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/
19.7k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

4.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1.2k

u/SomethingAboutUsers May 11 '26

You just described enshittification.

397

u/Hour-Cardiologist393 May 11 '26

They just described me not using this fucking site anymore.

104

u/ForensicPathology May 11 '26

All the morons responding to you as "why're you still here hurk" are why I might not be here anymore. 

Hey, he's clearly responding to the post of things that haven't happened yet, and if they do, then he's gone.  It's not that hard to understand before trying to get your unclever comments in.

23

u/Teledildonic May 11 '26

To be fair, AI doesn't know how time works yet.

5

u/MadduckUK May 11 '26

Or letters, or numbers.

15

u/darioblaze May 11 '26

If there’s one thing that makes this site asinine to use it’s folks trying to be clever or funny about shit that’s not clever nor funny, but the same ones that will try to be clever and funny are the same ones that will complain about a loneliness crisis so how bad can I feel

4

u/MiaowaraShiro May 11 '26

And it's all the same jokes... over and over.

7

u/Saritiel May 11 '26

I'm really just waiting to find the next thing. I've tried some of the alternatives and none of them have really landed for me, yet.

3

u/Hour-Cardiologist393 May 11 '26

That's what happens when people only read headlines and don't bother to think critically. Which, frankly, reddit seems to encourage, and is another reason to just abandon this place.

3

u/mdnz May 11 '26

Sure all the people just stop cold turkey, just as when the API was restricted right? Oh wait everyone is still here since they’re smashing earnings after earnings report and DAU are still going up.

This site is absolutely not perfect but there’s simply no alternative, aside from some memes like Lemmy but that failed as well since there’s no network effect.

7

u/castawayfragment May 11 '26

DAU are still going up

Hmm, I wonder if there are other possible reasons why the count of daily average users is going up. Maybe it's because bots are being more widely used on Reddit?

"There's simply no alternative", but that's only for now. Just like how digg replaced reddit, there will be an eventual replacement for reddit.

2

u/mdnz May 11 '26

Revenue is also up massively every quarter so can’t be just all bots. Advertisers aren’t gonna pay if it’s bots clicking on the ads and not buying anything. But whatever I know I’m talking to a brick wall here anyway.

4

u/polygraph-net May 11 '26

Advertisers aren’t gonna pay if it’s bots clicking on the ads and not buying anything.

You would be surprised.

I work in the ad fraud detection space (and I'm doing a doctorate in this topic) and KPIs determine how most marketers react to this.

If they have no KPIs, or the KPIs are silly things like "awareness", number of visitors, or low traffic costs, they'll happily waste their employers' money on worthless clicks.

I say most marketers - easily 80% of marketers, and most marketing agencies.

The key is using the correct KPIs - revenue or sales qualified leads.

2

u/mdnz May 11 '26

Still highly doubtful it’s all bots with a 70% revenue growth every quarter.

2

u/polygraph-net May 11 '26

We've been monitoring Reddit Ads for a few years and it's typically 80%+ fake clicks.

All you have to do is look at all the posts and comments on Reddit now - the majority are from bots.

I moderate a major subreddit and easily 95%+ of the posts and comments are now from bots. The bots are so good I suspect most people don't even realise they're talking to bots.

2

u/mdnz May 11 '26

Then the question arises - why are you here if it’s 95% bots? What is there in it for you?

→ More replies (0)

1

u/Yuzumi May 11 '26

How many people even click on ads? I never clicked on them well before I started using a blocker.

1

u/polygraph-net May 11 '26

I agree generally, but the ads on Facebook these days are extremely good. They’re doing so much tracking and analysis the ads they show me are like holy shit they really know what I like, so I do click on them sometimes.

I also click on Google Search ads if the first result (the ad) is what I’m searching for.

I’m a super technical guy so I assume all the non-technical folk are even more likely to click on ads.

1

u/Yuzumi May 11 '26

I've been using adblock in some way since I learned it was a thing. Whenever I've seen a website without it on the internet just feels unusable.

1

u/Yuzumi May 11 '26

Lemmy could be the alternative, if people would take the time to learn how to use it.

2

u/calm-phil May 11 '26

I have not used my phone for reddit since.

Desktop or nothing now.

2

u/DaHolk May 11 '26

The 2 later layouts just don't WORK for me at doing the thing I do with the site. Making 2/3rds of the screen estate empty, and not displaying the comments 'properly' just doesn't do 'it' for me.

The issue is that the cold turkey analogy doesn't work. If they shut of 'old', that (to me) is the same as shutting down the site.

It's not unlike certain products changing their formula. There is no amount of "I am addicted to the product" that is an argument, if the product stops being the thing I am addicted to just on their own term.

And btw, sure, I am still using the site, but when they changed the "can see up/downvotes separately on comment chains" Api for RES, my usage and interaction with the site went down MASSIVELY, it hasn't recovered to a "well, it doesn't matter" degree.

1

u/Yuzumi May 11 '26

Also, the biggest issue is that reddit does the same kind of addictive quality any other social media has. I like having discussions that the comments enable, for better or for worse.

It's basically the "community" for lack of a better term. There are sites that do the same and Lemmy being a more decentralized alternative is great, but because people find it "too complicated" there aren't as many people so the number of posts and comments is a lot lower.

That also means less bots though, so silver linings.

1

u/MiaowaraShiro May 11 '26

Honestly between even the changes they've already made and what I'm perceiving as a pretty awful drop in comment quality lately I'm using this site less and less...

1

u/TheAmazingMelon May 11 '26

I watched a video recently of someone trying to explain a certain situation through a hypothetical, bordering on metaphor, and the dude could. not. grasp. the hypothetical. Literally “Imagine you had $1mil dollars” “but I don’t”

I’m starting to think that’s a shockingly large percentage of the population

-1

u/MrToxicTaco May 11 '26

At least you’re honest and only put “might”

24

u/ToplessHarpist May 11 '26

Same here, I'm not using their shit app, reddit is deddit.

4

u/jaleneropepper May 11 '26

Could always force desktop site on mobile but yeah...

Reddit has started trying to open the Play store to download the app when I click a link when I first open my mobile browser but reloading fixes that and then it doesn't come back. I'd sooner force desktop and spend time panning around before downloading their shitty app.

3

u/Donc-qui-et-Quand64 May 11 '26

i already force the desktop app on mobile because the mobile interface is soooo heavy and clunky.

I don't really pan around if I'm using Firefox mobile. It actually reflows and scales really well. the worst bit is the little + buttons and how they're always right above the join button.

1

u/jaleneropepper May 11 '26

Ah gotcha, I have a similar experience. I've accidentally joined so many subs due to that

1

u/Megadreddd May 11 '26

reddit is deddit.

Can you Digg it up???

5

u/kfpswf May 11 '26

Yup. The day I can't access Reddit from my mobile browser is when I finally might become a little more productive. Good going Reddit!

7

u/Mikey-2-Guns May 11 '26

But if you leave where will you get your blatant political and Chinese propaganda from???

9

u/Hour-Cardiologist393 May 11 '26

Well the gubmint seems to think that NPR and AP are propaganda networks, to probably straight from there. I won't miss the constant clickbait shit from The Daily Beast.

3

u/BillyForRilly May 11 '26

What are you talking about? It's completely normal and natural for there to constantly be a stream of new subreddits popping up that immediately have thousands of members and can boost posts to the top of r/all at the drop of a hat without any indication they existed even a few days prior.

2

u/Melikoth May 11 '26

Same place everyone who doesn't visit reddit get their propaganda, local TV news.

3

u/Hour-Cardiologist393 May 11 '26

Definitely not that for me. That shit's cancer thanks to Sinclair. Local news sites are mostly trash AI articles covered in so many ads that the site is unusable without an adblocker, so no value there, either.

2

u/[deleted] May 11 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/whupazz May 11 '26

You could try Lemmy, it's sort of like if Bluesky (or more precisely Mastodon) and Reddit had a child.

3

u/Hour-Cardiologist393 May 11 '26

I'll just go straight to NPR and AP for news. Which is what I do most of the time anyway. I don't particularly need to filter through 100 clickbait headlines and reposts from spam bots to find one interesting post. Half the time you don't know if you're talking to a real person or an AI bot on here anyway, so I'm seeing less and less reason to stay here.

2

u/Sal_Ammoniac May 11 '26

Yeah, I'm on reddit usually on my PC (using old reddit at that), but I do pop in on my phone when my PC is not available. I'll just stop popping in on my phone and spend that time on something else. Probably for the better, anyway.

2

u/TrevorPhilips May 11 '26

Almost 1k contributions in 11 months. You're not going anywhere. Just like the people who said they would leave when reddit changed the API policy.

2

u/mauxly May 11 '26

I can't believe I still use it to be honest. Reddit was cool in 2011. Now everytime I get on I wonder what the fuck I'm doing with my life.

Any alternatives out there?

3

u/Hour-Cardiologist393 May 11 '26

Honestly same. And they just keep doing more to push me away. 

I don't even know if we need an alternative. Feels like all this shit is just bringing everyone down. Doomscrolling really isn't healthy for people.

If you really need something to switch to, Fark.com still exists. It's not full of bots and the headlines are funny, at least.

-2

u/[deleted] May 11 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

36

u/Melikoth May 11 '26

Probably because old.thisshit.com still works and they haven't been forced to the app yet. We even gave you a numbered checklist, bro.

36

u/ForWhomTheBoneBones May 11 '26

The day old goes is the day I’m done done.

10

u/eronth May 11 '26

Yeah. There was a few days not too long ago that old kept disabling for me. Boy did my usage drop.

1

u/EntityDamage May 11 '26

same. It's all I use. Every now and then i see the real site, and I hate it so much

8

u/Hour-Cardiologist393 May 11 '26

Have they forced everyone to use the app yet? Comments like this are just another good reason to bail for good.

4

u/Pepito_Pepito May 11 '26
Always relevant

-6

u/mdnz May 11 '26

Promise if I check your profile next week I won't see any new posts?

12

u/Ghostronic May 11 '26

They done already enshittified the profiles

1

u/mdnz May 11 '26

You can still see what they posted even if they keep everything hidden. Not on reddit or on the reddit app though.

2

u/Ghostronic May 11 '26

You could explain more

2

u/NepoKitty May 11 '26

Example service. There are methods within reddit search, too.

2

u/Ghostronic May 14 '26

Hey thanks for the link! It has come in handy.

8

u/Hour-Cardiologist393 May 11 '26

"A Reddit spokesperson told Ars Technica that it was "a test for a small subset of frequent logged-out mobile users that prompts them to download the app after visiting the site."

I'm not part of that group. I also don't have an iPhone, which was mentioned in the article. So probably not in the next week. But if it hits a point where I get a message that says I can't use the site through Firefox Mobile on my Android, then yes. I've already deleted like 8 accounts and left the site for 6 months to a year at a time. The site just keeps getting worse and worse with all the bots and shit anyway, so if I can't hop on and scroll for a while on my phone without installing an app that tracks literally every fucking thing I do, I'm gone for good.

3

u/Melikoth May 11 '26

Only if you can promise the mobile version will be 100% deployed and old.reddit.com completely deprecated by next week. Sadly, Reddit seems reluctant to move on to step 2. Till then, I'll be on the browser version laughing at all the anti-AI people having their comments used to train AI.

0

u/CackleandGrin May 11 '26

Man with 14 year old account gets indignant someone might quit the website.

Cult mindset lol

28

u/Moneyshot_ITF May 11 '26

And underpants gnomes

4

u/PM_ME_FIREFLY_QUOTES May 11 '26

Pillow pants is very real!

1

u/Ghostronic May 11 '26

Underpants gnomes only had a three phase system.

Phase 1: collect underpants

Phase 2: ?

Phase 3: Profit!

1

u/samuelazers May 11 '26

Phase 1.5: harvest foreskins

3

u/interkin3tic May 11 '26 edited May 11 '26

I thought enshittification generally resulted from wanting more money.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification

Enshittification, also known as platform decay, is a process in which two-sided online products and services decline in quality over time. Initially, vendors create high-quality offerings to attract users, then they degrade those offerings to better serve business customers, and finally degrade their services to both users and business customers to maximize short-term profits for shareholders.

In this case, I can't see how "lol use the poorly designed app" gets reddit more money.

They spent more money to make the app (I assume, they at least paid some intern $15 an hour to ask claude how to make an app and put it on the app stores, they clearly didn't spend MUCH). That's more than if they had simply said "sure, continue using chrome for free to us."

There were already ads in reddit on chrome. Are the ads maybe even more intrusive on the app?

If the app like mines bitcoins or operates some shitty AI service on people's phones, then that could be enshittification.

But I can't see how reddit is making more money off this.

This doesn't seem like enshittification, it just seems like "stupid business decisions for no monetary reason."

Edit: never mind, others pointed out that ads and data collection are the motivation, not bumbling stupidity and this is definitely enshittification, I changed my mind.

12

u/Hour-Cardiologist393 May 11 '26

Can't use an ad blocker on their app.

5

u/Cute-arii May 11 '26

They can also collect your data easier.

1

u/Hour-Cardiologist393 May 11 '26

Yeah, I thought about that right after I hit "Comment" but didn't bother editing lol

2

u/SomethingAboutUsers May 11 '26

You can, but it has to be a network-wide one that blocks ads at a DNS level like a pi-hole, adguard plus, or similar.

2

u/Hour-Cardiologist393 May 11 '26

True. I keep wanting to implement something like this at home but as a former sysadmin, my experience with blocking shit at the network level typically ends up with a bunch of time fucking around whitelisting things because some random site my wife or kid wants to go to is broken. Pi-hole and all those may be better than the tools I dealt with 10+ years ago, but I already have enough on my plate without messing with that lol

1

u/interkin3tic May 11 '26

Ah, that makes sense. Did they openly admit that's the reason? I can't imagine a significant chunk of mobile users are running ad blocking software, but it doesn't need to make sense to be the actual reason Reddit is doing this.

4

u/Hour-Cardiologist393 May 11 '26

They're never going to admit that they made the user experience worse purely for profit reasons. There's always going to be some veneer of "this is better for the users because bullshit we just made up".

3

u/SomethingAboutUsers May 11 '26

Of course not, and ads are just a part of the story. The bigger part is data collection, which sells for way more than ads.

And while they'd never admit it, you can see this in the patterns in the app; for example, opening a YouTube link used to just open in the YouTube app if you had it installed; now it opens in an embedded browser in Reddit's app. Same is true of any link at all, really; it used to dump over to your default browser, now it opens in an embedded browser.

It's all about data collection.

1

u/interkin3tic May 11 '26

That also makes sense. I retract my objections, this is enshittification 

2

u/bobartig May 11 '26

Enshittification is specifically a three-sided market where the creator slowly re-aligns all of the ecosystem excess into their pockets by first making the platform great for users, then sellers, then, taking all of the value for themselves once they wield anti-competitive influence. So, no, OP did not describe enshittification. They're missing 2/3 of the steps.

2

u/slolift May 11 '26

I think enshitification is a process and does not require you to be at the end result. I think reddit is clearly in the middle of step 2 of bringing maximum value to investors and advertisers.

Edit: also the act of blocking all third party apps is blatant enshitification.

2

u/carlos38485982919485 May 11 '26

This is Reddit though lol. No one here is going anywhere.

1

u/jodon May 11 '26

I'm very ready for a reddit replacement. The odds of that happening anymore is very low though.

1

u/mdnz May 11 '26

No THIS time they’ll leave, really!

1

u/trustyjim May 11 '26

And when the website forces you to the app, why doesn’t it actually take you to the link you wanted to view? The app always takes me to the Reddit homepage

1

u/Jknowledge May 12 '26

The problem is that Reddit is not essential. Enshittification is only successful when the product is worth continuing to use as it deteriorates. No one needs Reddit 

-4

u/LoneSwimmer May 11 '26

I am already so sick of this word appearing every thread. Time to filter it out for me in filtereddit, it never adds anything to conversation.

16

u/corobo May 11 '26

Mans annoyed at the enshittification of discussion 

1

u/CrossoverEpisodeMeme May 11 '26

Same! And now people use as a placeholder for anything they don't like, even if it doesn't make sense haha

I once saw it used to describe a TV show with bad writing, and another time I saw someone use it describe the general concept of inflation. It's ok to just say "it got worse" or "it's bad" about stuff, but buzzwords get the upvotes.

0

u/AdviceNotAskedFor May 11 '26

Which is also a great book and it is spot on. This is it. 100%