The clumsiness of the redesign aside, I’ve noticed that the experience on mobile is getting progressively worse as time goes on.

Now it’s almost impossible to browse reddit on mobile via browser, as you’re almost always get hit with the “see this community in app” or “log in to view this community”.

I use Slide or Narwhal as my reddit clients on mobile, and while this might be subjective, I’ve noticed how the experience has gotten progressively worse over time: gifs/videos take longer to load or don’t load at all, notifications either don’t arrive or arrive with great delays and a lot of other quality of life worsenings.

Part of this is probably due to the nature of third party apps and reddit’s api etc etc, but I get the unshakeable feeling that reddit is trying to close down it’s ecosystem, a la “death by a thousand cuts”.

Has anyone else noticed something similar or is it just me?

  • onlooker
    10·
    4 years ago

    Obligatory Old Reddit Redirect plugin link. Yeah, reddit has been going down the shitter for a while now and it gets closer to the drain with each rotatioin. I got the “see this community in app” message for the first time just last week. What baffles me is that if you enable desktop mode, it loads up just fine. What the hell are they doing over there?

      • onlooker
        2·
        4 years ago

        I have not, mainly because I don’t know what https redirect is outside of configuring web servers. Can you give me a quick rundown?

        • clockwise_bit
          4·
          4 years ago

          Well, it turns out I wrote redirect, instead of everywhere.
          I meant the popular browser plugin, but I fell victim to my usual distraction.

          That plugin has a not-so-advertised section in its settings where allows users to specify custom url rewrites.
          When you are on a webpage you want to redirect elsewhere, click on the plugin icon.
          Click on “See more” to extend the dropdown menu.
          You should see a button that says “Add a rule for this site”.
          Instead of stopping to that, press the “Show advanced” button to expand another subsection.
          There, you can use regex to define a matching pattern, and the correspondent redirect url.

          This only rewrites the domain though, not the url parameters.

  • DrivingForce
    10·
    4 years ago

    I also have noticed that. They are making their web browser for mobile experience worse and worse in hopes that you will succumb and install their app. That way they can better track you and serve up adds/sell the data they collect on you.

    • DessalinesA
      12·
      4 years ago

      Its definitely a possibility that they’ll shut down or heavily restrict 3rd party mobile clients in order to funnel people toward their official ad-ridden app, just like twitter did.

      • clockwise_bit
        4·
        4 years ago

        That’s a shame, as many others I already use a third party client (slide in my case), because the website is heavier than a whale.
        There are still interesting subreddits that are not political or full of bad people, usually DIY is one of them, selfhosted follows in tow (even though it’s becoming progressively worse).

        I hope they’ll at least leave the rss feed working, it might be the last step before being forced to use their new app/website.

  • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
    9·
    4 years ago

    I find the UI redesign is completely unusable. If they ever get rid of the old UI, I don’t think I’ll be going there anymore.

  • clockwise_bit
    7·
    4 years ago

    Not only that, I’m starting to see less and less pages accessible with the old interface.
    I don’t remember which one, but recently I opened a subreddit and it said it didn’t exist, only to discover that if I enter through the new interface, it indeed exists.

  • मुक्त
    6·
    4 years ago

    For this reason, I have been looking for a good reddit alternative since 2017, if not earlier. Despite not being aligned with any political camp, I was first on the alt-right instance (voat), and now, on this “antifa website”.

    I believe that the future for likes of me is on p2p software - but they are not mature enough at this time.

    • samebchase
      9·
      4 years ago

      This is exactly why I deactivated my Reddit account. Was pleased to discover there was a federated Reddit replacement yesterday, and I made an account on here immediately.

  • forgotmylastusername
    4·
    4 years ago

    It joined the ranks of the annoying UX platforms. For me the first of these was Twitter. I use to think it’s because I’m getting old and out of touch.

    My question is why are platforms doing this anti-design thing. I figure they aren’t designing for “user as a human” anymore but for “user as a product” reasons.

  • ace
    2·
    4 years ago

    I don’t use the redesign, and on mobile I use narwhal

    • DessalinesA
      8·
      4 years ago

      There is a danger that they will, like twitter, further restrict and possibly even make 3rd party clients defunct. Reddit is unusable on mobile without 3rd party clients IMO too, so that would be pretty terrible.

  • HeychseaB
    1·
    4 years ago

    On my side even the mobile app is becoming unusable, I’m sometimes waiting like 5 to 10 seconds to see the post (with comments) appear.