd much rather still be able to be mindless in my consumption without a barrage of Big Dick pills, Came on Jesus ads, or any number of minor annoyances (that damned email banner anyone?).
It'll be interesting to see what happens when Google's manifest v3 (I think thats what its called... the chromium revamp) takes effect. From what I've read, that seems to be thought of as a major roadblock for ad-blockers on all chromium based browsers, unless they hard fork prior.
Chrome's evil + Reddit's = welcome to 1999 where the ads just bombard you from all angles faster than you can close the windows.
Seems like they're gonna shoot themselves in the foot though. The technologically and sociologically literate users are the ones that are most likely making the best content.
In the long term yes, but that will take a while. For now the current leadership team and investors don't care because they will have cashed out and moved on to something else long before Reddit fully dies. I guarantee Huffman will be gone from Reddit in the next 18 months with a fat pile of cash.
I was thinking about that, and it's maddening and sad.
I too have always believed that scaring away the people who create that best content would be the doom or reddit, and it wouldn't take much since content creators are always a tiny minority of a social userbase, but what if u/criticalma55 is right?
What if "we" who value quality content are also a minority? What if the majority of reddit users are perfectly fine with bot reposts and shitposting?
I mean, I was active of reddit until the blackout began and I've seen several people saying they didn't even know 3rd party apps existed, many saying "I always used the official app, what's wrong with it?". I bet many people don't even know what's happening, and won't notice the difference if reddit goes on reposting stuff during the blackout, I've seen a few screenshots of comments that were very obviously written by AI, but how many will notice?
So maybe reddit is indeed trying to angry us as much as possible to push us all away and leave on reddit only the "low-information" masses that don't care and will take whatever shit reddit throws at them without battling an eye, they have enough content at this point to repost for years.
Reddit is a lost cause at this point for technical users. They clearly put in more effort to intentionally break the site on mobile browsers - time and resources that could have been spent improving their shitty app or god forbid making an actual responsive version of the "new" UI (which hasn't improved in years, on desktop nor mobile).
The AMA with spez was an utter waste of time. There's nothing they can do to keep anyone who is pissed off with them and rebuild trust. It's like when you hand your notice in, and the boss goes away to "see what they can do" (some minor salary increase to keep you, promises that "things will change") - once you've decided to leave, you're leaving. It may drag things on for a few more weeks or months, but the damage is done.
This is just another example of Steve Huffman et al doing their usual gaslighting and double speak. They clearly want to kill off old.reddit.com (in spite of denial) and worse still, they want to completely break the new site on mobile browsers.
I really think the AMA was just about getting a sense of what questions were being asked and sort of "testing the water" to see if people would "buy" the answers.
Bf and I were just saying, Reddit is just a congregated forum and prior to their not so genius idea to host media content on their own vs users continuing to use their own links, they just had to worry about storing text. They don’t pay mods. And they have ads. The fact they’re not profitable is mind-boggling and 2000 people seems ridiculous for what Reddit is.
That number boggles the mind. What do they DO? The ui hasn't changed in years, the app just gets worse over time, mobile browser is completely broken. I just don't even understand it. Do they have like 1999 middle managers and one lone developer keeping the lights on?
This is one of the deep mysteries of life. I remember being similarly baffled at some point in the past when I learned that Mozilla has nearly one thousand employees. What do employees at silicon valley software companies/foundations even do? Who knows. Do they know? One should hope so.
I think you're highly underestimating the amount of work Mozilla does.
For starters, think that a web browser is one of the most (if not the most) complex pieces of software there are. That's why most browsers are based on Chromium, not even Microsoft was up to the task of keeping up with their own engine, and they had decades of experience doing it. And that's why we only have, basically, only three browsers (or browser engines). Two of them are made by two of the biggest companies in the world, Google and Apple (and both come from the same forked engine). The other is made by Mozilla. Free, open source, and kinda privacy focused. It goes against everything this timeline has teach us about itself that we get to have Firefox. I don't even use it, but seriously, don't underestimate it.
And that's just Firefox, one of the many many things Mozilla does. They have their issues tho, they are not above judgment and criticism, but that's another conversation. But 1k employees is almost low, in my uneducated opinion.
I was there, and it wasn't pretty - for Digg. It turns out the switching costs for social media link sites are comically low. Another round of VCs, other investors, and deluded CEOs are about to find that out the hard way.
Reminds me of Facebook's private experiments that messed with users' moods based on the posts they saw, which were chosen by Facebook to be either positive or negative. Experiments without informing the user should not be legal.
As a dev for a different company I do that sort of A/B testing on users all the time. They're looking to see if turning off mobile web access leads to them using the app or ceasing to use Reddit. The resulting stats will inform their decision about rolling it out to 100% of users
Looks like they are doing everything in their power to drive away all their tech community. I guess we are not profitable for them with all our ad blockers and tracker blockers.
Funny they are selling it as 'targetting' since most of the ads I see on reddit are scam sites using vague titles below a celebrity who sure didn't approve being used by the ad. If that's the way they want to go, fine. But then it's not for me.
I said this recently on Reddit as well, but somewhere during the last ~25 years of using the internet, the sheer quantity of ads and notifications being hurled at me hit a breaking point where I can no longer tolerate even the banner ads and little text ads I used to, and even sometimes used to click on (if they didn't seem fishy) to support the sites I liked. Now it's almost offensive to see even one on anything I like to use, I'm just so tired of it.
I understand intellectually that things I like need to support themselves somehow, and if not through charging a fee to the user, it's likely through advertising. But at an emotional level, I've just lost all patience with it. Sponsored posts; banners top, bottom, left, right, and mid-scroll; accept our cookies or manually decline all 100 of our partners; join our newsletter; chat with a representative; top 10 search results are sponsored. And I don't really know if things even can go back to how they were.
You expressed it better than I ever could - I feel exactly the same way. I was born when internet literally didn't exist yet, so ice been here for all of it. And now it's such an ad-infested pigsty that I literally refuse to briwse it without an af-blocker of some sort - I sumpmy cannot deal with it.
I actually have an issue with advertising in the physical world too - I love in one of the biggest cities on the planet, and it's next to impossible to find space that is not plastered with ads when going outside. Bright ads, lots ads, moving ads, static ads - almost everywhere you look it's ads on ads on ads. I find it extremely exhausting and obnoxious. The other day I realized that a big reason I frequent a particular restaurant I love is that I can't see or hear a sigle ad when I'm there - there are none on the tables or i the menu, and even looking out of the window, amazingly I see no banners or bilboards, which is rare as hell in the center of Tokyo. I really need more ad-free spaces like that in my life...
They've been hampering mobile for over a year now. It started with prompts to use the app, but you could turn the prompt off in settings. Then they removed the prompt and put the pop-up on a timer, every 45 minutes to an hour it would ask you to install the app instead. Then it started jumping back to the top of the screen after every prompt, then for me it was jumping back to the top of the page after I exited threads, or if I expanded comments. A couple of weeks ago I wasn't part of the couldn't do anything test, but every time I clicked any link it would give me the pop up basically making the site not work. They definitely plan to kill it.
It doesn't make any sense, most people probably use an ad blocker on desktop but not on mobile. I can't wrap my head around cutting out the mobile option. I guess they just need to have people use their app, but they will do everything except make it better.
It's all about the data. Google's app page for their app says it's collecting a lot and sharing it too.
Data Shared (Data that may be shared with other companies or organizations)
Personal ID's for Analytics
In App Messages for App Functionality, Fraud Prevention, Security, and Compliance
Videos for App Functionality, Analytics, Fraud Prevention, Security, and Compliance
App Activity for App interactions, in-app searches history, user generated content, and other actions
App info and performance for crash logs and diagnostics
Photos, Files, and Docs
You could argue all of this is needed for the app to function, but it specifically says they may share the data with other companies.
Data Collected (Data this app may collection)
Location, Personal Info (such as email and user ID), messages (other in-app messages), photos and videos, audio (music files), files and docs, app activity, web browsing history, crash logs and diagnostisc, Device or other IDs.
Data isn't encrypted (Your data isn't transferred over a secure connection)
The fact they are taking all of this and not encrypting it is very concerning, IMO.
They really are just flailing their shit covered arms around at this point. Guess it really was time to get out. Now I just gotta hope some of the subs I used migrate over, cause I have no other motivation to go back.
If they aren't here then start them yourself. This is still small and it's possible to mod one or two magazines yourself into it gets bigger. Either it will get bigger and you can recruit some help or it won't and you can know you tried.
I've never modded before, and part of me wasn't sure if I wanted to, but at the same time I'm considering it. Even if just to get it started. I would ask the old mods what their plans are, but with the subs being down I cant.
Amen. I do hope an app or something appears soon that allows easy viewing of individual communities soon - I might not want /r/animalsbeingderps on my front page all the time, but it would be cool if I could easily take a peek once in a while...
I have to say, Reddit’s death at the hand of spez and Twitter’s demise at the hands of Musk have to be two of the most egregious stories of corporate mismanagement in recent years.
And I doubt this is adhering to the beta opt-in setting. Instead of making an app that people actually WANT to use, they create all this bullshit to FORCE people to use it. Really reminds me of those predatory FOMO tactics that a lot of online games nowadays use to keep users return to the game, or even pay for it, like battlepasses. I don't understand why companies have to be dirty like that, instead of just convincing people through offering a great product? I guess for every old user / player that goes, there's a bunch of new ones that come in that are completely unaware of how good things used to be.
are they trying to destroy the sight? seems intentional at this point if they cant make a profit and the community doesnt like the changes going forward.
If you must browse via the mobile browser you can install an extension (on iOS) called Sink It, removed all the nag screens for the mobile app and removes most of the sponsored posts
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