They can serve you ads just fine on mobile web, that’s not it. It’s that the app let’s them track your behavior far better than the web browser.

It's both. Firefox for Android lets you run uBlockOrigin, effectively killing the ads.

Chinese owners need a tiktok backup plan.

You know what's most fucked up about all of these types of practices? It's that they had something great and have deliberately slowly destroyed it because of unchecked greed. Same with Facebook. They had a site so great that like 60% of the people on the entire planet signed up. They've been making money. Reddit and Facebook make millions of dollars a month. But it's not enough for them. Nooo. They have to make billions. They have to make enough money to buy governments and amass as much power as small nations. The men running these companies are soulless. They try to fill the hole in their hearts with money, but it will never be enough. They've taken something that was amazing, something that benefitted billions of people, and destroyed it to serve their own selfish greed.

They are trying what Facebook did to their Facebook chat, forcing users to use the app by banning mobile web access

Right like how you can't copy images from Pinterest, a site that populates all your Google Image searches. Like you fuckers didn't create this content. You just got people to upload it to your site then blocked anyone else from accessing it without a membership and a share link.

I agree. I'm not downloading an app that siphons out data just to access a website.

Ultimately Reddit thinks they're too big to fail because they don't have any real competition right now.

My guess is this is only for mobile users which would explain why when the OP request a desk top version of the site he can still log in. That way they can push more mobile users to the app and shove all sorts of ads down their throat and there's nothing they can do about it. You can block ads on a browser, you can't in the official Reddit app.

Shut down all the 3P apps. Prevent mobile users from being able to use their browser on mobile, forcing them to grab the official app. Load it to high hell with ads... Profit.

To force people to use their app, of course. Facebook did that several years ago with Messenger. There’s no real reason to not have mobile browser access to it other than to try to make people use the app so it can spy on you in various ways.

To sell ads

Because they want you to open the app when you land on a link.

When you land in the app they can gather way more data on you, including better dwell time metrics and things like that. Also being in the app there’s no back button to return to Google or whatever, so you open the link without ad blockers, see an ad, and presumably view more posts and ads.

Plus having the app installed means notifications (they have a lot of notification types), and they can link your various accounts through your app’s unique identifier.

Only for mobile and they’re already doing it.

Also when they blocked being able to open subs with "age restricted content" on mobile browser. That doesn't mean porn either. I've been running into it for a while on discussions relating to guns or drugs/alcohol. You either have to switch to desktop mode or open the comments in the app.

And from what I e been picking up it appears that reddit killing themselves is making for pretty good marketing for Lemmy and other reddit alternatives it kinda feels like a new era of the internet

Can't eliminate the "I'll just do without" competition.

Like, when I got rid of Netflix... I didn't sign up for an additional new service. I just watch YouTube.

When I stopped using Facebook so much, I didn't go to another service -- I just didn't use social media as much.

because if the government gets involved and does a things then that's bad

The problem is that you cant really have a competitor to reddit. People want all their news sources to be in one place. Imagine if you had /r/soccer on reddit but then /r/soccer on a different site. It would be two split communities. Its kind of set up in a way that makes it hard for competitors to exist unlike other products

Some of them predate the official app.

I can’t think of any other website that has that many alternative apps, much less at that popularity level

But we need to track all your mouse movements, browsing history, eye gaze, hand shake, geolocation data, shopping habbits, political opinions, friends and family connections, to make it a better experience for you honest!

This content is better in the app! Log in to Twitter/TikTok/Reddit to view it!

Project Forgeddit

Can't wait for Google to derank Reddit links due to this BS.

Not only that but some features like Chat just redirect you to the app on Reddit mobile web, and it's too cumbersome to use the desktop Reddit chat on a mobile browser.

There are filters for adblockers that block these mobile app banners.

That's what I thought. I'm actually thankful since I've been browsing it out of habit via RIF. This will all come to an end with this week.

Yeah, so, uh, m.facebook.com has made a sudden and radical change in the last few days. I'm not sure what's going on, but it's currently not usable for me. I don't know if that's happening to multiple people.

Are there third party Facebook apps?

Or use desktop site & desktop user agent

I guess they think the dwell and other telemetry info from the app will be of greater value than the ads shown on a browser.

This is what's amazing. They could make a good, ad-supported app, but they seem to insist they don't need to while wondering why everyone's angry about third party apps going away.

How can they do all the data collection then?

What's sad is that they had Alien Blue to work with which was a great app. I honestly was excited for the official app to come out. It was a big let down.

Do it! I blocked them in Adguard. It has saved me a few times when I've absentmindedly typed the URL into my browser out of habit.

Zero hits and zero ad impressions coming from me :)

Absolutely agree with that. Some things are worth having as apps, but when every website you visit on mobile is trying to get you to download their app, which is basically just a wrapper for the system browser with some bits of code to stop you leaving their site you know something has gone wrong.

Revanced app apparently also can patch reddit app and block ads. The thing though is that it will still collect information about you.

I have a feeling its too big to die to be honest

'But they pinky promised that they wouldn't!' -Reddit users after the 30th, probably

We can only hope.

That's unpossible!

One day it will just be a link to download their shit pile of an app, and nothing else.

The data they’re looking at when they make this decision is”people aren’t using our app as much as I’d like”.

They know that many users will try to use web page once 3rd party apps stop working. They are testing how many of them they can make use their mobile app which allows them to obtain more information about you.

It's garbage anyway, so you're better off.

Such genius and innovation. He added not one, but three pop-ups telling you to log in and allow notifications. Have you ever seen such naked brilliance before? No one besides him has had the courage... except for maybe every malware site webmaster in 2002. He also sold a blue checkmark for $8! Like how does one human have such an unlimited well of brilliance?

That makes me wonder, has anyone seen Spez and Elon in the same room? Are we sure they aren't the same person? Stelon Muskman?

for real. they are just making terrible decisions. fook reddit rise lemmy

I hope their coffin will be full of nails, as I'm convinced that Reddit will continue to live, hobbling along like Digg before it.

A barely alive Reddit, trapped in its coffin full of nails, inside the walled garden cemetery of its own making, would be such a satisfying ending to all of this.

They said they are going to kill .old soon

I think libreddit will stop working on July 1st as it uses the API.

The toilet?

Did you try sync ReVanced?

It's designed to shove ads and bot posts in your face and steal your information, everything else is secondary. This is the true reason why the app is so fucking shitty and unusable for what reddit is supposed to be for.

It makes sense that you'd be waiting for r/Godot

That is not a good reason to keep using reddit. A boycott is a boycott. If a community that you want is not available outside of reddit, why not start it here?

R/godot is also one of my missing communities en Lemmy.

I hope that, with time, we can move people over here.

I assume as Reddit becomes more and more hostile and Lemmy more and more mature things will be easier.

I find that nearly all my Reddit page views are now when I'm trying to Google what I am doing wrong in Godot. I'm trying to build a habit of looking for a Stack Overflow result instead now. That said, I strongly suspect that there is a big overlap between the sort of person who cares enough about Godot to want to connect with a community about it and the sort of person who would want to use Lemmy and other feddyverse services so I think it's only a matter of time before there is a decent Godot community on Lemmy. There's at least a few of us so far in this thread!

I also am hoping for more Gamedev groups. r/gamedev is shut down so my only hope is a community growing fast on here. the discords are... ok but not what I'm looking for. And I'm off reddit now so nothing on there will work for me.

in aliving

Please don't bring these TikTokisms to the fediverse

Harder to block ads and tracking on an app.

Also, last time I tried it, you couldn't use the app without being logged in, so they get more data on you than if you were able to browse anonymously.

all the better to spy on you, my dear.

Reddit users are product not customers.

The product is the data they mine from users. The reddit app is almost certainly loaded with telemetry and tracking.

This is data that can be sold. Likely worth more than the increased ad revenue from users who know how to block ads on their phone.

For that sweet sweet ad revenue from my understanding

Since... It's significantly more difficult to avoid ads/data harvesting from an in-house-designed app than, say, a 3rd party browser with adblockers, or 3rd party apps that don't run ads at all

Testing limited roll outs is actually really really common in large internet sites/apps. Done right, you'd never know.

It's a common thing to do, to test how it impacts the user experience without totally changing it for everybody. The problem here is that out right just removing access to the website via a mobile browser is so painstakingly obvious and imprecise, that it baffles me why they'd even do it.

Don't forget killing of .compact

I wrote .compact to run on a Motorola Droid, which was a 533MHz device with 512Mb of total ram, and a kernel which was very aggressive about freeing up this ram.

This post is from early May, so probably long before they decided to kill the API (and the actual experiment could have started long before that post).

Eww I clicked on a Reddit link, warning please!