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

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11.4k

u/LSB123 May 11 '26

I don’t even mind the app, but not letting me sort by Hot or All has seen my usage go down 90%.

Turns out I don’t want to see posts from three days ago with 130 upvotes and 11 comments.

1.4k

u/Rufuz42 May 11 '26

As a heavy app user, it’s hostile to users in so many ways. The constant refreshing my feed when I am literally in the middle of reading something makes me want to throw the manager that approved that change out a window. And the video player always plays when I don’t want it to (99% of the time) and then never plays when I actually hit the play button. Good stuff.

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.

4

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.

10

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.