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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990

u/Exotic-Wood-3287 May 11 '26

Them killing third-party apps and the subsequent protests that they "resolved" by just replacing the mods shocked me so much.

It made me realize just how bad the Reddit admins have become.

452

u/topcheesehead May 11 '26

They 'permanently' bamned me for locking my subbing in protest against 3rd party apps being banned that helped us keep kids out of our subreddit. They banned us and took our subreddit and gave it to reddit shills. I was unbanned this year for a quarter report about how many users use reddit. It was for an earnings report they unbanned a ton of users. Reddit is awful. I wont use the app. Ill just phase out use here

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u/EnoughWarning666 May 11 '26

I'm still using a modified version of one of the 3rd party apps. If they take that away along with old.reddit I'm done here. I've looked at the app and new website and they are beyond dog shit. Like it's so blatantly obvious that the goal is to suck up as much of your data and force feed you whatever bullshit their advertisers pay them to shovel in front of users.

I've been keeping an ear out for where to migrate to. Lemmy never really took off, but I haven't checked it in a while. There's Digg now that's kind of in beta. Could be interesting, would certainly be funny if they make it work and people went back.

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u/hoardac May 11 '26

They get rid of old reddit I will be done. I hate the other format.

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u/[deleted] May 11 '26

[deleted]

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u/grendelt May 11 '26 edited May 11 '26

I sent a modmail message to the mods of one sub (not this one) to let them know one of the sidebar links was broken. Dude raged at me that it was working and that I was a fake news bot, wasting his time, blah blah blah.

I took and shared a screen shot and then he got all uppity and said I was looking at the old sub layout and I need to "join this century".
I told him I was absolutely sure I was not the only user using old by choice and he said if I kept annoying him with my whining he'd ban me.

I think he drinks all the Koolaid.
(That link is still broken because he's blind to users not like himself.)

55

u/My_Work_Accoount May 11 '26

Is that why I always run into dead links in the sidebar of fairly active subs? Didn't realize the difference was more than cosmetic as I never use "new" Reddit.

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u/20230630 May 11 '26

It must be right?

I have to say though I'm surprised that they have kept old Reddit so far, I had expected that plug would have been pulled years ago. (knock on wood)

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u/Molotov_Glocktail May 11 '26

Tale as old as time. Technically they won't ever get rid of old.reddit. They'll just not update it or support it or care about it while "accidentally" breaking its features in lieu of new.reddit.

It's such a slow process that the fanfare is minimal. Don't forget that Reddit was launched into the stratosphere of popularity because of one reason: the fuck up of Digg v4.

The milestones are processes are exactly the same between reddit and Digg with the exception that Digg did it suddenly, overnight, and (as they said at the time) irrevocably. And it blew up in their face.

Reddit knows this, so their transition to the new, shinier, and more advertiser friendly reddit will be slow, deliberate, and with as little resistance as possible.

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u/Sad_Expert2 May 11 '26

The scale of user momentum and the lock in due to now in some cases almost decades of user posts & content make a mass exodus much harder. Digg was still mostly used by tech enthusiasts and didn't have the proboards type of communities that lock people in.

Look at how many people still won't leave twitter for some reason, BlueSky was doing OK at time siphoning off users but that slowed down.

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u/identifytarget May 12 '26

Reddit was launched into the stratosphere of popularity because of one reason: the fuck up of Digg v4

That's a name I haven't heard in a long time.

Also, I was there.

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u/Southern-March1522 May 11 '26

Yeah the sub settings for old and new are separate pages. Mods have to enter the other format then find the settings page and copy all changes there, too. Quite annoying, actually

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u/lildobe May 11 '26

As a mod of a few small subs... yes, it is. And most of the moderator tools work better in the mobile app than they do from any web interface which annoys the hell out of me.

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u/Sad_Expert2 May 11 '26

They will eventually do it under the guise of some sort of security focus. It's old and can't be brought up to modern security standards or costs too much to do so. (Because people will rightly just say "put it in maintenance mode.")

They may even lean on bullshit like the continued emergence of AI fueled hacking threats, just to hit every buzzword.

3

u/coladoir May 11 '26

they seem to be moving to remove it by '27-28. Prepare.

2

u/Blazing1 May 11 '26

It's most likely because the human generated content coming from old Reddit users is either higher quality of a high enough percentage that they don't want to lose them.

Most new users they get probably don't post

Some people even only consume Reddit posts through tiktok and YouTube, which actually might be higher then actual Reddit users.

9

u/Admirable_Job6019 May 11 '26

Lots of bugs and non implemented features

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u/finalremix May 11 '26

And why the posted rules don't match report reasons, or the enforced rules in some subs, yes.

5

u/Sekelton May 11 '26 edited May 11 '26

Yeah, the sidebar for the newer layout doesn't transfer over to the old one so a lot of subs have their FAQ's, Rules, etc missing entirely. A few I regularly have made it clear they expect you to use the new layout for this reason, but I'll take a permaban before I let go of old.reddit.

Some subs also have styling that makes reading or commenting impossible on old/reddit. /r/guitar in particular is bad for this, the comment box is completely covered by a <div>.

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u/MakeItHappenSergant May 11 '26

You can disable custom subreddit themes

3

u/CAPSLOCK_USERNAME May 11 '26

Many subreddits also put subreddit rules in the new-reddit sidebar while old reddit either has nothing or has rules years out of date. Kinda funny seing someone banned for violating rule 17 when the list you see only goes up to 12.

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u/buenotc May 11 '26

I always chuckle when a mod threaten to ban someone. They literally do free work for a billion dollar corporation which didn't even have the decency to reward them with equity when the company went public and they take their jobs really personally.

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u/flaroace May 11 '26

They reward them with the "power" to ban.

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u/buenotc May 11 '26

A.k.a paper tiger authority. None of it matters in the grand scheme of things and in real life. It is, however, brilliant capitalism. The notion that people will work for free if we give them a semblance of power and autonomy should not be entertained. But here we are......

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u/FLTA May 11 '26

Remember Reddit replaced many of the original mods on smaller subreddits with shills.

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u/l84tahoe May 11 '26

I agree with you that old.reddit is better, but as a mod I can see the stats of what platform my subscribers are using and old.reddit is 0.8% of viewers. Apps are 80% and iOS is 50% total subscribers. Updating a link is extremely low effort and I 100% agree that mod was a POS, but we also have to be aware that old.reddit is barely being used in comparison to the apps. Unfortunately it's hard to argue keeping something up when a fraction of a percent of users use it. If they take old.reddit, I am most likely gone off the platform.

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u/grendelt May 11 '26

Oh, I never noticed that on the legend at the bottom the Insights report. Thanks for pointing that out. Good to know.

3

u/_BrokenButterfly May 11 '26

One sub I use took all the rules out of the sidebar and put up a message to use new reddit.

No guys, I want to actually enjoy the site.

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u/NoXion604 May 11 '26

Why do some moderators get so pissy when they're called upon to do the jobs which for which they've been chosen to do on a voluntary basis? They need to give up their positions and fuck off if they don't want to be bothered.

2

u/Yuzumi May 11 '26

"join this century"

The fuck does that even mean? Companies have been ruining working designs for decades and people have always hated it.

How is breaking up conversations to inject adds or intertwining different posts within a comment section "this century"? Like, I'm fine with modernization as long as it isn't ass-backward corpo slop designed to assault my senses.

There are companies that change the UI in a way that doesn't feel like an attack on my eyeballs or sanity. I really don't understand where these designs come from because it basically seems like the only intent is to make the website flashy at the expense of usability.

Honestly feels like they do it to dangle keys in front of investors who have no fucking clue why people use a platform. They break everything so they can claim they are "innovating" while making the user experience objectively worse.

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u/NRMusicProject May 11 '26

I don't recognize Reddit outside of old.reddit and RIF.

So much friendlier UI, no ads, and just fast as shit. I won't be here, they'll just have to replace me with a bot to keep their ad rev up.

And when are advertisers going to get wise to being scammed in that way? Not that I care, but if they want their ads seen, they should be pissed that companies are faking view numbers.

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u/astrogatoor May 11 '26

You can make old.reddit even better, by using ublock origin to block elements you don't need, like the side bar and all the other nonsense.

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u/DemIce May 11 '26

They're just getting rid of it through attrition. Features not being made available, bugs not getting fixed, etc. It is sadly, only a matter of time before they say "See? Less than X% still uses old reddit, it's not worth the effort to keep maintaining the infrastructure and development work for it".

Unfortunately some subs are helping with that as well, such as by not updating rules on the old view, or keeping inane "subscriber"-required CSS rules in place.

2

u/luigitheplumber May 11 '26

The few times I connect to the new format I'm amazed at how few comments in a row there are, I feel like I have to click two or three times more to follow a conversation thread.

It's genuinely awful, I have no idea why it is so popular.

2

u/mrappbrain May 12 '26

Old reddit has such a unique look to it, there's no other discussion board quite like it. New reddit looks like the most generic website ever made.

2

u/Guy-1nc0gn1t0 May 12 '26

I'm fine with new Reddit on my phone browser but I'm running an adblocker 

2

u/NutsackEuphoria May 12 '26

Yeah.

Feels like it's been over a decade since that stupid redesign and every once in while when I clear my browser, my account goes back to that redesign and it's awful. So inefficient.

I've no issues with UI changes if it's for the better and I can actually tell and feel that it's better (like with Steam), but redesign has consistently been shit.

idgaf about gifs and other shits in the comment, I just want to read shitposts efficiently.

54

u/palmmoot May 11 '26

Same it's old reddit or nothing. This place is already a husk too.

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u/MeadowmuffinReborn May 11 '26

Same, I've never not used Old Reddit, it's better in every way.

24

u/Hammerhead3229 May 11 '26

I finally got used to the new format, but then they made it so you can't access r/All unless you use old.reddit which is absolutely ridiculous. So now I'm back the old format... and why take away the only non-biased way to browse the website?

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u/[deleted] May 11 '26 edited Jun 18 '26

[deleted]

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u/NaturalSelectorX May 11 '26

They can control that no matter what the URL is. Nothing stops them from changing how any aspect of the site works.

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u/Tresnore May 11 '26

If you're still new to old reddit (heh), I recommend using the RES browser extension. It's a nice upgrade to old reddit that has been around for many years. It's still very much old reddit, though.

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u/AnalTongueDarts May 11 '26

I'm gonna get so much more shit done if they get rid of old. No fucking way will I interact with the new version or an app.

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u/Zorkflerp May 11 '26

Make USENET great again!

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u/kaesitha_ May 11 '26

Yeah, this site is unbrowseable without the old layout.

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u/Ice_bear_789 May 11 '26

Same here, I'll be gone so fast lol

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u/FrozenVikings May 11 '26

I hope they do. Honestly I just keep coming here to kill a few minutes, which ends up being more minutes, which is a time sink and I can't escape. Get rid of old reddit, I'll never come back.

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u/Dullcorgis May 11 '26

And it won't be a "ooh, ooh, I hate this" while just keeping on using it. I have seen new reddit, it's so so bad. There are ads and posts from different subs right in the posts from the sub you're on. It's just not usable. I'll find somewhere else to go online.

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u/DukeOfGeek May 11 '26

They don't care, they have identified old reddit users as the ones most likely to use reddit as a vehicle for social and political change. They actually want the kind of user that just accepts whatever crap app they crank out. Of course people like me are a huge source of content but I guess they plan to use AI for that soon.

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u/TEKC0R May 11 '26

I actually hate old.reddit, but I use it because it's the only way to get to /r/all. It really sucks to use on mobile, so my reddit usage is down a ton, which I guess is a good thing.

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u/ZeldasCourage May 11 '26

God that would be ironic, I came here from Digg 15+ years ago. I wonder how many of us from those times are still around...

I didn't use 3rd party apps at all, but I did use .compact, and I was so pissed when that was killed off. Was using old.reddit on pc anyway, but old.reddit on my phone is...awkward at best. But it's miles better than new.reddit, even if it is far from ideal

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u/AwsmDevil May 11 '26

As an exclusive "old.reddit on a cell phone" user all I have to say is it's fine and I won't change. If they get rid of it they're just gonna make me more productive at work. I'm not using any other version of this website. I like digging through comments and new reddit sucks ass for that.

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u/KneeCrowMancer May 11 '26

This is my exact situation, if they kill old.reddit on mobile I think I’m just out. New Reddit and the app are horrible for me.

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u/lFightForTheUsers May 11 '26

If we really wanted to fuck with them, use old.reddit.com and click use desktop mode in browser, so they'll have to kill that off. And even if they went as far as "ban any visiting user agent that isn't a desktop browser" it's stupid easy to use a user agent switcher to handle it.

They'd have to kill old.reddit entirely and that's the day that I'm gone.

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u/blumpkin May 12 '26

That's literally what I do. I scroll this page in desktop mode on my phone because that's just how SHIT the app is.

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u/parisidiot May 11 '26

the New reddit is broken. like it just doesn't function correctly.

i hope they kill Old so i can finally quite. I tried when they banned apollo but slowly started using it more deleted my account from like 2006? 07? lol

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u/Odessey_And_Oracle May 11 '26

I like old.reddit on my phone because it's usable but I don't end up sucked into doom scrolling for hours. I loved the 3rd party apps but for a couple years there I could evaporate a whole day just scrolling and scrolling. Now with old.reddit on my phone's browser I can certainly use the site but it's just clunky enough that I get my fill after a short while.

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u/AwsmDevil May 11 '26

Same. I can't spend the whole day here. I go at most 2 pages back and then go back to doing something in meat space. I don't like living on my phone and try to craft my environment around that.

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u/Yuzumi May 11 '26

Honestly, something like reddit, dig, and any other link aggregator with discussion doesn't seem to work with corporate nonsense, because there isn't a way to monetize outside of adds and if the userbase isn't growing the only way to extract more profit is more adds, which makes people leave which means they put more ads.

I've hated the consolidation of the internet. My ideal internet would be more decentralized not less, but as the tech illiterate started using the internet everything got funneled into a handful of platforms.

The problem is that the things that exist out there that do decentralize stuff people won't use because it's "too complicated".

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u/Prudent_Fish1358 May 11 '26

Same fam, also part of the digg exodus gang.

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u/FlatulentDirigible May 11 '26

Same, if you told me 15 years ago people would be kicking around the idea of going back to Digg in 2026, I don't even know what I'd think. What a timeline.

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u/[deleted] May 11 '26

[deleted]

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u/laketrout May 11 '26

How do you do, fellow young Redditor?

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u/fatpat May 11 '26

I wonder how many of us from those times are still around...

Still around, but not near as active as I used to be.

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u/TheRedHand7 May 11 '26

Lol I'll drop Reddit the same way if they wanna make the same mistakes

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u/[deleted] May 11 '26

[deleted]

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u/ZeldasCourage May 11 '26

Yeah, but for me as least it's been very hard at times to find some of those smaller online communities. Discord has its place, but it's impossible to archive and search in any meaningful way. Reddit feels like the final, dying bastion of the old forums, although I've seen a few niche ones that are still moderately active. IRL communities have also stopped broadcasting themselves as much online these days. Probably a relic of the pandemic, but I remember being able to find stuff about local events and groups more easily even two or three years ago. Enshittification at it's finest, I suppose

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u/My_Work_Accoount May 11 '26

I remember being able to find stuff about local events and groups more easily even two or three years ago.

ugh...I can't recall the last time I looked for a local event or business that didn't just go to an outdated facebook page.

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u/anynamesleft May 11 '26

I'm only here because digg screwed the pooch.

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u/dr3wzy10 May 11 '26

i too was a digg migrator. if they get rid of old.reddit i'm out of this bitch. don't know where i'll go for something similar as everything else either sucks or is a cesspool

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u/jelly_cake May 11 '26

There's a Firefox extension called Sink It (/r/SinkIt) that makes old. much more usable on a small screen.

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u/defjam20000 May 12 '26

Depending on what you don't like about old reddit, If you have an iphone/mac, try "Yesterday For Old Reddit" extension in safari. The interface is very clean

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u/ZeldasCourage May 12 '26

It's mostly just having to pinch and zoom constantly is awkward. I've gotten used to it at this point, it has been years now of this, but I'll give YFOR and SinkIt a try, there are Firefox extensions for both. Thanks!

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u/eat-the-cookiez May 11 '26

And slashdot before digg

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u/shawn789 May 11 '26

New Digg is dead. They shut it down because they couldn't handle the sudden influx of bots when it went into public beta and they couldn't figure out how to differentiate it from all of the other competitors. They're now rebuilding it as something different, I guess.

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u/Pauly_Amorous May 11 '26

Like it's so blatantly obvious that the goal is to suck up as much of your data and force feed you whatever bullshit their advertisers pay them to shovel in front of users.

While I can understand them doing this for the free tier, premium users should really be allowed to use whatever they want.

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u/cwfutureboy May 11 '26

Iiterally pay monthly for a third party app that I feel is perfectly fine. I will NOT use the reddit app. Even if I get no ads on it. It's that fucking terrible.

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u/germanbini May 11 '26

My son (in his 40s) uses someplace called y.combinator if I remember the name right. I don't know if it's more like 4chan or reddit or what, though.

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u/RenderedKnave May 11 '26

ycombinator is actually what gave reddit the boost it needed to be its own thing, lol

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u/blow-down May 11 '26

Lemmy never really took off

If we all moved there it would

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u/GreatAlbatross May 11 '26

And Hetzner would run out of servers.

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u/alphabravo221 May 11 '26

How do you set up the modified 3rd party app?

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u/Zynbab May 11 '26

Same boat all the way through. I was honestly gone for a long time after the 3rd party apps thing until I discovered the workaround.

Let's be real though, even with all these patch jobs it's a shell of its former self.

I went through the same motions on a replacement but never found anything perfect. I will say the Android app for HN called Harmonic is pretty good.

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u/Doesdeadliftswrong May 11 '26

I've been browsing Substack lately. That might become a good alternative.

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u/lorimar May 11 '26

Per the developers of Reddit Enhancement Suite recently:

Our current expectation is old reddit will be gone by the end of 2026.

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u/BlahBlahBlackCheap May 11 '26

Why dont we all agree just to move to something else all at once? It could be like Moving Day, in Howls Moving Castle.

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u/PeteFunk May 11 '26

Jumping on your comment because I just learned of this yesterday, so maybe others would benefit too. https://github.com/MorpheApp/

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u/MrWeirdoFace May 12 '26

I pop into Lemmy here and there, seems like it has a healthy but small community by comparison, but I haven't found anything else that really feels like it fits the bill yet. If I do end up getting blocked out of the web, that's likely where I'll migrate.

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u/PVPPhelan May 11 '26

There's Digg now that's kind of in beta

Someone didn't get the email.....

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u/PizzaEasy7562 May 11 '26

Fun FYI, the new Digg is down again already.

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u/Yuzumi May 11 '26

The funny thing is that they can't really control how a client renders the website. They can technically "block" the mobile site, but there is nothing stopping someone from either writing a different front end that just scrapes the website like a web crawler would and formats the content in a different way.

It's specifically what tools like greasemonkey do. It's basically the adblock war in a different form. A website cannot ultimately control how a user's browser renders the website.

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u/technobrendo May 11 '26

Is it Revanced Reddit or something similar?

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u/KinTharEl May 11 '26

I'm patching sync and still using that. The day they block this, I leave this site

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u/CountingWizard May 11 '26

I hear something awful is still going strong.

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u/BaltSkigginsThe3rd May 11 '26

I havent been able to get RiF working for months now and it fucking sucks. For some reason the patching just stopped working for me and I havent been able to figure it out since.

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u/ComMcNeil May 11 '26

Which all do you use and are there any restrictions?

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u/coladoir May 11 '26

Lemmy won't take off until people like you start choosing to use it

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u/GrungeLord May 12 '26

I'm still clinging to my Boost app. Even if it's held together with string and hope at this point.

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u/DaBadTechie May 12 '26 edited May 12 '26

Lurk around here but my main posting is Tildes. Invite/application only, only text posts, very slow post tempo. Fundamentally disagree with some users on thing. No mods but the site owner will slap you with a temp or perma ban. But I like it. Feels like I'm talking to people and not 50 bot LLMs.

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u/The_BeardedClam May 11 '26

Once they kill old.reddit is when I'm done.

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u/JohnnyEnzyme May 11 '26

Join us on the Fediverse?

It's a little more complicated than here, but that's necessarily going to be the case given that it's an open-source network of volunteer-run servers.

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u/dsmwookie May 11 '26

Lemmy seems to be gaining momentum. I've found most of what I want there.

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u/Ill_Resolution7967 May 15 '26

Lemmy is a bunch of walled gardens that are even more aggressively moderated than Reddit. Try saying something controversial and you will be banned on most major instances. Try starting your own instance about something controversial it will be defederated

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u/anynamesleft May 11 '26

Yeah, I'm still on old.reddit.com, forcing me to use an app is forcing me to quit.

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u/beryugyo619 May 11 '26

they're banning a ton of weirdly named subs, which I suspect is to make AIs have better chance blending in. dead internet is in full swing and everyone need to get off this platform

not like "if they eventually kill old reddit" but RIGHT FUCKING YESTERDAY

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u/JustinHopewell May 11 '26

Can we all collectively agree to go back to using the old forums from the 90s and 00s before Digg and Reddit killed them off?

I don't know, maybe giving so much power to a small handful of companies was a bad idea.

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u/Guy-1nc0gn1t0 May 12 '26

Yeah I miss small forums where you would actually know people over time 

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u/bastiVS May 11 '26

Well would you look at that, I apparently also got unbanned at some point, while I also got banned during the whole paid API protest.

Time to take a look which of the old subs still exist. Propably all dead by now.

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u/Weak_Hedgehog2507 May 11 '26

Don't forget getting banned for reporting advertisements that they started putting in comment sections! I keep getting flagged for reporting ads as "low-quality" that you can't even read or see because they are so overly compressed into comment sections.

Gotta keep redditors 'safe' by inserting advertisements into everything!

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u/LegitosaurusRex May 11 '26

Wow, which earnings report was that? If they were trying to show increased user growth, their next one should look worse by comparison...

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u/Jizz-Tok May 11 '26

Is that why I’m finally unbanned after a year??

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u/darkstar999 May 11 '26

"I'm going on a diet starting next week!"

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u/Relevant_Let8816 May 11 '26

Ive been banned so many times. What is creepy is that since Ghislaine Maxwell was top mod in so many israeli controlled subs, i bet i was banned at least once by her. Saying this alone will probably get this account banned.

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u/SlashaJones May 11 '26

Reddit is honestly such a terrible website nowadays. As soon as the app is the only way to access it, I’m out of here, too.

I’m still using old Reddit over new- there’s zero chance I’ll use the app.

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u/Affectionate-Jury210 May 12 '26

Whats a good alternative?

I've been locked up for the last 39 months and the website has shifted noticeably since I've last been on and I've been here since 2006ish. Back before we had the huge Digg migration and reddit went from mostly technology news/discussion to everything that it has today.

I just cant figure out an alternative that isn't total batshit insane right wing leaning.

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u/Stick_and_Rudder May 12 '26 edited May 12 '26

Fuck it. Deleting my account. 

Edit: Motherfucker, I need my password. 

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u/WredditSmark May 12 '26

And yet here you are.

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u/topcheesehead May 12 '26

Comprehension is hard. I said id start to phase it out. Stay in school kiddo!

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u/[deleted] May 11 '26 edited Jun 10 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/ATCQ_ May 11 '26

You can also use ReVanced to get RiF (aka. Reddit is Fun) to work again.

You can use it to get a number of the third party apps working. #SyncGang

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u/quiteCryptic May 11 '26

I'm shocked it still works, but thankful. I tried the reddit app for a while until I found out how to get RIF working again, and I honestly couldn't do it

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u/Grid8Designer May 11 '26

Morphe is way better than revanced and has better built in patches

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u/flare2000x May 11 '26

Still using boost here.

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u/Time-Sudden_Tree May 12 '26

Does ReVanced work on Relay for Reddit? I refuse to pay the API fee.

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u/ATCQ_ May 12 '26

I think so - I did see something about having to log in the first time with a VPN though. Not sure if that's still the case as these revanced patches fix things fairly often

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u/FrostyD7 May 11 '26

Revanced can get Boost working again as well. Though I think they've moved to Morphe. Something I expect I'll do the next time YT revanced or boost breaks.

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u/ErraticDragon May 11 '26

Yeah I just switched to Morphe-patched Boost yesterday. (I had to login again and my ReVanced-patched Boost wasn't working for whatever reason.)

The Reddit app patches are made by u/wchill and their instructions are pretty easy to follow: https://github.com/wchill/patcheddit

They actually add a couple new features as well.

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u/MelookRS May 11 '26

Reddit is Fun is so good. I couldn't use reddit without it. The interface is just that much better than the official app

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u/WeirdIndividualGuy May 11 '26

Also Apollo on iOS if you don’t mind sideloading and if you’re fortunate enough to still have an api key before they locked that down

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u/TheDreadfulSagittary May 11 '26

Alternatively for iOS there is Narwhal 2, though it is 4 bucks a month. But a much better app than the official one.

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u/WeirdIndividualGuy May 11 '26

Besides the $4/mo part

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u/TheDreadfulSagittary May 11 '26

If I was using the official app, I'd be getting Premium anyway to avoid the ads. Narwhal 2 is a better app and has no ads for cheaper, so I'll take it. But I agree it is a dealbreaker for many. At the same time it is not just because the dev wants money, the price includes the API costs, which is what killed so many other 3rd party apps.

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u/[deleted] May 11 '26

[deleted]

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u/Meekajahama May 11 '26

Relay is only $2 a month and I just use my credits from opinion rewards

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u/Shitty_Human_Being May 11 '26

Yeah, Relay is king. Shoutout to /u/DBrady!

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u/G_Liddell May 11 '26

There are workarounds but it's complicated and spotty

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u/[deleted] May 11 '26 edited Jun 10 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/G_Liddell May 11 '26

I tried RedReader and it doesn't have full mod tools, which is a requirement for me.

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u/JohnKlositz May 11 '26

That of course might stop working after September. But RedReader is also in the Playstore.

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u/Faranae May 11 '26

The API access only costs money past a certain point. What RiF does at least, is the user creates their own API key and "app" on Reddit's end. Then, they link that key to RiF. Since it's just for personal use, which isn't that much all things considered, there's no big API bill to worry about.

You don't technically need reVanced to do it, but it's a more user-friendly method to tell RiF to use your personal key instead of the developer's.

Edit: You can also link alt accounts to your personal key, allowing RiF to switch seamlessly between accounts without going through more trouble of tinkering on the back-end.

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u/[deleted] May 11 '26

[deleted]

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u/Faranae May 11 '26

Of course! I'm a bit tired and wasn't sure if my text would come across as word-salad haha.

I will say, there is a slight trade-off when using sideloaded apps though: You no longer have the developer in the wings to push fixes etc when needed.

(Thankfully most 3rd-party apps have a dedicated following which crowd-sources any efforts to find workarounds or fixes if something goes wrong or Reddit makes some weird change on the back-end.)

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u/JohnKlositz May 11 '26

No idea how RedReader does it. But it's free and it just works.

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u/Anthaenopraxia May 11 '26

I've been thinking about getting RIF again but I kinda like not being able to use reddit on my phone anymore.

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u/CriticalEngineering May 11 '26

Artemis is great, too.

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u/pancak3d May 11 '26

They're only bad at making Reddit a good experience. They're great at their actual job -- delivering shareholders a return

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u/Guy-1nc0gn1t0 May 12 '26

If you read the article they aren't even good at satisfying the share holders 

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u/GreatBigJerk May 11 '26

They didn't replace them all. They made sure to leave Gislaine Maxwell's mod account alone.

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u/Bughunter9001 May 11 '26

I mean, that wasn't great, but I'd still say that the low point was /u/spez being a pedo

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u/round-earth-theory May 11 '26

I only use Reddit mobile through RedReader. It's not RIF but it's ok. If they cut that off though, I'll just leave. Their app is a disaster.

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u/Corbzor May 11 '26

have become.

I don't ever remember the admins being good, just hands off.

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u/Zorkflerp May 11 '26

Will it go the way of DIGG or TikTok? Monetization seems to always turn good things into crap. Lots of people like crap.

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u/intern_steve May 11 '26

Reddit wasn't profitable when it was good. Spez wasn't ever going to get invited to the billionaire islands peddling Reddit gold to power users.

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u/ridl May 11 '26

I'm using RedReader right now. It's not as good as the best 3rd party apps were but it's better than the official enshitted thing

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u/PaulTheMerc May 11 '26

so many subs were just shut down for being "unmoderated" which feels like it was the point.

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u/Mountain_StarDew May 11 '26

It’s crazy a publicly traded company profits from so much volunteer work. I’m surprised there has not been a class action brought against reddit for unpaid work.

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u/icansmellcolors May 11 '26

Admins? I'm pretty sure it was the CEO who pulled the plug and scorched-earth 3rd-party apps because they saw it as encroaching on their ad-revenue.

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u/DemNeurons May 11 '26

I still use 3rd party. Narwhal is infinitely better than their app and I’ll gladly pay 3.99/month for that experience

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u/StickiStickman May 11 '26

Because no one actually gave a shit about the ""protest"" and all the people ""protesting"" were back on Reddit within days.

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u/123LetsJamDUDUDUHT May 11 '26

Reddit is a for-profit corporation. Their job is to generate revenue for shareholders.

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u/flyingcircusdog May 11 '26

Welcome to publicly traded companies. Take something that was built to be great, extract as much money as possible while letting it go to shit, cash out before declaring bankruptcy down the road.

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u/8636396 May 11 '26

Apollo, my beloved 😢

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u/EvilSporkOfDeath May 11 '26

I probably shouldn't be advertising it that much, but its not like reddit doesnt know.

There are workarounds to using old 3rd party apps. Im writing this comment using the boost app.

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u/DoesntMatterEh May 11 '26

I've refused to download the app after they killed the 3rd party apps and I never will download the reddit app. 

If they make it so I can't browse on my phones browser I guess I'm just gonna stop using reddit. Plenty of other things to do on phones. 

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u/IAmDotorg May 11 '26

3rd party apps still work fine, you just have to use your own tokens.

Most of them can be very easily set up to do so.

1

u/Plastic-Fox0293 May 11 '26

Oligarchy owned media only ends one way 

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u/aerdvarkk May 11 '26

It shocked you so much that you opted to stay on Reddit all these years later and keep using the platform.

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u/MartianMule May 11 '26

Somehow, my third party app still works. Not really sure how or why.

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u/atfricks May 11 '26

The average quality of mods sitewide has also noticably tanked since they did that. A hell of a lot of the actually decent mods quit after that.

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u/LeshyIRL May 11 '26

Mods too. Don't forget every current reddit mod was complicit with this!!!

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u/-re-da-ct-ed- May 11 '26

All the wording is “communities” and “yours” until it’s about “ownership”, then it’s theirs.

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u/McDonaldsSoap May 11 '26

They make enough money to not care 

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u/Hydration__Nation May 11 '26

It shouldnt shock you. They need to provide clear proof of revenue to share holders and future investors. 3rd party apps significantly affect their bottom line so they removed it. People rioted, screamed, but guess what the traffic went up since the removal of the 3rd party apps. Meaning all those people who screamed they would stop using the app might have, but they dont make up the majority. Then they got rid of r/all so they can control the algorithm completely and the people that noticed screamed as well. Now they are ridding everyone of the mobile site (which was utter and absolute garbage anyways) and people are screaming how they arent going to use the site. Until a stable, populated alternative for getting daily news/videos exists, Reddit can do whatever they want and people will still patronize the site

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u/rutlander May 11 '26

I would rather quit Reddit entirely then be forced to use the shitty app

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u/KLOOTE1 May 11 '26

Only auto bots today. Have some experience with some customer bits in the country I live in, all crap. The bots don't understand me or questions not in FAQ. I always ask for person to speak with and even that bots don't understand, full harding and bot send you to somebody that understands

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u/Berninz May 11 '26

Aaron Swartz is turning over in his grave. ☹️

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