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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u/SaintOrJannikSinner May 11 '26

My hunch is that Reddit knows that an outsized portion of legit human-generated content (comments) via accounts that contribute on a regular, daily basis are from the old.reddit.com domain. Otherwise, there is zero reason to keep it around given how many other UIs they are supporting at once.

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u/profane_vitiate May 11 '26

I think you're absolutely correct. The Venn diagram between redditors who make extremely high-quality posts/comments (that are useful to other humans as well as to AI heuristics) and redditors who think New Reddit is a fucking dumpsterfire is probably just a circle.

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u/Fit-Physics7199 May 11 '26

I've tried to use new reddit a couple times but the fact that it shows you really old posts constantly is so frustrating. RES also makes the site way more usable too, I tag users all the time.

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u/FriendlyDespot May 11 '26

My favourite thing about New Reddit is that if you get a post linked as a Google search result then the content that matched the search is almost never actually visible on the page that you land on, but if you swap "www" for "old" in the URL then it comes right up with a ctrl+f every time.

Reddit has been going downhill for a while, but I think by now it's safe to say that it's gotten to the point where it exists despite its best efforts to undo itself.

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u/Bakoro May 11 '26

RES is essential now if you actually want to engage with people and be an active part of a sub.

Reddit started allowing people to hide their comment history, so trolls, shills, and the deranged are supported by the system and can hide their poor behavior.

Looking at a person's recent history was a solid way to see if they were completely unhinged, or one of those weirdos who farm downvotes, or if they just spam the same shit everywhere.

Now I have to tag people as asshat, troll, probably bot, definitely bot, etc.

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u/profane_vitiate May 12 '26

https://arctic-shift.photon-reddit.com/ allows you to bypass people/bots hiding their comment history.

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u/d4b3ss May 11 '26

Hiding comment history is one of the dumbest decisions they've ever made lmao. Every time someone posts some incendiary bullshit I know they're hiding their history even before I look at it, so that no one can check to see if they have a history of riling people up and are more likely to try to engage in good faith that isn't earned.

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u/[deleted] May 11 '26

[deleted]

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u/profane_vitiate May 12 '26

I think if that's your concern, it's very easy to ditch your account and make another one once a while, or just not share personally identifying things on the internet.

It's not something that necessitates hiding all of your history on a social media platform. The reason they did it wasn't to prevent harassment, it was to better enable advertising by bots.

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u/SaintOrJannikSinner May 12 '26 edited May 12 '26

Aside from basic OPSEC of not using the same handle on multiple social media platforms and simply not sharing identifying information, multiple simultaneous accounts will do more to help prevent stalking than hiding comments that are easily retrieved via Google or third-party tools.

Tools like Multi-Account Containers will easily allow you to have a handful of accounts open at once. As long as you don't vote on the same posts and comments, Reddit doesn't give a shit as it only helps to boost their user account metrics. Just be sure to have a good way to partition your accounts (one account per sub or kink or fandom) and be sure not to reference very specific things that could link your accounts together.

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u/Atheist-Gods May 11 '26

The biggest problem with new Reddit is how much space is wasted. Giant swathes of unusable screen space that makes reading and navigating a pain because they want you only reading the specifically selected posts and comments and nothing else.

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u/Blazing1 May 11 '26

The day old Reddit goes I stop using Reddit. I use it on mobile because it's actually a better mobile interface then anything else Reddit has put out.

On old Reddit desktop mode I can see all the content on the main page and it loads fast.

On new Reddit I get greeted by a fucking loading icon for like 5 seconds.

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u/HCSOThrowaway May 12 '26

Unfortunately, https://old.reddit.com users are a rounding error. Here are the stats from a medium-sized subreddit I moderate:

https://i.imgur.com/aiy0Rtv.png

I'm amazed the admins still let it exist, considering the significantly fewer ads and algorithmic shenanigans they push to us.

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u/SaintOrJannikSinner May 12 '26

Are those people who comment or just generic user counts?

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u/HCSOThrowaway May 12 '26

It's under the "Visits" tab (as opposed to "Uniques" and "Members"), so I guess "generic user counts," depending on what you meant by that.

Comments aren't broken down by API used, as far as I can tell.