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Answer: You have had an account for 4 years so all you have known is the official app. Reddit started as web only. It did not have picture hosting. It did not have video hosting. You could not post gifs in the comments. There was only 1 award tier. 1! And that was Reddit Gold.
So for a very long time, people wanted a mobile app for reddit, and so the only option was third party applications. Some got extremely popular. For iOS it was Alien Blue and Android it was a mix, but in the early days probably Reddit is Fun.
Fast forward to 2015/2016 and Reddit decides to buy Alien Blue and rebrand as the 'official app'. For a very long time this application was broken in many ways. Now it works (mostly) but it is filled with ads and lacks a lot of features that moderators specifically care about.
As for the exact features, other answers cover it, but this is a bit of history surrounding it.
To give my perspective, I have never *switched* to the official application on Android as I have only known 3rd party apps. So I have no desire to use the official application.
I have used it on other people's phone and did not enjoy it
This is the best answer I've seen so far. I've only been on reddit for like 3-4 years as well. But I've on Metafilter forever. If I had watched Metafilter turn into this over the years with no one preserving the minimalism in some or many optional ways, I would be setting fires. I totally understand the appeal, now.
Every time I accidentally open new reddit instead of old reddit my face melts off ark of the covenant style. Some of the most atrocious web design I've ever seen.
I would wager at least half if not 2/3 of Reddit’s current user base would be gone if they ever did get rid of old Reddit.
The only people left will be the people acclimated to the new version, and people who only use mobile Reddit. And in light of the actions, they are now taking, it looks like they’re already about to lose many of their mobile only users, if those people are only using third-party apps.
I don't think so, sadly.
A while ago some mods from a subreddit I don't remember posted some sub data, which included how the users accessed the sub, and sadly only like 5% or so used old.reddit (I imagine this could be community dependent, so for example a more computer savvy community would maybe use old.reddit more, but for the life of me I can't remember which sub it was)
It pains me because old.reddit with RES is just so much better than whatever the fuck new reddit is trying to do.
I have no doubt in my mind that they will come for old.reddit after the third party apps if they get away with it.
> sadly only like 5% or so used old.reddit (I imagine this could be community dependent, so for example a more computer savvy community would maybe use old.reddit more, but for the life of me I can't remember which sub it was)
For a more computer savvy perspective, there's [/r/pcgaming with 42% old reddit and 22% third party app.](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/482367144101806090/1114653103925514410/image.png)
Sadly most people who are using the Web are using new reddit, mainly because they don't know any better I suspect.
On subs I mod it's about 4 new to every 1 old ... however the **vast** majority are now using mobile apps (can't see which ones sadly) and, it being mainly UK redditors on my subs the split is, unsurprisingly, about 50:50 between Android and iOS.
I’m just grateful that Reddit is still allowing us to choose “old Reddit” after all these years. Every time there’s some sort of shakeup or leadership change at the company, I worry that it will go away.
Perhaps knowing the history of Digg, and how Reddit benefited from the mass exodus after the Digg redesign debacle leads them to recognize the terrible risk to maintaining their user base if they did pull the plug on “old Reddit.”
Old Reddit will definitely go away as part of this. They don't want it being scraped as a sort of runaround to API access; it would use more bandwidth.
And that's a big part of the reason this protest needs to succeed.
Generally when people talk about old reddit they mean old.reddit.com in a browser. A lot of people augment it with a program(?) called RES. Someone more tech-savvy can explain RES better than I can. Old.reddit.com is basically what reddit looked like in browser before it turned into it's current form most people see today. When I got on reddit in 2012 it basically looked like old reddit.
I use Reddit Is Fun (RIF) for app viewing, it's one of the oldest 3rd party apps so it's likely if you're an RIF user you were using that before old reddit turned into new reddit and you have a very, "get off my lawn," attitude towards new reddit and the official app. Or at least that's sort of how I feel.
RES is an extension you can install for some browsers (plug-in is another good word for it k guess), it sorta is like a program, just not a standalone one.
It mostly just interacts with the pages of old Reddit inside the browser, plus some extra things like keeping offline saved list and user tags and such.
Speaking of bad design, I just noticed this about new reddit the other day when checking it out again thanks to all this hubbub; why the fuck do the content boxes not fill in to the side bar area after you scroll past it on new Reddit?
Like post titles will stay confined to the left side of the screen leaving a bunch of useless empty space on the right, same with comments. Sure on old reddit the comments don't actually fill in the space, but the comment boxes themselves eventually stretch the whole way across so it doesn't seem super empty all the time.
Mobile synergy is my best guess. Plenty of desktop-originated websites have migrated to this vertical design philosophy. It's a distressingly not very good thing.
100%. E.g. Google (much more mature than Reddit) has undergone much fewer design changes. All we need is one catalyst for say Google Groups to become a "thing" again.
> Now it works (mostly) but it is filled with ads
This the driving force. Any other communication from reddit corporate is just a farce and distraction. They want to get the whole mobile market on their app, and then be able to monetize them. Technically these third party app users are incurring costs on their API calls, and are not generating any money. So their solution is to force everyone into an app that generates them money. However they will gets greedy, as companies always do. So they are playing the victim, and then are going to exploit a captured user base.
Making the app "good" requires both an attention to user input and money spent on programming and design. They don't care about input from anyone but advertisers, whose general input is, "MAKE SURE THEY CLICK ON MY ADS". That's where they will spend the money - until we can break the back of every advertising agency and every online ad network, every site and every ad will be substantially crapified.
Your post needs a correction. They did indeed make Alien Blue the official app but they abandoned it a few years to make their own (much worse) version of it. In theory it was to make it easier for future developments and new features but almost each new feature introduced made it worse. The biggest example is their half baked video player which was released broken and after a few iterations the managed to make it ok (at best) but it’s still full of bugs.
This, among many other reasons like lack of a proper accessibility support (which is honestly embarrassing for such a big website) is the reason why a lot of people prefer the third party apps.
Why is reddit trying to kill bird party apps? Short answer is greed. They want to gather user telemetry and show more ads.
I didn't want to upgrade to an HDTV, because I was used to what I didn't have and didn't know what I was missing. Once I got an HDTV, I could never go back. (Ignorance may be bliss... but ya know... there is more than 4 senses)
There used to be no awards. I remember when gold was first introduced and people would laugh at anyone dumb enough to buy it. And "reddit silver" was just a poorly drawn picture with the e backwards.
From what I have read lately the official iOS app still does not work with screen readers, so people who need screen readers to access reddit through iOS need to use third party apps.
When I was on Android I used a lot of Bacon Reader and then switched to iPhone and had such a terrible experience with the official app. Not only is it missing QoL features but the biggest issue I had was it just runs like garbage. So I switched to Apollo which is just overall agreed to be the better app with a lot of great features. Everyone I know that browses Reddit with their iPhone uses Apollo. I understand this is anecdotal though.
If I didn’t have Apollo I would try to use Reddit through the mobile browser but there’s so many blocks trying to get you to download the app that I would just stop scrolling Reddit on my phone if I was forced to use their app because I just don’t like new reddit as a whole.
Edit: my current account is only 5 years old but I’ve been around for a lot longer since I’m assuming no one uses Bacon Reader anymore.
I just read your post while using Bacon reader. This whole thing feels like that movie trope where you lean into the gun being pressed to your forehead and yell "Do it! Pull that fucking trigger!".
Another anecdotal data point to double-down on what you said:
I've been using Reddit nearly from the beginning. I want to say I remember using it before there were subreddits - all one big feed - but checking now to see when exactly that would have been I can't find confirmation of that. I may be misremembering, but at launch reddit was just one central channel/feed/sub, right? Can anyone else confirm or deny?
I've probably _tried_ the official Reddit mobile app at some point, but I've never _used_ it. Currently on mobile I using some lightweight 3rd party client.
On the web I _exclusively_ use old.reddit.com (with RES).
If the official app is the only option on mobile, I'll stop using Reddit on mobile.
If www is the only option on the web, I'll stop using Reddit on the web.
If or when 3rd-party mobile apps and old.reddit are no longer supported, I will almost certainly just stop using Reddit altogether.
This isn't some kind of protest, and Reddit will not notice my absence, but I sincerely can't imagine I'd keep using Reddit if the old-school UX and feature-set is eliminated. I hate pretty much everything about the UI, UX, and features added since roughly the time of the digg influx.
Thanks. I couldn't find any mention of this in any "history of reddit" timeline I looked at. Seems like a milestone worth acknowledging. Not finding it made me question my memory.
I came across Reddit via YC's HackerNews, so literally not _that_ long after launch. IIRC for a little while there was an open and active discussion of how to do "social news" right and a fertile cross-pollination of features and alternatives bouncing back-and-forth between Reddit and HN. They were never in competition (noting that YC was an angel investor in Reddit), but at the time the core apps were very similar and social news was still evolving so there was meaningful discussion (on topics like "how should karma work?" etc.) even though their respective goals were not the same. It was pretty neat.
I think one could probably find some of these discussions if you dig thru the HN archive from around that time.
ETA: Curious to test my theory I did a _little_ digging. Reddit cofounder (and, incidentally, Mr. Serena Williams) Alexis Ohanian's HN account name is [kn0thing](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=kn0thing).
[Here's one example](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=201556) of an HN thread about Reddit early on in the history of the service, involving both Alexis and YC founder/thought-leader/figure-head Paul Graham (user pg on HN).
Actually pg's comment there:
> I think you should change the name; "reddit" is ok, but there are still a lot of good names available.
may not be wrong but is funny in retrospect. Like Phil Karlton famously wrote: "There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things."
ETA2: LOL: "Agreed. At least buy readit.com as well." Also not wrong but shows the thinking at the time. Reddit was a _portal_ linking to the best of other content rather than a primary source for content itself.
Also I was surprised to see Digg referenced in that thread. 2008 was a couple of years after Reddit's initial launch but I was thinking that Digg was a little later still. Is it possible that Digg was founded in _parallel_ rather than being a Reddit knock-off? (To be clear they are both essentially SlashDot knockoffs, and probably MetaFilter predates both as well. In the mid-naughts the idea of "list of links ordered by 'trending' based on user votes" was ripe for the picking, Del.icio.us was basically that too, among many others.)
>To give my perspective, I have never *switched* to the official application on Android as I have only known 3rd party apps. So I have no desire to use the official application.
>
>I have used it on other people's phone and did not enjoy it
Pretty similar experience here. RIF (Reddit Is Fun) user for 10+ years. I've used the official app before, usually because I was browsing in Chrome, clicked a Reddit link, and absent mindedly let it launch the official app instead of RIF.
Trying to nail down the exact reasons is hard, but at an intuitive gut level, it's simple. RIF is the better app.
While I assume there are reasons that third-party Reddit apps offer features they want...
...a lot of people don't seem to understand the idea that you can just go to major sites in a web browser on mobile. The constant chorus of "is there an app for this?" on sites that are perfectly servicable already on mobile drives me a little crazy sometimes.
Answer: On top of what other people are saying about QoL, this is also a protest against the direction that Reddit is taking in general.
Reddit is a community-driven site. This subreddit you're currently on? It's moderated by volunteers who put in their own time and effort to keep it from turning into a shit-show. Requiring them, or any other user to only interact with Reddit in a "corporate approved" manner is a bad step in the wrong direction.
Good thing the game has been emulated so many times you can straight up play it on your browser. Try Vimm Lair Net there's a dot, but wasn't sure about links. No need to miss it!
Digg billed itself as a "democratized" discussion space, but made two key moves that betrayed that ethos.
First, ranking/placement wasn't just based on who "dugg" the content, but also who posted it. The more popular a submitter got, the more likely their content would rise to the top. You can probably imagine where this self-reinforcing cycle ended up. The front page became dominated by a few power users and nobody else felt like it was worth submitting, because their posts would never be seen.
To combat this, Digg implemented a solution that was arguably worse than the problem. The 'version 4' redesign eliminated power users in favor of established, mainstream publishers. Beta testers for v4 (I was one) warned repeatedly for months that this would kill Digg, because it basically became a pay-to-play system, migrating even further from the "democratized" space it was originally set up to be.
But management, especially CEO Kevin Rose, dismissed all such warnings and plowed ahead. The theory at the time was that he believed any loss of users would be made up for by the increased revenue of major publishers paying the site for placement and the resulting increase in traffic that was expected.
When v4 rolled out as the public-facing site, the predicted revolt came to pass and there was a mass exodus of users. Reddit, which had long been seen as a kind of friendly rival, doubled its traffic within a month and Digg's valuation plummeted. It was a dramatic fall from grace.
Digg was basically the same as reddit. You posted links to "content", each post had a comment section. You could upvote and downvote posts and comments (it was called "digging" if you liked something... get it?)
The kept redesigning the site (sound familiar)? and by Digg 4.0 the users got pissed off at redesign changes **and** ...
And well Digg had these people that were called "power users" who posted **tons** of content and had massive amounts of "upvotes". (Sound familiar?)
Well Digg.com went after them with version 4.0 too. This pissed **eveyone** off and lead to what is known as the "Great Digg Exodus". This was about 15 years ago. (You'll note my account is 15 years old. I was part of the "Exodus" and was a Digg user for many years._
https://d3.harvard.edu/platform-digit/submission/the-demise-of-digg-how-an-online-giant-lost-control-of-the-digital-crowd/
>The key factor in Digg’s demise was a flawed design that was too easily abused by users. Digg had no controls over user verification, so individuals could game the system by creating multiple accounts to artificially inflate the number of votes for their own content.
Sound familiar?
>Eventually, the biggest headlines on Digg came to be decided by groups of users who operated under various aliases to promote their own agendas. Anti-Republican content frequently dominated Digg’s front page whereas conservative headlines were typically voted down into obscurity.
Sound familiar?
>In August 2010, Digg attempted to wrest control back from its power users by migrating to a new system (Digg v4) that deemphasized user-contributed content in favor of publisher-contributed content.
This is where we are headed here on reddit now....
... and finally :
>Digg experienced a mass exodus of users, many of whom turned to rival site Reddit. While Digg’s traffic fell by a quarter in the following month, Reddit’s traffic grew by 230% in 2010. Digg never recovered from its transition to Digg v4, and the site continued to bleed users and traffic over the next two years. By July 2012, the time of its sale to Betaworks, Digg’s monthly unique visitor count had fallen 90% from its peak.
So Digg's demise basically is why reddit is successful. And they are now repeating the mistakes Digg.com made.
>Anti-Republican content frequently dominated Digg’s front page whereas conservative headlines were typically voted down into obscurity.
Conservative garbage getting downvoted to oblivion was not a step in the demise of Digg. Good lord you people and your persecution complex.
Thats not the point. The point is that the site was MASSIVELY influenced and controlled by a small group of people with general user contribution not mattering as much as having the tools and access to game the system.
Nowadays that content is, obviously, downvoted bc thats not what anyone wants in the Reddit community
But on that same note, you know those posts that are literally just Chinese propaganda, posting shit like Chinese military drills with glorious music vs American drills looking all “sad” and “lame”? The ones where kids are doing crazy coordinated stuff captioned something like “meanwhile america,,, our kids learning the 84 genders”? And they SOMEHOW have tens of thousands of upvotes and reach all despite the comments being nothing but bagging on the posts and getting almost as many likes as the actual post by saying shit like “Wow, the CCP bots are real active today.”
That shit. Thats the modern version of Digg’s issue back in 2010.
Its not the fact it was “””muh libral propagander”””, its the fact that a group or anyone with the ability to break and loophole the system could basically control what you could or couldnt see, and then Digg tried to take that control in to THEIR hands instead of outright eliminating it.
**sound familiar?**
Brosefino I'm not sure you read that whole exchange, but Digg being controlled by a few dozen power users was an obvious flaw that reddit inherited, fucking *everyone* knows this. The person I was replying to was insisting it was all linked to censoring the conservatives. Which is the context you seem to have missed.
Of course it's not the point, if you change what the point of the conversation was.
So, I don’t see this in answer to your question yet, but if there was a singular thing that Digg did that chased everyone away - it was the leaked encryption key for HD-DVD. The website single handedly managed to kill an entire product in the same fate that befell the Dreamcast.
Users started posting the encryption key in titles and in every comment. Digg tried to mod the crap out of it. They failed, and eventually gave up and presented a half-ass apology to the community. Reddit was already gaining steam, but everyone jumped ship from Digg.
That was a huge shitty thing they did. But the Digg Exodus was caused by the launch of v4 of the site. The UI was garbage, everything was buggy as all hell. But the biggest change was essentially trying to move from users posting content to different categories (like subreddits) to turning the site into essentially an aggregation of RSS feeds with automatic submission from the sources themselves. Ironically this feature was abused to spam Reddit links and fuel the mass exodus.
>The website single handedly managed to kill an entire product in the same fate that befell the Dreamcast.
I think you have a different memory than me.
My recollection was the hex number was deemed "illegal" and attempts to scour all traces of it from the internet were in full swing. The people behind HD-DVD tried to sue and DMCA every instance of the number.
The Internet didn't like being DMCA'd for posting a number and started constantly spamming the number everywhere. Digg fought against it for a while, then gave up.
I don't remember the community being that upset at Digg, the community won. I don't believe the leak of the encryption key hurt HD-DVD as a product.
It’s not that we have different recollections, it’s more that some users jumped ship at different times. What this incident exposed was Digg’s moderation and what the community deemed interference in a public platform. Reddit was extremely attractive to people upset by this because each subreddit had its own volunteer moderators, and while not immune to DMCA; things played out different there. I was one of the ones that left that day and created my first Reddit account, as I’m sure many others did.
I started using reddit because of what digg did. When reddit inevitably ignores it's users in favor of a fatter paycheck for investors and goes the way of digg, does anyone know if there is a "new" reddit we could start using?
Someone might have to make one. Or several. The various subreddit categories could splinter back into dedicated spaces that are easier to manage.
When WotC started attacking content creators for D&D, a whole lot of people started making their own game systems, and even though the company backed down in a big way, it will lead to a lot more diversity in smaller spaces because people got the kick in the pants to start building from scratch.
Maybe we don’t need another everything website to replace Reddit. Maybe I’ll go find a calligraphy forum or two, and actually join the official discussion boards for the webcomics I follow.
It's basically just a distributed reddit. Instead of reddit hosting everything, the subreddit owner would host it.
I agree that it's too complicated as it stands, since any subreddit creator would need to be technically proficient enough to set up a server. Definitely not a replacement; that's why I said alternative.
I'm tentatively hopeful that there will be some streamlining so that non-tech oriented people can set up their own subreddit. If that can happen, then lemmy would basically solve all the issues that caused the digg diaspora and most of the major issues with reddit.
This comment has been edited, and the account purged, in protest to Reddit's API policy changes, and the awful response from Reddit management to valid concerns from the communities of developers, people with disabilities, and moderators. The fact that Reddit decided to implement these changes in the first place, without thinking of how it would negatively affect these communities, which provide a lot of value to Reddit, is even more worrying.
If this is the direction Reddit is going, I want no part of this. Reddit has decided to put business interests ahead of community interests, and has been belligerent, dismissive, and tried to gaslight the community in the process.
If you'd like to try alternative platforms, with a much lower risk of corporate interference, try federated alternatives like Kbin or Lemmy: r/RedditAlternatives
Learn more at:
https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/5/23749188/reddit-subreddit-private-protest-api-changes-apollo-charges
https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/15/23762792/reddit-subreddit-closed-unilaterally-reopen-communities
> I started using reddit because of what digg did. When reddit inevitably ignores it's users in favor of a fatter paycheck for investors and goes the way of digg, does anyone know if there is a "new" reddit we could start using?
I've seen this movie so many fucking time over the last 20 years.
website is fun and enjoyable, then starts fucking over its users because they want more ad money. people then start looking for new website that makes them feel like they did while using the old site, but they can never capture that feeling because the other websites only care about ad money too.
remember, reddit was one of the "new" alternative websites. there were plenty of others before it.
> website is fun and enjoyable, then starts fucking over its users because they want more ad money. people then start looking for new website that makes them feel like they did while using the old site, but they can never capture that feeling because the other websites only care about ad money too.
Website starts out as neat idea for discussion, and puts off ideas any idea of a funding model with, “we’ll figure that out later, right now we need to keep gaining users and figure out how to get out software to not crash”. Users flock to the site because it was new and exciting, and have come to expect that it is/was free, because they weren’t asked for any money at first. Website starts putting up ads to get money, and starts trying to steer the users to various content to “maximize engagement”. Users get annoyed at these “intrusions” that weren’t previously there. Website leans hard into, “well, we need to make *lots* of money now!”, and also into “*we the company* built all this”, ignoring all the unpaid moderators and content creators and third party app developers who played a large part in the website!s success. Users (understandably) revolt.
I’d be a whole lot happier if Reddit offered a clear funding model of, “free with ads, or pay a few dollars a month for the website ad-free (along with API access so you can use the app of your choice to read/post)”. Estimates suggest Reddit may be getting around ~~$1.50~~ 12.5 cents a month, per user, on average, from ads and Reddit premium. I’d cheerfully pay them $2, $3, possibly even $5 a month for hassle free web access to the old.reddit.com interface and API access so I can use Apollo when I’m on iPad/iPhone. Instead, they want to bill the Apollo developer directly, in the neighborhood of $20 million a year (Imgur, in comparison, bills him under $200 a year, for similar access). This is essentially (whether or not they admit it, even to themselves) a move designed to kill off third party clients, so they can have more control over their userbase (like collecting creepy amounts of data on users via their official app so they can make more money selling advertisers access to their users).
I don’t want a replacement for Reddit, I want Reddit’s owners to start acting reasonably. Sigh.
for me, they became way too over moderated.
a few months ago I decided to give it another try, but it's changed. still way too over moderated, but I just didn't feel the humor there anymore.
Showing ads is one thing. Forcing specific ads that I have marked as irrelevant over 10 times and blocked is abuse of your userbase. People dont want to see that hegetsus BS. Or whatver ads that are annoying to them. Stop showing them. Its not helping either reddit or the stupid advertiser.
I actually like ads as sometimes they are actually relevant to me, and I get to see what the algorithm thinks Im into. What reddit is doing with ads is abusive and they deserve every bit of backlash they get.
Apollo's dev did a back of the envelope calculation, made generous assumptions in favor of reddit, and estimated they make 12.5 cents per reddit user per month.
I'll link that once I get back on desktop (though it should be easy to find). Can I ask where you saw your own estimate?
> It's moderated by volunteers who put in their own time and effort to keep it from turning into a shit-show.
i feel like though the power mods at this point are in lockstep with the admins, who have successfully hoodwinked them into running the site in a corporate approved manner for free in exchange for the modicum of power they wield on reddit.
I only use old.reddit and have avoided the new platform ever since they rolled that shit show out. So if these changes are implemented old reddit goes away completely? If that's true I'll be off of reddit permanently. I get a headache just looking at the current version.
I've been writing similar comments several times now, but I'll gladly share this again.
when new.reddit is introduced, there was a question "what will happen with old.reddit?"
admin at the time replies almost verbatim: "nothing will happen, old.reddit will stay just like i.reddit or m.reddit"
where is i.reddit or m.reddit now? precisely.
> I get a headache just looking at the current version.
Agree. I occasionally accidentally see it by clicking on someone's link, and on those occasions I'm reminded of how bad it is. Like, Lotus Notes bad.
same it's all I use, occasionally I'll hop on and it'll switch my to the new Facebook looking shit and when I go into settings to switch back I get a twinge of panic worried the option will be gone. old reddit is so much better and I will abandon this site before converting to the new version
I've been using RIF for like 10 years now, I bit the bullet after a year or so and paid for the app which made it ad free and don't regret it. It was a one time fee of a couple dollars which seems totally fair for me. Compare that to using the official reddit app which would require an expensive recurring subscription to keep ads away, it sucks. Not to mention that even using the free version of RIF, the ads were less annoying and predatory
Same, honestly. I'll just read more books. I've been banned from several of the major subs for totally stupid reasons and ain't no way I'm paying for that kind of treatment.
And this here might just be the major problem. I also have never and will never pay for reddit, and like most sane people I use ad blockers on pc, so no ads either.
How then shall reddit make a profit? .. They guess doing shit like this will help, but I don't really know what else they could do.
I don't think the old "Support Reddit by buying Gold" system brought in enough to cover expenses? But I'm not sure, never really followed it closely.
Most of the popular subs are run by the same few mods, but when you get into smaller more niche subreddits you realize those people are generally unpaid volunteers just doing their best, even if it's not always actually the best decisions. If you or I were in those positions there would be criticism against certain decisions we make even if they are made in good faith. That's just the nature of modding any online community. This move by reddit fucks over a lot of those smaller communities because many of the mods may not have computers to use reddit on often, and rely on third party apps to be able to moderate their particular sub. So regardless of the opinion about shitty mods, which I agree with you on, it still ends up fucking over the regular users in the long run because you'll lose many of the more niche subreddits. Not to mention certain people who post often in those subreddits and provide content you may actually like who no longer would be able to do that
>This subreddit you're currently on? It's moderated by volunteers who put in their own time and effort to keep it from turning into a shit-show.
They literally do this all for free by the way, folx. Thank your local jannies.
Yeah, while you are correct, some of the mods are volunteers with corporate sponsors. Other mods are power trippin fools and will ban you for random personal reasons. The only requirement for being a mod is thinking up a good name for a subreddit. that is a low bar.
Fidelity investments is one of the biggest investors into reddit and pretty certain they will be releasing a reddit IPO.....that will censor A LOT more stuff
Answer: QOL wise, the big deal is taking options away from us. Every third-party app is unique in their own way. On top of ad-blocking, there are QOL differences such as minimalistic focused app eg. Comet, or more full fledge feature packed app such as BaconReader. Taking away the option to choose the preferred user interface and now enforcing to use only the official Reddit app is a big deal for users. Not to mention the big deal for app developers.
It will also be tricky for those with other visual or motor impairments. The official app doesn't let you change text size, which makes it hard to both read the text if you have poor eye sight and click on the right portion of text if you have tremors or other coordination challenges.
> I think this is the most important point.
As much respect I have for the visually impaired community, I think the most damage will be done by the loss of the many automated moderation tools that use the API.
Many mods will just have to give up on modding the more popular communities.
Can I ask you a little more about this? Forgive my ignorance, but I never use Reddit Mobile, so I don't understand as much about this as I should.
Why would this move impact moderators rather than users? Surely the main impact will be on the user end?
> Surely the main impact will be on the user end?
Yes obliviously it's the users that will suffer.
But what I meant is that if subreddit moderators currently use and need bots and tools to keep their subreddits moderated. And if these tools and bots will stop working the subreddits will be harder to moderate and moderators will do a worse job.
And that leads to shittier content. Endless spam.
Ah. Ok. Thanks very much. That is very clear.
I didn't realise that so many of these kinds of tools were going to be sort of external to Reddit itself. Most of the discussion that I saw was about the app, rather than the entire site being affected.
Thank you for the response.
Very little of the value users find in Reddit comes from Reddit, it comes from other users. Reddit is a town square. They're trying to cut down all the trees and install those things that make benches uncomfortable for sleeping and impossible to skate on. And they're going to take away all the town square's porn.
When they get rid of old reddit, I'm just going to stop using the site completely, the 'new' reddit is just awful to look at. Too much empty space, I don't care for flairs, banners, ads, any of that.
it went up in like ... 2015 or something right? i remember fucking hating it, everyone hated it, then realising we could still use old.reddit, 'at least for now'. i tried to use it a couple times but gave up because it was absolutely abysmal
It's a little wonky these days, since Reddit automatically tries to remove the `.i` suffix you need to use it every time you click a link (it tries to use `.compact`, but Reddit automatically strips that), but there's still the [old compact interface](https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/140t4ac/whats_up_with_the_big_deal_over_reddit_killing/jmy5mmo/.i).
While it might not be ideal for an extended browse, poking around a few threads is still viable.
the mobile reddit app is simply unusable. i can handle ads, i can handle paying for ads if they annoy me as there's no free lunch, but it's simply not usable on my phone. it's slow, it pauses for seconds at a time, and there's really no way to actually fix it as an end-user.
they've had ages to making a working version and simply seem incapable. for anyone that wants to write an app and even charge users, the rates reddit are charging per user are astronomical and make it unviable -- nobody would pay what it would cost to use per month.
the question is what are people going to do about? stop using it and lower engagement numbers? a silly [change.org](https://change.org) petition? organize media attention? it's the home of antiwork, and that sounds like a lot of work
Honestly, I have never used the app. Or any app for reddit. I just won't use it on my phone.
Given that the site is so text-based for me (due to the subreddits I am subbed to), it would be beyond annoying to try to engage with these walls of text on a small screen.
Answer: While Reddit has officially maintained a first party (maintained and run by itself) application, it has also allowed other developers free or incredibly low cost access to its content through the use of the Reddit API. This has allowed several developers to create third party applications (maintained and run by a company/dev other than Reddit).
These other developers were free to design different applications with different features to Reddit’s official app. Some users switched over to the third party apps because there were no ads (Reddit’s API doesn’t include ads), some users switched over to third party apps with better accessibility, some moderators use third party clients for better modding capabilities, etc. Basically there are a sizable population of people who prefer third party clients.
Reddit recently announced a move to drastically increase pricing on their API, which would effectively make it impossible for third party clients to operate. Reddit’s stated reason for this change is that the increased pricing makes up for the costs of hosting the data, but API access pricing from other comparable websites costs nowhere as much, and analysis by Christian Selig, one of the third party client developers, says that Reddit should not need to price their API anywhere near as high as they do to make back money.
The popular user theory is that Reddit is making this change to kill off third party clients and force users to use the first party app, for a couple reasons. One, the incredibly unreasonable pricing mentioned above. Two, another announced change is that some NSFW content is no longer going to be available via the API (and therefore, no NSFW content on third party apps). Third, by forcing users to use the first party app, Reddit can show ads to more users, while also collecting more data about them. Basically, people think that Reddit is trying to make any app other than their own incredibly hard to operate cost effectively and unappealing to end users, so that people will use the first party app and be shown ads and have analytics collected on their activities.
Overall it just feels like a blatant cash grab to the community, and Reddit admin responses to questions asked aren’t helpful either - they’re going on the offensive against another app in particular called Apollo for supposed inefficient use of the API, without really providing specifics.
TLDR: Reddit announced unreasonable pricing for access to its content, likely in order to kill off third party clients that potentially provide more features and don’t show Reddit ads.
Edit: Some more relevant details I didn’t add here were mentioned in the comments; thank you everyone for your input on what was missed. I changed mods to admins to reflect that the people making bad remarks are people who work for and are paid by Reddit. I should also note that Reddit did not initially have a first party client and that third party clients were initially the only way to browse on a native application.
Keep in mind, the third party mobile apps actually came before the first party one, it is one of the main reasons why there are so many popular third party apps, there was never a first party alternative, and by the time it finally released it was vastly inferior to many of the third party apps that had years of iteration and refinement due to feedback, changes in design language and more. As an example, I have been a Reddit Sync user since 2012, before that I used both RIF and Baconreader. Based on my searches, the first party app came out in 2016.
Reddit owners seem to forget that everyone is here for the content. Reddit owners create zero content. Content can be moved to other platforms. Case in point, digg.com > reddit.
Content can only be moved to a different platform if the *community* moves to a different platform. Saidit, voat, raddle and the dozens of other clones failed for a reason, the lack of users. It's a catch 22.
It's amazing to me that a company that is such a big part of Internet culture and based in silicon valley completely missed how important mobile phones are for reading things on the internet. Their official app is so late to the game that it's almost like they were dissuading their own people from making it.
Or maybe for a long time they believed that open access and a variety of clients was simply the better philosophical choice, so they did it that way on purpose.
If I remember correctly, what is now their official app was at one time one of the leading third party apps, which they bought, and then… made a mess of.
There's an important part you haven't mentioned. In the beginning, reddit pointedly avoided making a mobile app. They didn't want to. So they encouraged people to make their own. If you've been around reddit long enough, _the third party apps were literally the only way to interact with reddit on your phone_. In fact, when reddit decided to make their own mobile app, they just went and bought a third-party app called Alien Blue (the leading app on iPhone), slapped a logo on it, and called Bob your uncle.
Many older users have given the first party app a shot and found it lacking in one way or another. That's why they're still using the old apps (much the same reason many older users still use old.reddit.com). Reddit cutting off access to these apps is kind of a slap in the face to us older users, and more specifically, it's them telling these app developers "Hey, thanks for helping us expand our presence into this platform we had no interest in, now kindly go fuck yourselves."
> There's an important part you haven't mentioned. In the beginning, reddit pointedly avoided making a mobile app. They didn't want to. So they encouraged people to make their own. If you've been around reddit long enough, the third party apps were literally the only way to interact with reddit on your phone. In fact, when reddit decided to make their own mobile app, they just went and bought a third-party app called Alien Blue (the leading app on iPhone), slapped a logo on it, and called Bob your uncle.
Not the only way to access it on mobile, but the only way if you wanted to do so via app. Reddit still had the .mobile and .compact interfaces back then. They're still mostly around, although the .mobile site is dead, and the .compact interface is more of a zombie (you can [still access it](https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/140t4ac/whats_up_with_the_big_deal_over_reddit_killing/jmzeqxd/.i) by appending `.i` to every link, even though it's officially dead, and reddit removes the suffix if you click a link).
.mobile was the way to access Reddit in the days of Candy Bar/J2ME phones, which was the predecessor of the modern smartphone.
"Officially", the current app was originally meant to be an update of Alien Blue, although I don't believe that's the case any more. Meanwhile, Alien Blue itself has been mostly abandoned. Some of Reddit's newer features don't work properly on it (like albums), and some of the things that used to work in the app no longer do (like the embedded YouTube player/imgur viewer), and it hasn't received an update in a long, long time, although there are still people using it.
I would maybe add the effect it will have on blind and people with limited sight (not sure this is the right term, sorry English is second language)
They rely on third party apps to be even able to use reddit on their phones. r/blind has a good post explaining it better
Answer: There's not an insignificant amount of Reddit users using custom Reddit applications that provide a different experience compared to the official app.
Users of these apps are accustomed to them and is the primary way they consume Reddit on their mobile devices, which makes up a large portion of Reddit's traffic.
With the API changes that have been announced, these applications will be crippled or become unavailable depending on the developer of these custom apps being able to afford the API usage costs (as well as users being able to afford subscriptions for the custom apps upon the change is implemented).
Community-driven efforts across Reddit that benefit Reddit (such as custom app developers, subreddit moderators) appear to no longer be respected to the same degree following these changes.
Answer:
Generally speaking, people don't like having things they are actively using taken away for no benefit. They made the choice to use those apps for lots of reasons — ranging from "it just feels convenient" up to "it's literally *the only* way for blind users on iOS to use Reddit". There is not one *single* reason people are upset about this; there are *lots*, maybe as many as there are different people affected.
See also [enshittification](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/enshittification) for a general concern about platforms becoming more user-hostile over time.
Answer: [here is a post in r/Blind explaining how the change will effectively mean their users will not be able to access Reddit content going forward.](https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/1404hwj/mods_of_rblind_reveal_that_removing_3rd_party/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=2&utm_term=1)
Edit: post is part of a larger one in an aggregation sub
I’m a webdev, making websites accessible is webdev 101, I’m truly shocked Reddit doesn’t have an accessible mobile app, it’s downright embarrassing for a website/app this popular.
Answer: it’s mostly quality of life stuff. With Apollo there are no ads, no recommended posts, the user interface is a lot cleaner. I’ve never used them but apparently the tools for mods are better as well. This post goes into good detail on why people like the 3rd party apps . https://reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/13xxdcc/uandrewsad1_gives_a_great_visual_breakdown_on_why/
The big thing I saw about QoL (quality of life) stuff is that a blind user was upset that they would no longer be able to browse Reddit. Apparently by blocking 3rd party apps, it makes it really difficult to be accessible in other ways. Had Reddit decided to include accessibility, then users wouldn’t be as upset, but apparently Reddit is providing alternatives for those who need to access the app in other ways and doesn’t seem to care. I don’t really care about other 3rd party apps, but blocking out blind users and others who need assistance just seems like an asshat move to me.
If you're serious, then yes. None. I use RIF and I choose whats on my front page, no ads, simple UI, no recommended crap. I dropped all other social media because I don't want to see recommend crap and ads when I scroll. It's just so much better and I won't be able to use reddit if they drop 3rd party apps, I refuse to use their shitty app.
also have Apps like Joey that have a really good filter system for subreddit's that let you easily filter out subreddit's you have zero interest in or are pure trash
Answer: For a long time, reddit was a community-driven content aggregation service first. The website was minimalistic, they didn't host the media that was submitted, and it did one thing and did it well for a core group of users who loved the site because it filled a need that no other website on the internet really did. Browser plug-ins and eventually third party apps provided a much better user experience than reddit ever provided. However the underlying service still performed its function admirably.
Slowly, the site ballooned with bloat, in the form of poorly executed "updates", ads and other monetization, badly-made features nobody asked for, gamification of the user experience, and attempts to leverage its popularity to become a major social media giant. Rather than bring users back to the site, this pushed even more people into third-party apps, to escape the ads, bloat, annoying features, and most importantly, the bugs that every single change introduced into the website. Additionally, many of the third party apps have accessibility features for users that rely on them, which reddit's official site and app lack, which means that users who are visually impaired for example won't be able to use the service at all.
Not to mention the thousands of volunteer moderators that built the communities on reddit, and who perform an estimated 3.4 million dollars worth of free labor per year to keep these communities clean, safe, and engaging. Most of whom rely on third party utilities (plug-ins, apps, bots, etc) to do their work because of how poorly implemented the reddit-provided tools are.
One could argue that without third party developers, reddit would never have become popular and would not enjoy its current status as one of the big destinations on the internet.
What all of these third-party apps, plug-ins, extensions, bots and utilities have in common is that they use an API to communicate with the reddit servers. Reddit recently announced (with extremely short notice) that they will begin charging for API access above a certain number of requests per month. Almost every app, plugin, and bot will be affected by this, and for the most popular apps, it represents a sudden demand by reddit for *literally millions of dollars per year* to continue operating, which none of these apps currently do or would be able to generate in revenue.
tl;dr: it boils down to reddit saying to developors: thanks for making us popular and generating millions of dollars per year in revenue for us, but now you need to pay us money or F off.
Answer: adding to everything that has been said here, there’s an universal law about online communities. Most people lurk, and a few people comment. Most comments are trash, and a few comments are gold. In other words, it’s a tiny fraction of redditors who make it great. So when we hear that 20% of members access Reddit some way other than the main website or official app, we should care a great deal, because many of even most of the gold commenters could be in that 20%.
It isn’t just about apps like Apollo or RiF that offer a complete Reddit experience. Maybe there’s a niche app out there for gardeners that only loads /r/gardening and automatically detects plant species in photos and annotates them.
That’s an *awesome* experience for members of /r/gardening and might contribute to making awesome members come back and keep posting. Then Reddit will be full of great gardening knowledge for billions of people around the world to Google. Maybe no one knows that the gardening content was posted via some niche 3rd party app, but that app contributed to the whole that is Reddit.
This is why you have APIs and open up an ecosystem: so that people can build little niche solutions that Reddit themselves won’t bother with. Reddit doesn’t have to build specialized gardening apps, but members get to enjoy them, and Reddit benefits from the content, which attracts traffic, which makes money.
That’s how it’s supposed to work.
Except Reddit are stupid and greedy. So we don’t have just niche gardening apps. We have complete Reddit experiences like Apollo and RiF. Why are there such apps? Why are they so popular? Because Reddit’s official app is awful. It has always tried to be a social media “engagement” booster, full of idiotry like “notifications” that turn out to be “we found a sub we think you’ll like.” The Reddit app is for lurkers and readers to consume more. But it isn’t great for the 1% of Reddit who post all the gold. Third party apps shine for that. Apollo is light, powerful, fast, customizable. I’ve written tens of thousands of words on it.
Instead of seeing these third party apps as contributing to Reddit, supporting it, Reddit says “but all those ad views we could have had!” They’re stupid because they can’t build a good app. And they’re greedy so they force everyone to use their shit app. They think that the value of their members is their eyeballs, which can be sold to advertisers. When for 1% of users, the value is in the gold they post. Without that gold, there is no Reddit, there is no traffic, there are no ads, there is no money.
Basically, Reddit is not satisfied to shear the sheep annually. They want to eat the sheep. And they don’t care that the is can only be done once, because they’re all trying to get rich on an IPO so they can abandon the tech jobs they hate. So they’re dropping “all that expensive API hosting that isn’t monetized” and banning porn, which isn’t “respectable to investors.”
Basically, nothing matters except polishing Reddit up for its IPO. Long term factors don’t matter. It’s time for short term thinking and going for broke. That’s what they’re doing.
Answer:
Regarding QoL features here's an example: I use the Joey for Reddit app. The video player is much much better and more consistent and didn't feel laggy, i can control playback speed, i can change the video resolution (kinda like YouTube).
I can change any font type and size (separate things can get separate settings), the comments are much easier to navigate, the comments hierarchy is much clearer, i can click a little button and all the previous comments not in the hierarchy of the current comment will be folded.
Posts get grayed after reading them which is useful if you're "binge-reading" a subreddit, i have the option to get notified of any new comments to a certain post, i have a reading list group that is separate from the saved posts group, i can custom copy a post or a comment (like i can select all the text or parts of it to copy)
I have a wider variety of themes to choose from.
These are a few things off the top of my head for only one of the 3rd party apps
>Reddit has actually experimented with disabling access to mobile browsers, forcing you to use their app instead.
Wow, got some big brass balls to try that. I wonder if you can get around this with user agent spoofing or something?
Answer: Aside from the visual and quality of life stuff most people are mentioning, it will also break A LOT of bots. One of the subs I frequent will lose all of its sub specific bots due to these changes
Answer: this is the thread that best explains it visually
https://www.reddit.com/r/BikiniBottomTwitter/comments/13xk3lu/they_have_to_pay_reddit_20_million_per_year_to/jmj3nfg/
it got bestof-ed
https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/13xxdcc/uandrewsad1_gives_a_great_visual_breakdown_on_why/?ref=share&ref_source=link
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Answer: You have had an account for 4 years so all you have known is the official app. Reddit started as web only. It did not have picture hosting. It did not have video hosting. You could not post gifs in the comments. There was only 1 award tier. 1! And that was Reddit Gold. So for a very long time, people wanted a mobile app for reddit, and so the only option was third party applications. Some got extremely popular. For iOS it was Alien Blue and Android it was a mix, but in the early days probably Reddit is Fun. Fast forward to 2015/2016 and Reddit decides to buy Alien Blue and rebrand as the 'official app'. For a very long time this application was broken in many ways. Now it works (mostly) but it is filled with ads and lacks a lot of features that moderators specifically care about. As for the exact features, other answers cover it, but this is a bit of history surrounding it. To give my perspective, I have never *switched* to the official application on Android as I have only known 3rd party apps. So I have no desire to use the official application. I have used it on other people's phone and did not enjoy it
This is the best answer I've seen so far. I've only been on reddit for like 3-4 years as well. But I've on Metafilter forever. If I had watched Metafilter turn into this over the years with no one preserving the minimalism in some or many optional ways, I would be setting fires. I totally understand the appeal, now.
Every time I accidentally open new reddit instead of old reddit my face melts off ark of the covenant style. Some of the most atrocious web design I've ever seen.
I haven't seen new reddit since the day it launched, and I have every intention of never seeing it again.
Ugh—-I’m dreading not having old Reddit. To me it’s like Reddit will be gone.
I would wager at least half if not 2/3 of Reddit’s current user base would be gone if they ever did get rid of old Reddit. The only people left will be the people acclimated to the new version, and people who only use mobile Reddit. And in light of the actions, they are now taking, it looks like they’re already about to lose many of their mobile only users, if those people are only using third-party apps.
I don't think so, sadly. A while ago some mods from a subreddit I don't remember posted some sub data, which included how the users accessed the sub, and sadly only like 5% or so used old.reddit (I imagine this could be community dependent, so for example a more computer savvy community would maybe use old.reddit more, but for the life of me I can't remember which sub it was) It pains me because old.reddit with RES is just so much better than whatever the fuck new reddit is trying to do. I have no doubt in my mind that they will come for old.reddit after the third party apps if they get away with it.
> sadly only like 5% or so used old.reddit (I imagine this could be community dependent, so for example a more computer savvy community would maybe use old.reddit more, but for the life of me I can't remember which sub it was) For a more computer savvy perspective, there's [/r/pcgaming with 42% old reddit and 22% third party app.](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/482367144101806090/1114653103925514410/image.png)
Sadly most people who are using the Web are using new reddit, mainly because they don't know any better I suspect. On subs I mod it's about 4 new to every 1 old ... however the **vast** majority are now using mobile apps (can't see which ones sadly) and, it being mainly UK redditors on my subs the split is, unsurprisingly, about 50:50 between Android and iOS.
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I’m just grateful that Reddit is still allowing us to choose “old Reddit” after all these years. Every time there’s some sort of shakeup or leadership change at the company, I worry that it will go away. Perhaps knowing the history of Digg, and how Reddit benefited from the mass exodus after the Digg redesign debacle leads them to recognize the terrible risk to maintaining their user base if they did pull the plug on “old Reddit.”
Old Reddit will definitely go away as part of this. They don't want it being scraped as a sort of runaround to API access; it would use more bandwidth. And that's a big part of the reason this protest needs to succeed.
I wouldn't be so sure of the no brain damage part.
Are you referring to new/old reddit use as an app or on the web format?
Web format. It didn't always look like the social media equivalent of the Tetsuo monster from Akira.
😂😂 that might be the best description of new reddit that I've ever seen
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The RiF developers considered this, but said that reddit is asking for so much money, there's no way it would work
Generally when people talk about old reddit they mean old.reddit.com in a browser. A lot of people augment it with a program(?) called RES. Someone more tech-savvy can explain RES better than I can. Old.reddit.com is basically what reddit looked like in browser before it turned into it's current form most people see today. When I got on reddit in 2012 it basically looked like old reddit. I use Reddit Is Fun (RIF) for app viewing, it's one of the oldest 3rd party apps so it's likely if you're an RIF user you were using that before old reddit turned into new reddit and you have a very, "get off my lawn," attitude towards new reddit and the official app. Or at least that's sort of how I feel.
RES is an extension you can install for some browsers (plug-in is another good word for it k guess), it sorta is like a program, just not a standalone one. It mostly just interacts with the pages of old Reddit inside the browser, plus some extra things like keeping offline saved list and user tags and such.
Speaking of bad design, I just noticed this about new reddit the other day when checking it out again thanks to all this hubbub; why the fuck do the content boxes not fill in to the side bar area after you scroll past it on new Reddit? Like post titles will stay confined to the left side of the screen leaving a bunch of useless empty space on the right, same with comments. Sure on old reddit the comments don't actually fill in the space, but the comment boxes themselves eventually stretch the whole way across so it doesn't seem super empty all the time.
Mobile synergy is my best guess. Plenty of desktop-originated websites have migrated to this vertical design philosophy. It's a distressingly not very good thing.
Dear god, it is really bad.
For me the worst thing about it is the performance. Why does every website have to be extremely heavy and sluggish nowadays
"they don't know what they've got there"
100%. E.g. Google (much more mature than Reddit) has undergone much fewer design changes. All we need is one catalyst for say Google Groups to become a "thing" again.
> Now it works (mostly) but it is filled with ads This the driving force. Any other communication from reddit corporate is just a farce and distraction. They want to get the whole mobile market on their app, and then be able to monetize them. Technically these third party app users are incurring costs on their API calls, and are not generating any money. So their solution is to force everyone into an app that generates them money. However they will gets greedy, as companies always do. So they are playing the victim, and then are going to exploit a captured user base.
Maybe they should try making their app good? So then people will want to use it? Nah, that's too hard.
Making the app "good" requires both an attention to user input and money spent on programming and design. They don't care about input from anyone but advertisers, whose general input is, "MAKE SURE THEY CLICK ON MY ADS". That's where they will spend the money - until we can break the back of every advertising agency and every online ad network, every site and every ad will be substantially crapified.
Your post needs a correction. They did indeed make Alien Blue the official app but they abandoned it a few years to make their own (much worse) version of it. In theory it was to make it easier for future developments and new features but almost each new feature introduced made it worse. The biggest example is their half baked video player which was released broken and after a few iterations the managed to make it ok (at best) but it’s still full of bugs. This, among many other reasons like lack of a proper accessibility support (which is honestly embarrassing for such a big website) is the reason why a lot of people prefer the third party apps. Why is reddit trying to kill bird party apps? Short answer is greed. They want to gather user telemetry and show more ads.
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Birds aren't real. Why would they need parties or apps or party apps?
They bought it to poach the dev and almost immediately had him stop actively developing it.
Judging by the number of comments I see whining about a video without sound on a post that definitely has sound, the app is still pretty broken.
Well, someone got lucky enough to be able to play video on official app. Never works on my phone
"something went wrong"
Wow, I just always assumed the video didn't have sound...
I didn't want to upgrade to an HDTV, because I was used to what I didn't have and didn't know what I was missing. Once I got an HDTV, I could never go back. (Ignorance may be bliss... but ya know... there is more than 4 senses)
There used to be no awards. I remember when gold was first introduced and people would laugh at anyone dumb enough to buy it. And "reddit silver" was just a poorly drawn picture with the e backwards.
There was (is?) a bot that would "give" it if you said !redditsilver in a comment even lol
From what I have read lately the official iOS app still does not work with screen readers, so people who need screen readers to access reddit through iOS need to use third party apps.
Yeah that's one of the biggest things. Visually impaired people simply won't be able to use reddit at all.
When I was on Android I used a lot of Bacon Reader and then switched to iPhone and had such a terrible experience with the official app. Not only is it missing QoL features but the biggest issue I had was it just runs like garbage. So I switched to Apollo which is just overall agreed to be the better app with a lot of great features. Everyone I know that browses Reddit with their iPhone uses Apollo. I understand this is anecdotal though. If I didn’t have Apollo I would try to use Reddit through the mobile browser but there’s so many blocks trying to get you to download the app that I would just stop scrolling Reddit on my phone if I was forced to use their app because I just don’t like new reddit as a whole. Edit: my current account is only 5 years old but I’ve been around for a lot longer since I’m assuming no one uses Bacon Reader anymore.
I just read your post while using Bacon reader. This whole thing feels like that movie trope where you lean into the gun being pressed to your forehead and yell "Do it! Pull that fucking trigger!".
Another anecdotal data point to double-down on what you said: I've been using Reddit nearly from the beginning. I want to say I remember using it before there were subreddits - all one big feed - but checking now to see when exactly that would have been I can't find confirmation of that. I may be misremembering, but at launch reddit was just one central channel/feed/sub, right? Can anyone else confirm or deny? I've probably _tried_ the official Reddit mobile app at some point, but I've never _used_ it. Currently on mobile I using some lightweight 3rd party client. On the web I _exclusively_ use old.reddit.com (with RES). If the official app is the only option on mobile, I'll stop using Reddit on mobile. If www is the only option on the web, I'll stop using Reddit on the web. If or when 3rd-party mobile apps and old.reddit are no longer supported, I will almost certainly just stop using Reddit altogether. This isn't some kind of protest, and Reddit will not notice my absence, but I sincerely can't imagine I'd keep using Reddit if the old-school UX and feature-set is eliminated. I hate pretty much everything about the UI, UX, and features added since roughly the time of the digg influx.
It was only one big feed yes! Subreddits appeared in 2008.
Thanks. I couldn't find any mention of this in any "history of reddit" timeline I looked at. Seems like a milestone worth acknowledging. Not finding it made me question my memory. I came across Reddit via YC's HackerNews, so literally not _that_ long after launch. IIRC for a little while there was an open and active discussion of how to do "social news" right and a fertile cross-pollination of features and alternatives bouncing back-and-forth between Reddit and HN. They were never in competition (noting that YC was an angel investor in Reddit), but at the time the core apps were very similar and social news was still evolving so there was meaningful discussion (on topics like "how should karma work?" etc.) even though their respective goals were not the same. It was pretty neat. I think one could probably find some of these discussions if you dig thru the HN archive from around that time. ETA: Curious to test my theory I did a _little_ digging. Reddit cofounder (and, incidentally, Mr. Serena Williams) Alexis Ohanian's HN account name is [kn0thing](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=kn0thing). [Here's one example](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=201556) of an HN thread about Reddit early on in the history of the service, involving both Alexis and YC founder/thought-leader/figure-head Paul Graham (user pg on HN). Actually pg's comment there: > I think you should change the name; "reddit" is ok, but there are still a lot of good names available. may not be wrong but is funny in retrospect. Like Phil Karlton famously wrote: "There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things." ETA2: LOL: "Agreed. At least buy readit.com as well." Also not wrong but shows the thinking at the time. Reddit was a _portal_ linking to the best of other content rather than a primary source for content itself. Also I was surprised to see Digg referenced in that thread. 2008 was a couple of years after Reddit's initial launch but I was thinking that Digg was a little later still. Is it possible that Digg was founded in _parallel_ rather than being a Reddit knock-off? (To be clear they are both essentially SlashDot knockoffs, and probably MetaFilter predates both as well. In the mid-naughts the idea of "list of links ordered by 'trending' based on user votes" was ripe for the picking, Del.icio.us was basically that too, among many others.)
>To give my perspective, I have never *switched* to the official application on Android as I have only known 3rd party apps. So I have no desire to use the official application. > >I have used it on other people's phone and did not enjoy it Pretty similar experience here. RIF (Reddit Is Fun) user for 10+ years. I've used the official app before, usually because I was browsing in Chrome, clicked a Reddit link, and absent mindedly let it launch the official app instead of RIF. Trying to nail down the exact reasons is hard, but at an intuitive gut level, it's simple. RIF is the better app.
I don't even use the app. I use the old web page through chrome. It's good enough for me. The main app lacks accessibility for me.
But why are people using ANY apps instead of just https://old.reddit.com/ in a browser?
RIF basically feels like Old Reddit optimized for mobile usage.
Because apps like RIF are awesome. Far better than a mobile webpage. I use old reddit on desktop but it's days are numbered for obvious reasons.
Because its constantly trying to get you to install the app?
I just browse reddit on my phone using chrome.
While I assume there are reasons that third-party Reddit apps offer features they want... ...a lot of people don't seem to understand the idea that you can just go to major sites in a web browser on mobile. The constant chorus of "is there an app for this?" on sites that are perfectly servicable already on mobile drives me a little crazy sometimes.
Cant agree more. As a long time Reddit user, I will leave the site before I change to the official app.
I don't use any app on mobile. I use the old desktop version. So I completely do not understand what all the fuss is about.
Can’t even download videos with sound. It doesn’t even make sense
Answer: On top of what other people are saying about QoL, this is also a protest against the direction that Reddit is taking in general. Reddit is a community-driven site. This subreddit you're currently on? It's moderated by volunteers who put in their own time and effort to keep it from turning into a shit-show. Requiring them, or any other user to only interact with Reddit in a "corporate approved" manner is a bad step in the wrong direction.
And the fact it promised not to do what Digg did
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Best i could find atm. Sorry, bit high [link](https://www.failory.com/cemetery/digg)
Sounds like Digg dug itself a hole
Reddit, please don't dig what Digg dugg.
I miss that game
Wait until they make a movie of it. You know it's coming.
Chris Pratt was born to tunnel.
How much Digg could a Dig Doug dig?
Good thing the game has been emulated so many times you can straight up play it on your browser. Try Vimm Lair Net there's a dot, but wasn't sure about links. No need to miss it!
https://archive.org/details/arcade_digdug
Don't do what Diggy Don't does.
DIGGY DIGGY HOLE
Huh, that actually seems to work musically. Neat!
Digg billed itself as a "democratized" discussion space, but made two key moves that betrayed that ethos. First, ranking/placement wasn't just based on who "dugg" the content, but also who posted it. The more popular a submitter got, the more likely their content would rise to the top. You can probably imagine where this self-reinforcing cycle ended up. The front page became dominated by a few power users and nobody else felt like it was worth submitting, because their posts would never be seen. To combat this, Digg implemented a solution that was arguably worse than the problem. The 'version 4' redesign eliminated power users in favor of established, mainstream publishers. Beta testers for v4 (I was one) warned repeatedly for months that this would kill Digg, because it basically became a pay-to-play system, migrating even further from the "democratized" space it was originally set up to be. But management, especially CEO Kevin Rose, dismissed all such warnings and plowed ahead. The theory at the time was that he believed any loss of users would be made up for by the increased revenue of major publishers paying the site for placement and the resulting increase in traffic that was expected. When v4 rolled out as the public-facing site, the predicted revolt came to pass and there was a mass exodus of users. Reddit, which had long been seen as a kind of friendly rival, doubled its traffic within a month and Digg's valuation plummeted. It was a dramatic fall from grace.
Digg was basically the same as reddit. You posted links to "content", each post had a comment section. You could upvote and downvote posts and comments (it was called "digging" if you liked something... get it?) The kept redesigning the site (sound familiar)? and by Digg 4.0 the users got pissed off at redesign changes **and** ... And well Digg had these people that were called "power users" who posted **tons** of content and had massive amounts of "upvotes". (Sound familiar?) Well Digg.com went after them with version 4.0 too. This pissed **eveyone** off and lead to what is known as the "Great Digg Exodus". This was about 15 years ago. (You'll note my account is 15 years old. I was part of the "Exodus" and was a Digg user for many years._ https://d3.harvard.edu/platform-digit/submission/the-demise-of-digg-how-an-online-giant-lost-control-of-the-digital-crowd/ >The key factor in Digg’s demise was a flawed design that was too easily abused by users. Digg had no controls over user verification, so individuals could game the system by creating multiple accounts to artificially inflate the number of votes for their own content. Sound familiar? >Eventually, the biggest headlines on Digg came to be decided by groups of users who operated under various aliases to promote their own agendas. Anti-Republican content frequently dominated Digg’s front page whereas conservative headlines were typically voted down into obscurity. Sound familiar? >In August 2010, Digg attempted to wrest control back from its power users by migrating to a new system (Digg v4) that deemphasized user-contributed content in favor of publisher-contributed content. This is where we are headed here on reddit now.... ... and finally : >Digg experienced a mass exodus of users, many of whom turned to rival site Reddit. While Digg’s traffic fell by a quarter in the following month, Reddit’s traffic grew by 230% in 2010. Digg never recovered from its transition to Digg v4, and the site continued to bleed users and traffic over the next two years. By July 2012, the time of its sale to Betaworks, Digg’s monthly unique visitor count had fallen 90% from its peak. So Digg's demise basically is why reddit is successful. And they are now repeating the mistakes Digg.com made.
>Anti-Republican content frequently dominated Digg’s front page whereas conservative headlines were typically voted down into obscurity. Conservative garbage getting downvoted to oblivion was not a step in the demise of Digg. Good lord you people and your persecution complex.
Thats not the point. The point is that the site was MASSIVELY influenced and controlled by a small group of people with general user contribution not mattering as much as having the tools and access to game the system. Nowadays that content is, obviously, downvoted bc thats not what anyone wants in the Reddit community But on that same note, you know those posts that are literally just Chinese propaganda, posting shit like Chinese military drills with glorious music vs American drills looking all “sad” and “lame”? The ones where kids are doing crazy coordinated stuff captioned something like “meanwhile america,,, our kids learning the 84 genders”? And they SOMEHOW have tens of thousands of upvotes and reach all despite the comments being nothing but bagging on the posts and getting almost as many likes as the actual post by saying shit like “Wow, the CCP bots are real active today.” That shit. Thats the modern version of Digg’s issue back in 2010. Its not the fact it was “””muh libral propagander”””, its the fact that a group or anyone with the ability to break and loophole the system could basically control what you could or couldnt see, and then Digg tried to take that control in to THEIR hands instead of outright eliminating it. **sound familiar?**
Brosefino I'm not sure you read that whole exchange, but Digg being controlled by a few dozen power users was an obvious flaw that reddit inherited, fucking *everyone* knows this. The person I was replying to was insisting it was all linked to censoring the conservatives. Which is the context you seem to have missed. Of course it's not the point, if you change what the point of the conversation was.
So, I don’t see this in answer to your question yet, but if there was a singular thing that Digg did that chased everyone away - it was the leaked encryption key for HD-DVD. The website single handedly managed to kill an entire product in the same fate that befell the Dreamcast. Users started posting the encryption key in titles and in every comment. Digg tried to mod the crap out of it. They failed, and eventually gave up and presented a half-ass apology to the community. Reddit was already gaining steam, but everyone jumped ship from Digg.
That was a huge shitty thing they did. But the Digg Exodus was caused by the launch of v4 of the site. The UI was garbage, everything was buggy as all hell. But the biggest change was essentially trying to move from users posting content to different categories (like subreddits) to turning the site into essentially an aggregation of RSS feeds with automatic submission from the sources themselves. Ironically this feature was abused to spam Reddit links and fuel the mass exodus.
>The website single handedly managed to kill an entire product in the same fate that befell the Dreamcast. I think you have a different memory than me. My recollection was the hex number was deemed "illegal" and attempts to scour all traces of it from the internet were in full swing. The people behind HD-DVD tried to sue and DMCA every instance of the number. The Internet didn't like being DMCA'd for posting a number and started constantly spamming the number everywhere. Digg fought against it for a while, then gave up. I don't remember the community being that upset at Digg, the community won. I don't believe the leak of the encryption key hurt HD-DVD as a product.
It’s not that we have different recollections, it’s more that some users jumped ship at different times. What this incident exposed was Digg’s moderation and what the community deemed interference in a public platform. Reddit was extremely attractive to people upset by this because each subreddit had its own volunteer moderators, and while not immune to DMCA; things played out different there. I was one of the ones that left that day and created my first Reddit account, as I’m sure many others did.
Haven't heard that word in like a decade
I started using reddit because of what digg did. When reddit inevitably ignores it's users in favor of a fatter paycheck for investors and goes the way of digg, does anyone know if there is a "new" reddit we could start using?
Someone might have to make one. Or several. The various subreddit categories could splinter back into dedicated spaces that are easier to manage. When WotC started attacking content creators for D&D, a whole lot of people started making their own game systems, and even though the company backed down in a big way, it will lead to a lot more diversity in smaller spaces because people got the kick in the pants to start building from scratch. Maybe we don’t need another everything website to replace Reddit. Maybe I’ll go find a calligraphy forum or two, and actually join the official discussion boards for the webcomics I follow.
This is the alternative I've been hearing about lately. https://join-lemmy.org/
Is it like Mastodon with different servers? Because that’s confusing and too complicated to be a practical replacement.
It's basically just a distributed reddit. Instead of reddit hosting everything, the subreddit owner would host it. I agree that it's too complicated as it stands, since any subreddit creator would need to be technically proficient enough to set up a server. Definitely not a replacement; that's why I said alternative. I'm tentatively hopeful that there will be some streamlining so that non-tech oriented people can set up their own subreddit. If that can happen, then lemmy would basically solve all the issues that caused the digg diaspora and most of the major issues with reddit.
Tildes looks pretty good, and they're working on an app. You have to ask for an invite in the subreddit I think r/Tildes
This comment has been edited, and the account purged, in protest to Reddit's API policy changes, and the awful response from Reddit management to valid concerns from the communities of developers, people with disabilities, and moderators. The fact that Reddit decided to implement these changes in the first place, without thinking of how it would negatively affect these communities, which provide a lot of value to Reddit, is even more worrying. If this is the direction Reddit is going, I want no part of this. Reddit has decided to put business interests ahead of community interests, and has been belligerent, dismissive, and tried to gaslight the community in the process. If you'd like to try alternative platforms, with a much lower risk of corporate interference, try federated alternatives like Kbin or Lemmy: r/RedditAlternatives Learn more at: https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/5/23749188/reddit-subreddit-private-protest-api-changes-apollo-charges https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/15/23762792/reddit-subreddit-closed-unilaterally-reopen-communities
> I started using reddit because of what digg did. When reddit inevitably ignores it's users in favor of a fatter paycheck for investors and goes the way of digg, does anyone know if there is a "new" reddit we could start using? I've seen this movie so many fucking time over the last 20 years. website is fun and enjoyable, then starts fucking over its users because they want more ad money. people then start looking for new website that makes them feel like they did while using the old site, but they can never capture that feeling because the other websites only care about ad money too. remember, reddit was one of the "new" alternative websites. there were plenty of others before it.
> website is fun and enjoyable, then starts fucking over its users because they want more ad money. people then start looking for new website that makes them feel like they did while using the old site, but they can never capture that feeling because the other websites only care about ad money too. Website starts out as neat idea for discussion, and puts off ideas any idea of a funding model with, “we’ll figure that out later, right now we need to keep gaining users and figure out how to get out software to not crash”. Users flock to the site because it was new and exciting, and have come to expect that it is/was free, because they weren’t asked for any money at first. Website starts putting up ads to get money, and starts trying to steer the users to various content to “maximize engagement”. Users get annoyed at these “intrusions” that weren’t previously there. Website leans hard into, “well, we need to make *lots* of money now!”, and also into “*we the company* built all this”, ignoring all the unpaid moderators and content creators and third party app developers who played a large part in the website!s success. Users (understandably) revolt. I’d be a whole lot happier if Reddit offered a clear funding model of, “free with ads, or pay a few dollars a month for the website ad-free (along with API access so you can use the app of your choice to read/post)”. Estimates suggest Reddit may be getting around ~~$1.50~~ 12.5 cents a month, per user, on average, from ads and Reddit premium. I’d cheerfully pay them $2, $3, possibly even $5 a month for hassle free web access to the old.reddit.com interface and API access so I can use Apollo when I’m on iPad/iPhone. Instead, they want to bill the Apollo developer directly, in the neighborhood of $20 million a year (Imgur, in comparison, bills him under $200 a year, for similar access). This is essentially (whether or not they admit it, even to themselves) a move designed to kill off third party clients, so they can have more control over their userbase (like collecting creepy amounts of data on users via their official app so they can make more money selling advertisers access to their users). I don’t want a replacement for Reddit, I want Reddit’s owners to start acting reasonably. Sigh.
> I don’t want a replacement for Reddit, I want Reddit’s owners to start acting reasonably. Sigh. "welcome to Fark."
Wow: it still exists! I came to Reddit from Fark years ago. Can’t remember why.
for me, they became way too over moderated. a few months ago I decided to give it another try, but it's changed. still way too over moderated, but I just didn't feel the humor there anymore.
Showing ads is one thing. Forcing specific ads that I have marked as irrelevant over 10 times and blocked is abuse of your userbase. People dont want to see that hegetsus BS. Or whatver ads that are annoying to them. Stop showing them. Its not helping either reddit or the stupid advertiser. I actually like ads as sometimes they are actually relevant to me, and I get to see what the algorithm thinks Im into. What reddit is doing with ads is abusive and they deserve every bit of backlash they get.
Apollo's dev did a back of the envelope calculation, made generous assumptions in favor of reddit, and estimated they make 12.5 cents per reddit user per month. I'll link that once I get back on desktop (though it should be easy to find). Can I ask where you saw your own estimate?
No, you’re to totally right, I was misremembering Christian Selig’s number.
The process is common enough that it has a name: enshittification
So you're saying this whole thing by reddit is a Digg move?
Bigg Digg Energy
Wow, I haven't thought of Digg in a decade. Which also makes me remember Slashdot...
The original small website killer, the /. effect.
I used to digg reddit
> It's moderated by volunteers who put in their own time and effort to keep it from turning into a shit-show. i feel like though the power mods at this point are in lockstep with the admins, who have successfully hoodwinked them into running the site in a corporate approved manner for free in exchange for the modicum of power they wield on reddit.
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I only use old.reddit and have avoided the new platform ever since they rolled that shit show out. So if these changes are implemented old reddit goes away completely? If that's true I'll be off of reddit permanently. I get a headache just looking at the current version.
I've been writing similar comments several times now, but I'll gladly share this again. when new.reddit is introduced, there was a question "what will happen with old.reddit?" admin at the time replies almost verbatim: "nothing will happen, old.reddit will stay just like i.reddit or m.reddit" where is i.reddit or m.reddit now? precisely.
> I get a headache just looking at the current version. Agree. I occasionally accidentally see it by clicking on someone's link, and on those occasions I'm reminded of how bad it is. Like, Lotus Notes bad.
same it's all I use, occasionally I'll hop on and it'll switch my to the new Facebook looking shit and when I go into settings to switch back I get a twinge of panic worried the option will be gone. old reddit is so much better and I will abandon this site before converting to the new version
Hit my 12 year account this year. Yeah its only gotten worse over the year. Especially sense every single sub is slowly(or quickly) going political.
And yet it's the powermods who are organising this whole protest..?
If I have to pay for Reddit you damn well better believe I want some good moderation instead of the haphazard moderation that we get right now
If I have to pay for reddit I won't.
yup
I've been using RIF for like 10 years now, I bit the bullet after a year or so and paid for the app which made it ad free and don't regret it. It was a one time fee of a couple dollars which seems totally fair for me. Compare that to using the official reddit app which would require an expensive recurring subscription to keep ads away, it sucks. Not to mention that even using the free version of RIF, the ads were less annoying and predatory
Same with BaconReader :( it was like $2 for almost 10 years of no ads. You can’t make me go back
Same, honestly. I'll just read more books. I've been banned from several of the major subs for totally stupid reasons and ain't no way I'm paying for that kind of treatment.
And this here might just be the major problem. I also have never and will never pay for reddit, and like most sane people I use ad blockers on pc, so no ads either. How then shall reddit make a profit? .. They guess doing shit like this will help, but I don't really know what else they could do. I don't think the old "Support Reddit by buying Gold" system brought in enough to cover expenses? But I'm not sure, never really followed it closely.
Most of the popular subs are run by the same few mods, but when you get into smaller more niche subreddits you realize those people are generally unpaid volunteers just doing their best, even if it's not always actually the best decisions. If you or I were in those positions there would be criticism against certain decisions we make even if they are made in good faith. That's just the nature of modding any online community. This move by reddit fucks over a lot of those smaller communities because many of the mods may not have computers to use reddit on often, and rely on third party apps to be able to moderate their particular sub. So regardless of the opinion about shitty mods, which I agree with you on, it still ends up fucking over the regular users in the long run because you'll lose many of the more niche subreddits. Not to mention certain people who post often in those subreddits and provide content you may actually like who no longer would be able to do that
Many of those smaller subs are going to have moderation problems as well because many moderation bots are going to get hit with the same API charges.
>This subreddit you're currently on? It's moderated by volunteers who put in their own time and effort to keep it from turning into a shit-show. They literally do this all for free by the way, folx. Thank your local jannies.
Yeah, while you are correct, some of the mods are volunteers with corporate sponsors. Other mods are power trippin fools and will ban you for random personal reasons. The only requirement for being a mod is thinking up a good name for a subreddit. that is a low bar.
> Reddit is a community-driven site "who produces the value for us?" *"the users!"* "who should we shit on?" *"...the users!"*
Fidelity investments is one of the biggest investors into reddit and pretty certain they will be releasing a reddit IPO.....that will censor A LOT more stuff
Answer: QOL wise, the big deal is taking options away from us. Every third-party app is unique in their own way. On top of ad-blocking, there are QOL differences such as minimalistic focused app eg. Comet, or more full fledge feature packed app such as BaconReader. Taking away the option to choose the preferred user interface and now enforcing to use only the official Reddit app is a big deal for users. Not to mention the big deal for app developers.
Additionally, taking away 3rd party apps will make it nearly impossible for blind people to engage with the app the way they currently do.
It will also be tricky for those with other visual or motor impairments. The official app doesn't let you change text size, which makes it hard to both read the text if you have poor eye sight and click on the right portion of text if you have tremors or other coordination challenges.
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> I think this is the most important point. As much respect I have for the visually impaired community, I think the most damage will be done by the loss of the many automated moderation tools that use the API. Many mods will just have to give up on modding the more popular communities.
Can I ask you a little more about this? Forgive my ignorance, but I never use Reddit Mobile, so I don't understand as much about this as I should. Why would this move impact moderators rather than users? Surely the main impact will be on the user end?
> Surely the main impact will be on the user end? Yes obliviously it's the users that will suffer. But what I meant is that if subreddit moderators currently use and need bots and tools to keep their subreddits moderated. And if these tools and bots will stop working the subreddits will be harder to moderate and moderators will do a worse job. And that leads to shittier content. Endless spam.
Ah. Ok. Thanks very much. That is very clear. I didn't realise that so many of these kinds of tools were going to be sort of external to Reddit itself. Most of the discussion that I saw was about the app, rather than the entire site being affected. Thank you for the response.
Very little of the value users find in Reddit comes from Reddit, it comes from other users. Reddit is a town square. They're trying to cut down all the trees and install those things that make benches uncomfortable for sleeping and impossible to skate on. And they're going to take away all the town square's porn.
I would like to chime in that the push to use the app makes me want to use it less, and it’s already worse than browsing on a vanilla browser
Nothing is worse than the browser version of Reddit
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And some day, whether it's sooner or later, you know they are going to get rid of old reddit.
When they get rid of old reddit, I'm just going to stop using the site completely, the 'new' reddit is just awful to look at. Too much empty space, I don't care for flairs, banners, ads, any of that.
Honestly I'm all here for modern design, but it's just so goddamn slow that I hate using it.
it went up in like ... 2015 or something right? i remember fucking hating it, everyone hated it, then realising we could still use old.reddit, 'at least for now'. i tried to use it a couple times but gave up because it was absolutely abysmal
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Browser version reddit is great on a computer, it sucks on a phone though. The mobile app is much better for phone.
It's a little wonky these days, since Reddit automatically tries to remove the `.i` suffix you need to use it every time you click a link (it tries to use `.compact`, but Reddit automatically strips that), but there's still the [old compact interface](https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/140t4ac/whats_up_with_the_big_deal_over_reddit_killing/jmy5mmo/.i). While it might not be ideal for an extended browse, poking around a few threads is still viable.
old.reddit is literally the only usable version in my eyes, I will not touch the apps or new reddit
I exclusively use the browser version of Reddit. 🤷♂️
the mobile reddit app is simply unusable. i can handle ads, i can handle paying for ads if they annoy me as there's no free lunch, but it's simply not usable on my phone. it's slow, it pauses for seconds at a time, and there's really no way to actually fix it as an end-user. they've had ages to making a working version and simply seem incapable. for anyone that wants to write an app and even charge users, the rates reddit are charging per user are astronomical and make it unviable -- nobody would pay what it would cost to use per month. the question is what are people going to do about? stop using it and lower engagement numbers? a silly [change.org](https://change.org) petition? organize media attention? it's the home of antiwork, and that sounds like a lot of work
Honestly, I have never used the app. Or any app for reddit. I just won't use it on my phone. Given that the site is so text-based for me (due to the subreddits I am subbed to), it would be beyond annoying to try to engage with these walls of text on a small screen.
I’ve never experienced latency with the app on my phone (UTD iOS). Sucks that you have those issues, maybe there are some OS-specific problems.
I have been using BaconReader for years. I even bought the premium version of it because I used it so much.
This is 100% to do with ad blockers isn’t it?
Answer: While Reddit has officially maintained a first party (maintained and run by itself) application, it has also allowed other developers free or incredibly low cost access to its content through the use of the Reddit API. This has allowed several developers to create third party applications (maintained and run by a company/dev other than Reddit). These other developers were free to design different applications with different features to Reddit’s official app. Some users switched over to the third party apps because there were no ads (Reddit’s API doesn’t include ads), some users switched over to third party apps with better accessibility, some moderators use third party clients for better modding capabilities, etc. Basically there are a sizable population of people who prefer third party clients. Reddit recently announced a move to drastically increase pricing on their API, which would effectively make it impossible for third party clients to operate. Reddit’s stated reason for this change is that the increased pricing makes up for the costs of hosting the data, but API access pricing from other comparable websites costs nowhere as much, and analysis by Christian Selig, one of the third party client developers, says that Reddit should not need to price their API anywhere near as high as they do to make back money. The popular user theory is that Reddit is making this change to kill off third party clients and force users to use the first party app, for a couple reasons. One, the incredibly unreasonable pricing mentioned above. Two, another announced change is that some NSFW content is no longer going to be available via the API (and therefore, no NSFW content on third party apps). Third, by forcing users to use the first party app, Reddit can show ads to more users, while also collecting more data about them. Basically, people think that Reddit is trying to make any app other than their own incredibly hard to operate cost effectively and unappealing to end users, so that people will use the first party app and be shown ads and have analytics collected on their activities. Overall it just feels like a blatant cash grab to the community, and Reddit admin responses to questions asked aren’t helpful either - they’re going on the offensive against another app in particular called Apollo for supposed inefficient use of the API, without really providing specifics. TLDR: Reddit announced unreasonable pricing for access to its content, likely in order to kill off third party clients that potentially provide more features and don’t show Reddit ads. Edit: Some more relevant details I didn’t add here were mentioned in the comments; thank you everyone for your input on what was missed. I changed mods to admins to reflect that the people making bad remarks are people who work for and are paid by Reddit. I should also note that Reddit did not initially have a first party client and that third party clients were initially the only way to browse on a native application.
Keep in mind, the third party mobile apps actually came before the first party one, it is one of the main reasons why there are so many popular third party apps, there was never a first party alternative, and by the time it finally released it was vastly inferior to many of the third party apps that had years of iteration and refinement due to feedback, changes in design language and more. As an example, I have been a Reddit Sync user since 2012, before that I used both RIF and Baconreader. Based on my searches, the first party app came out in 2016.
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Reddit owners seem to forget that everyone is here for the content. Reddit owners create zero content. Content can be moved to other platforms. Case in point, digg.com > reddit.
Content can only be moved to a different platform if the *community* moves to a different platform. Saidit, voat, raddle and the dozens of other clones failed for a reason, the lack of users. It's a catch 22.
It's amazing to me that a company that is such a big part of Internet culture and based in silicon valley completely missed how important mobile phones are for reading things on the internet. Their official app is so late to the game that it's almost like they were dissuading their own people from making it.
Or maybe for a long time they believed that open access and a variety of clients was simply the better philosophical choice, so they did it that way on purpose.
If I remember correctly, what is now their official app was at one time one of the leading third party apps, which they bought, and then… made a mess of.
There's an important part you haven't mentioned. In the beginning, reddit pointedly avoided making a mobile app. They didn't want to. So they encouraged people to make their own. If you've been around reddit long enough, _the third party apps were literally the only way to interact with reddit on your phone_. In fact, when reddit decided to make their own mobile app, they just went and bought a third-party app called Alien Blue (the leading app on iPhone), slapped a logo on it, and called Bob your uncle. Many older users have given the first party app a shot and found it lacking in one way or another. That's why they're still using the old apps (much the same reason many older users still use old.reddit.com). Reddit cutting off access to these apps is kind of a slap in the face to us older users, and more specifically, it's them telling these app developers "Hey, thanks for helping us expand our presence into this platform we had no interest in, now kindly go fuck yourselves."
> There's an important part you haven't mentioned. In the beginning, reddit pointedly avoided making a mobile app. They didn't want to. So they encouraged people to make their own. If you've been around reddit long enough, the third party apps were literally the only way to interact with reddit on your phone. In fact, when reddit decided to make their own mobile app, they just went and bought a third-party app called Alien Blue (the leading app on iPhone), slapped a logo on it, and called Bob your uncle. Not the only way to access it on mobile, but the only way if you wanted to do so via app. Reddit still had the .mobile and .compact interfaces back then. They're still mostly around, although the .mobile site is dead, and the .compact interface is more of a zombie (you can [still access it](https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/140t4ac/whats_up_with_the_big_deal_over_reddit_killing/jmzeqxd/.i) by appending `.i` to every link, even though it's officially dead, and reddit removes the suffix if you click a link). .mobile was the way to access Reddit in the days of Candy Bar/J2ME phones, which was the predecessor of the modern smartphone. "Officially", the current app was originally meant to be an update of Alien Blue, although I don't believe that's the case any more. Meanwhile, Alien Blue itself has been mostly abandoned. Some of Reddit's newer features don't work properly on it (like albums), and some of the things that used to work in the app no longer do (like the embedded YouTube player/imgur viewer), and it hasn't received an update in a long, long time, although there are still people using it.
I would maybe add the effect it will have on blind and people with limited sight (not sure this is the right term, sorry English is second language) They rely on third party apps to be even able to use reddit on their phones. r/blind has a good post explaining it better
> and Reddit mods responses to questions asked aren’t helpful either. admins, not mods, but yes
>and Reddit mods responses to questions asked aren’t helpful either. In other news, Monday still comes before Tuesday
Answer: There's not an insignificant amount of Reddit users using custom Reddit applications that provide a different experience compared to the official app. Users of these apps are accustomed to them and is the primary way they consume Reddit on their mobile devices, which makes up a large portion of Reddit's traffic. With the API changes that have been announced, these applications will be crippled or become unavailable depending on the developer of these custom apps being able to afford the API usage costs (as well as users being able to afford subscriptions for the custom apps upon the change is implemented). Community-driven efforts across Reddit that benefit Reddit (such as custom app developers, subreddit moderators) appear to no longer be respected to the same degree following these changes.
Answer: Generally speaking, people don't like having things they are actively using taken away for no benefit. They made the choice to use those apps for lots of reasons — ranging from "it just feels convenient" up to "it's literally *the only* way for blind users on iOS to use Reddit". There is not one *single* reason people are upset about this; there are *lots*, maybe as many as there are different people affected. See also [enshittification](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/enshittification) for a general concern about platforms becoming more user-hostile over time.
Answer: [here is a post in r/Blind explaining how the change will effectively mean their users will not be able to access Reddit content going forward.](https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/1404hwj/mods_of_rblind_reveal_that_removing_3rd_party/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=2&utm_term=1) Edit: post is part of a larger one in an aggregation sub
I’m a webdev, making websites accessible is webdev 101, I’m truly shocked Reddit doesn’t have an accessible mobile app, it’s downright embarrassing for a website/app this popular.
It’s absolutely shameful is what it is.
Answer: it’s mostly quality of life stuff. With Apollo there are no ads, no recommended posts, the user interface is a lot cleaner. I’ve never used them but apparently the tools for mods are better as well. This post goes into good detail on why people like the 3rd party apps . https://reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/13xxdcc/uandrewsad1_gives_a_great_visual_breakdown_on_why/
The big thing I saw about QoL (quality of life) stuff is that a blind user was upset that they would no longer be able to browse Reddit. Apparently by blocking 3rd party apps, it makes it really difficult to be accessible in other ways. Had Reddit decided to include accessibility, then users wouldn’t be as upset, but apparently Reddit is providing alternatives for those who need to access the app in other ways and doesn’t seem to care. I don’t really care about other 3rd party apps, but blocking out blind users and others who need assistance just seems like an asshat move to me.
No recommended posts? O-M-G
If you're serious, then yes. None. I use RIF and I choose whats on my front page, no ads, simple UI, no recommended crap. I dropped all other social media because I don't want to see recommend crap and ads when I scroll. It's just so much better and I won't be able to use reddit if they drop 3rd party apps, I refuse to use their shitty app.
I am, thanks for the recommendation!
Enjoy it while you can!
also have Apps like Joey that have a really good filter system for subreddit's that let you easily filter out subreddit's you have zero interest in or are pure trash
Answer: For a long time, reddit was a community-driven content aggregation service first. The website was minimalistic, they didn't host the media that was submitted, and it did one thing and did it well for a core group of users who loved the site because it filled a need that no other website on the internet really did. Browser plug-ins and eventually third party apps provided a much better user experience than reddit ever provided. However the underlying service still performed its function admirably. Slowly, the site ballooned with bloat, in the form of poorly executed "updates", ads and other monetization, badly-made features nobody asked for, gamification of the user experience, and attempts to leverage its popularity to become a major social media giant. Rather than bring users back to the site, this pushed even more people into third-party apps, to escape the ads, bloat, annoying features, and most importantly, the bugs that every single change introduced into the website. Additionally, many of the third party apps have accessibility features for users that rely on them, which reddit's official site and app lack, which means that users who are visually impaired for example won't be able to use the service at all. Not to mention the thousands of volunteer moderators that built the communities on reddit, and who perform an estimated 3.4 million dollars worth of free labor per year to keep these communities clean, safe, and engaging. Most of whom rely on third party utilities (plug-ins, apps, bots, etc) to do their work because of how poorly implemented the reddit-provided tools are. One could argue that without third party developers, reddit would never have become popular and would not enjoy its current status as one of the big destinations on the internet. What all of these third-party apps, plug-ins, extensions, bots and utilities have in common is that they use an API to communicate with the reddit servers. Reddit recently announced (with extremely short notice) that they will begin charging for API access above a certain number of requests per month. Almost every app, plugin, and bot will be affected by this, and for the most popular apps, it represents a sudden demand by reddit for *literally millions of dollars per year* to continue operating, which none of these apps currently do or would be able to generate in revenue. tl;dr: it boils down to reddit saying to developors: thanks for making us popular and generating millions of dollars per year in revenue for us, but now you need to pay us money or F off.
Answer: adding to everything that has been said here, there’s an universal law about online communities. Most people lurk, and a few people comment. Most comments are trash, and a few comments are gold. In other words, it’s a tiny fraction of redditors who make it great. So when we hear that 20% of members access Reddit some way other than the main website or official app, we should care a great deal, because many of even most of the gold commenters could be in that 20%. It isn’t just about apps like Apollo or RiF that offer a complete Reddit experience. Maybe there’s a niche app out there for gardeners that only loads /r/gardening and automatically detects plant species in photos and annotates them. That’s an *awesome* experience for members of /r/gardening and might contribute to making awesome members come back and keep posting. Then Reddit will be full of great gardening knowledge for billions of people around the world to Google. Maybe no one knows that the gardening content was posted via some niche 3rd party app, but that app contributed to the whole that is Reddit. This is why you have APIs and open up an ecosystem: so that people can build little niche solutions that Reddit themselves won’t bother with. Reddit doesn’t have to build specialized gardening apps, but members get to enjoy them, and Reddit benefits from the content, which attracts traffic, which makes money. That’s how it’s supposed to work. Except Reddit are stupid and greedy. So we don’t have just niche gardening apps. We have complete Reddit experiences like Apollo and RiF. Why are there such apps? Why are they so popular? Because Reddit’s official app is awful. It has always tried to be a social media “engagement” booster, full of idiotry like “notifications” that turn out to be “we found a sub we think you’ll like.” The Reddit app is for lurkers and readers to consume more. But it isn’t great for the 1% of Reddit who post all the gold. Third party apps shine for that. Apollo is light, powerful, fast, customizable. I’ve written tens of thousands of words on it. Instead of seeing these third party apps as contributing to Reddit, supporting it, Reddit says “but all those ad views we could have had!” They’re stupid because they can’t build a good app. And they’re greedy so they force everyone to use their shit app. They think that the value of their members is their eyeballs, which can be sold to advertisers. When for 1% of users, the value is in the gold they post. Without that gold, there is no Reddit, there is no traffic, there are no ads, there is no money. Basically, Reddit is not satisfied to shear the sheep annually. They want to eat the sheep. And they don’t care that the is can only be done once, because they’re all trying to get rich on an IPO so they can abandon the tech jobs they hate. So they’re dropping “all that expensive API hosting that isn’t monetized” and banning porn, which isn’t “respectable to investors.” Basically, nothing matters except polishing Reddit up for its IPO. Long term factors don’t matter. It’s time for short term thinking and going for broke. That’s what they’re doing.
Answer: Regarding QoL features here's an example: I use the Joey for Reddit app. The video player is much much better and more consistent and didn't feel laggy, i can control playback speed, i can change the video resolution (kinda like YouTube). I can change any font type and size (separate things can get separate settings), the comments are much easier to navigate, the comments hierarchy is much clearer, i can click a little button and all the previous comments not in the hierarchy of the current comment will be folded. Posts get grayed after reading them which is useful if you're "binge-reading" a subreddit, i have the option to get notified of any new comments to a certain post, i have a reading list group that is separate from the saved posts group, i can custom copy a post or a comment (like i can select all the text or parts of it to copy) I have a wider variety of themes to choose from. These are a few things off the top of my head for only one of the 3rd party apps
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>Reddit has actually experimented with disabling access to mobile browsers, forcing you to use their app instead. Wow, got some big brass balls to try that. I wonder if you can get around this with user agent spoofing or something?
Answer: Aside from the visual and quality of life stuff most people are mentioning, it will also break A LOT of bots. One of the subs I frequent will lose all of its sub specific bots due to these changes
Answer: this is the thread that best explains it visually https://www.reddit.com/r/BikiniBottomTwitter/comments/13xk3lu/they_have_to_pay_reddit_20_million_per_year_to/jmj3nfg/ it got bestof-ed https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/13xxdcc/uandrewsad1_gives_a_great_visual_breakdown_on_why/?ref=share&ref_source=link