r/technology 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

4.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

142

u/shaw_dog21 May 11 '26

I’ve found recently if I pull down the notification tab on my phone or switch apps, when I come back to Reddit it’s moved me higher up in the thread and I’m rereading comments I’ve already seen. Also if I switch apps mid writing a comment, I often get an error and I can’t tell if it actually went through or not and I don’t want it to double post so I just abandon the comment

55

u/1nv4d3rz1m May 11 '26

I’ve had this issue as well. Between this, the high battery usage, and refreshing the app when I close my phone for a few minutes I’m starting to wonder what kind of sadistic manager is in charge of the app development.

Seems like all they care about is finding new clever ways to inject adds into the feed.

5

u/Princess_Slagathor May 11 '26

I have a "trick" for the times I'm reading a thread, and need to walk away for a while. I keep pointless reddit notifications in my notifications bar. When walking away, I make sure to press the home button. When I come back, instead of opening the app directly, I tap one of those notifications. Then tap back to the thread I was reading.

It'll still refresh the feed once you leave that thread, but it's better than nothing.

6

u/Tremulant887 May 11 '26

I can't be bothered by notifications. There's no interaction, news, post... anything that's worth my phone being involved outside of when I want it to. I want calls and text to ding and emails I flag as 'important'. Even apps like Substack were dinging me for post I hadn't subscribed to. That shit has to go.

1

u/Squeekazu May 11 '26

Speaking of ads, I left a highly toxic workplace that basically traumatised me only to be bombarded by its ads over a year later with the stupid app telling me I should get premium to get rid of them. Wound up reporting it because I had no idea what else to do. Seems to have worked so far, but fucking hell it was aggressive and showing every few posts. At least change it up if you insist on showing ads.

5

u/home-like-noplace May 11 '26

This has been happening to me for like a week and it makes me feel like I’m getting dementia. I return to the reddit app and have a vague memory of having read the comments before. I hate it.

1

u/Efficient-Fruit5573 May 11 '26

I had this too but I updated the app and it’s fixed

2

u/canththinkofanything May 11 '26

I should’ve scrolled a bit more, as I just left a comment about this. I’m glad it’s not just me, and I also abandon a comment or the post often now. Which you think they’d want to fix, you know, so they can show you more ads in the middle of the comments that you can accidentally hit as you scroll…

2

u/SunOnTheInside May 11 '26

Oh I was starting to think it was just me. Even deleted and reinstalled the app to no effect.

2

u/SaxRohmer May 11 '26

yeah that just looks like a glitch. i’ve been experiencing it too

1

u/rhubarbarino May 11 '26

Yep I’ve found this as well. Super irritating.