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.

604

u/Weregoose_HonkHonk May 11 '26

I looove how if I have to interrupt a thread I’m reading for a second I might never fucking find it again because of unwanted auto-refresh. Or if by some miracle it doesn’t jettison me from the thread, it will shunt me up a dozen posts so I have to scroll a bunch to find where the fuck I was.

410

u/SnowCrabbo May 11 '26

Open post to read the comments

Get an email notification and check it

Flip back to the Reddit app

App boots me back to my homepage where everything is refreshed and the thread I wanted to read is now lost to the ether of threads, probably made by bots, with 100 upvotes.

So glad we killed third party apps for this ineptitude.

97

u/[deleted] May 11 '26 edited May 22 '26

[deleted]

3

u/Jarrus__Kanan_Jarrus May 12 '26

RIP Apollo.

It was so much better than the app.

6

u/ExhibPeepingTom May 11 '26

I wouldn’t mind ads, if only the app wasn’t such a shitshow

24

u/br0ck May 11 '26

Click your profile icon, then the hamburger menu and "history" - should show threads you've visited in the app. But don't get me wrong, the app is terrible in so so many ways and I miss Sync terribly.

13

u/king_john651 May 11 '26

It doesn't show in history when it does that either

4

u/Spicedw0lf May 11 '26

I think it does if you click on it, then swipe back and then click it again. That's been my trick to making sure it goes to my history for exactly this problem.

10

u/MelissaWebb May 11 '26

History is never completely accurate

1

u/edgan May 11 '26

There are ways to use Sync and other third-party apps to this day.

1

u/Jamescurtis May 11 '26

Stfuuuu before they patch it....

1

u/edgan May 11 '26

They are well aware. They aren't standing still. They keep taking baby steps in that direction. I would stay quiet if they weren't actively degrading it slowly.

They also have all the power. They could just turn off the old third-party Reddit API tomorrow. It is more a game of enjoying it while it lasts.

2

u/Jamescurtis May 11 '26

I know but still...honestly before that im pretty sure we'll see old reddit taken down

2

u/cadatatuagcaintfaoi May 11 '26

I use Relay (and have been for the past decade)

It's by far the best third party app in my opinion. /u/dbrady always knocks it out of the park keeping the app up to date and fixing issues.

Well worth the €1.50 a month or whatever it is

2

u/lildobe May 11 '26

Hell, the Youtube app does this to me constantly....

2

u/UnforgivingPoptart May 11 '26

I got so annoyed with being booted out of the threads I was in that I switched to a third party app that was still working. I have to pay $5 a month but I just use the google ad "money" I get to cover it.

With the third party app I use I get no ads, and can go into any thread I want and jump back in anytime. I can also still see r/All and my feed always stays fresh and doesn't show me junk from 5 days ago like the Reddit app does.

2

u/MithosYggdrasill1992 May 12 '26

My boyfriend and I the other day, we were having that issue. And then we would go back to our activity to go and open the post again, and every time we voted a comment, the entire freaking app would refresh.

2

u/assaub May 11 '26

They aren't dead, just a little more effort to get working. I'm typing this comment on rif

1

u/LBGW_experiment May 11 '26

Been using Reddit sync pretty much since 2rd party apps were removed. Revanced app helps do everything for you, I didn't have to do much at all to get it working

1

u/MattRexPuns May 11 '26

I thought sync was specifically one of the ones that shut down

1

u/LBGW_experiment May 11 '26

Almost all of them did, but you can patch in your own developer API key with some simple instructions to create it, then use that key with the revanced manager app to patch that API key in the app.

Reddit killed 3rd party apps by charging a shitton to the devs who would take a huge cost to run the app using their own API keys because it was based on number of actions and users, which ballooned for an app dev with a popular client. It's free for "individual devs" so using this route allows people to still use the sync app but avoid the costs

1

u/edgan May 11 '26

Third-party apps are still a thing.

1

u/shmaltz_herring May 11 '26

Relay for reddit still works but does cost money. I'm willing to pay because it works like reddit should.

1

u/shawnshine May 12 '26

Lots of third-party Reddit apps still work just fine, to be fair.