I don’t use Reddit anymore, but I wanted to search something that I couldn’t find anywhere. This is what I saw. After killing all the other apps, Reddit now is trying to force us to use their own spyware app.

  • spencer@lemmy.ca
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    6 months ago

    This is why they removed the apps. They want to be driving traffic through the app, and the 3rd party apps prevented that from happening.

    • Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
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      6 months ago

      I think the worst part is they entirely ignored the most painfully obvious solution of implementing a “reddit plus” or “reddit premium” or “reddit red” and just gated third party app access behind a $9.99/mo subscription. I have a hard time believing most reddit users’ ad views are worth anywhere near that much per month. But instead they decided to burn a significant sum of goodwill on questionable premises and pissed off a significant number of power users.

      The feeling I got from all of the communications was that /u/spez was jealous of Apollo and just wanted to kill off Apollo. Which would explain why they took such a scorched earth approach in trying to kill all third party apps

      • InvaderDJ@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        That is basically what they did. There are a decent amount of third party apps around that work. I personally use Narwhal.

        The further we get from the whole third party app debacle, the more I think this was just a way to kill the most popular apps. The ones that people said made reddit worth using. The ones that got shouted out in Apple keynotes.

  • Andromxda 🇺🇦🇵🇸🇹🇼@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    6 months ago

    The only decent way to browse Reddit nowadays is a private frontend called Redlib. You can use the LibRedirect browser extension or the UntrackMe Android app to automatically redirect all Reddit links to Redlib. It’s better for privacy, since you don’t need to access Reddit directly and thus your information isn’t exposed, it works without JavaScript, it doesn’t have ads or trackers and works behind a VPN or Tor. It also lets you view NSFW content without any limitations.

  • zeppo@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    They’ve had this for a while. The cheat code is to change the url to old reddit.

  • rdri@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Love the absence of logic in these messages. Next time it’ll be “pay $2 to continue” or “do a barrel roll to continue”.

  • Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz
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    6 months ago

    On android, I would recommend using Stealth or Geddit to browse reddit. Stealth has a mode where it scrapes old.reddit.com (and bypasses the API), and Geddit uses the RSS feed to pull content instead of API.

    Downside is neither app will let you interact, but I don’t have any desire to generate content for reddit anyways.

  • repungnant_canary@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    I know it has nothing to do with protecting the users, but how exactly is the app supposed to make viewing unreviewed content safer?

  • pete_the_cat@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    I think what’s even more annoying is when you actually do use the app, every community you visit, it pops up a notification that says “turn on notifications so you don’t miss updates from this community!”

    • Persen@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      This doesn’t work anymore. I just refresh it and stop somewhere in the middle and it sometimes works.

      • InvaderDJ@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Old Reddit works for me. Does it just not work in general for you, or does it not work when not logged into an account?

        • Persen@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Well, I think the link structure changed. If I add old to the url, the page doesn’t even work, but the homepage does.

          • InvaderDJ@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            Interesting. I’ll have to test it when I get home. I’m always signed in and I use RES so could be some other factors causing it to not be a problem for me.

          • InvaderDJ@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            Did you get a browser error when trying this? It might be because you left the www in the URL. I had to remove that and replace it with old, and it works. The rest of the link structure is the same on both old and new reddit. I even tried it from a VPN just to be sure it wasn’t seeing my logged in cookies, and in a private browsing window where RES isn’t allowed to run. Worked fine.

    • Shadowq8@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      any idea how reddit keeps banning my alt accounts ? I am suspecting chrome broswser is complicit.

      • JdW@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Many ways to detect this, but let’s start with the basics: Are you using the same Ip address?

    • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Don’t think of it as them being unprofessional, think of it as them having a safety valve to relieve the pressure of some people wanting to leave Reddit for Lemmy or elsewhere, because of their bs.

      Someday, when they’re confident enough that they have customer retention locked in, that methodology of bypassing will be removed.

      Anti Commercial-AI license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

        • applepie@kbin.social
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          6 months ago

          my set up won’t let me login via normal webpage, and i aint changing that. so fuck 'em

          looks like my set up is working properly at blocking google etc verification on login.

          it is fucking disgusting how my login must be verified by all mega corps nowadays.

          reminds of that meme with white chick on couch and 5 black dudes… take this verification BBC peasant.

    • kinsnik@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      the thing is, the one and only purpose of this dialog is to increase metrics of engagement, like how many users download the app. they don’t need to convert every mobile web user to an app user immediately. as long as that dialog is driving the engagement metrics apps, it is doing its work correctly. obviously at some point there will stop increasing engagement, so the middle managers will turn and try to squeeze a bit more by removing the loopholes, but it is not an urgent problem. it even might be intentional so they can squeeze a bit more later

      the one that i am surprised at how bad it is is Twitter, that is still hosted at twitter.com . even going to x.com just redirects to twitter.com . i assume that there’s some major engineering problem that is preventing them from switching, but still, it has been almost 10 months and the clown at chief really pushed for the rebranding

    • DarkThoughts@fedia.io
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      6 months ago

      I have 0 doubt that they eventually shut old.reddit down, or they make it so unusable that it doesn’t make a difference anymore if they did. Probably with some extensive regretful apology letter about how hard it became for the team to maintain, something about the future of Reddit moving forward and blah blah blah…

    • Zorsith
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      6 months ago

      Or just going to “view desktop site” for mobile browsers.

    • Bezier@suppo.fi
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      6 months ago

      I’m sure they know and don’t care. The gain in app installs from the users of this workaround would be nonexistent.