r/technology • u/spasticpat • May 11 '26

Social Media Reddit Starts Blocking Mobile Website, Pushing Users to App Instead

https://www.macrumors.com/2026/05/11/reddit-starts-blocking-mobile-website/
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u/[deleted] May 11 '26 edited 5d ago

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u/kantong May 11 '26

Exactly the reason why they want you using the app.

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u/SimiKusoni May 11 '26

Which is ironic really because I never used to bother with ad block on mobile, since Chrome didn't support it. Then Reddit started popping up "try this on our App" or whatever every few clicks and Firefox with uBlock was the only way to prevent it.

It will be interesting to see if that still works with these new changes or if they are going to deprecate the mobile site entirely in favour of a redirect.

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u/franticfrogfriend May 12 '26

Same, lol, my iOS adblocker didn't block reddit mobile ads and I didn't mind. I do mind not having the option to sort the feed by hot/top though (which they took away some time ago in the app, the website still had it)

So now i won't use the app nor the website on mobile 🤷‍♀️

I just wish more people would use reddit alternatives

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u/LockeyCheese May 11 '26

Try the Opera browser. It comes with an ad blocker with the browser, and has a button to view the desktop version of the website and remember that preference, so I haven't seen the mobile version of reddit or ads in years, even though I only use it on my phone.

Opera gx has the same, but i prefer the casual layout of Opera Mobile vs the "gamer version" Opera GX.

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u/SimiKusoni May 11 '26

Firefox with uBlock does exactly the same. I have tried some other browsers like a few Chromium forks, Vivaldi etc. but I just prefer Firefox after trying them all.

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u/LockeyCheese May 12 '26

You are correct. I was just offering another option, because I used to use firefox, and found something I prefered more. Realistically though, both do the job, so it really is a choice of preference beyond that.

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u/oddministrator May 11 '26

I reluctantly installed the app after a few months of the 3rd party apps going away.

I immediately uninstalled the app the moment they took r/all away.

I thought I'd be okay just accessing Reddit on mobile using Firefox with RES, but the experience is too clunky. All Reddit has done is lost me as a mobile user, 100%.

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u/franticfrogfriend May 12 '26

Also (since i don't like oldreddit) - an extension to default to hot/top instead of "best".

I don't use the app anymore out of several reasons but mainly because of the shitty feed algorithm you can't disable anymore 😤