Jeez. The speed at which I've gone from "man it sucks that Apollo is shutting down but I still really enjoy Reddit and will suffer the first-party client" to "wow, Reddit is really trying to destroy their service and it's probably best I don't invest any more time there" is insane... going to draft up some thoughts and a probable farewell message for my frequented subs and followers there. End of an era.
this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2023
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Technology
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Stages of grief Speedrun any%
It's one thing to test a new idea or a UX tweak or similar on a small portion of users - but just turning off a key way to access your service is so just so weird to me. How many of Reddit's decisions at this point are some version of, "hey, how angry do they get? What can we get away with?"
People need to understand that this is about tracking your eyeballs. Reddit viewed on a webpage does not provide the metadata they want. What metadata does the app provide? Things you wouldn't think about wanting as a human, but the aggregate is very valuable.
Stuff like how long did you watch that video Ad? Where did you click on screen and at what time? What content were you viewing and what course of action did you take to get there? Web viewing only shows the landing page you arrived on reddit from and the exit page that took you away from reddit. Performing these actions in the app provides metadata cookie crumbs like a trail of roach shit to every single thing you've done on reddit in micro activities.
I'm not sure. I've worked at companies using amplitude and hotjar that can record all click event and sessions on web
Users can block those with extensions so the data isn't as reliable
That's probably a big part. Web browsers can do ad blocking. Within the official Reddit app that's way more difficult.
Not surprised. They need to milk every last drop of revenue from their users free content for the upcoming IPO.
Are they legally allowed to just do that? Just shadow ban certain users temporarily for an 'experiment'?
If so... Why is that legally allowed??
Of course they are, gotta make everyone use the shitty app to farm as much data as possible!
They already made the mobile site practically unusable by constantly reminding you to use the app. The mobile browsing experience was just terrible. They can just show the same adds in the mobile browser...
Reddit is officially on a bankruptcy speedrun.
It almost looks like Reddit is trying to commit suicide in the fastest possible way.
I still have an account there. But I will delete it the moment the Apollo goes dark.
I can honestly say since Twitter did this I’ve hardly ever used it
They've already made the "new" reddit web view unusable for any sub marked NSFW. I feel sorry for the web devs at Reddit that spent all this time making a responsive site that works on mobile, then to be forced to artificially block access to push app usage.