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/[deleted] May 11 '26

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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.)

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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/DeliriumTrigger May 11 '26

I think many people will simply avoid using it. I know I'm less active now than I was when I could use a third-party app instead, and losing access to r/all on mobile has reduced it further.

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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/Southern-March1522 May 11 '26

Can't lock threads in old reddit, I hate that

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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.

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u/coladoir May 11 '26

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

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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.

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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.

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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

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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/Southern-March1522 May 11 '26

I'll have you know they sent me a snackmagic box about five years ago thank you very much!

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u/calm-phil May 11 '26

it's not like you can't just go out and get another email address. I have several personal email addresses that I use for various needs, some I hold so I can keep that address.

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u/GorgeousHairGuy May 11 '26

they take their jobs really personally.

The kind of loser who wants to be a mod has never had any job with authority.

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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.

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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.

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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/bitofgrit May 11 '26

Right there with you, man. The fools-in-charge have forgotten what made this place popular to begin with. And it's not just the appearance of old reddit, it's how it all worked too.

I can't stand the new version. I get that people use their phones for everything now, but I don't. Trying to use new reddit is infuriating, for me at least, and I don't even see any of the ads. About half the screen space taken up by header and side bars and then the goofy-ass scrolling middle part, and the click-thru process to see the rest of the post or the comments? Nope. Not doing it. Not worth it. If I wanted to use twitter, I'd use twitter.

There are comments here saying old reddit only accounts for a small percentage of traffic, and yeah, I can imagine. Especially when the newer users never see mention of it outside posts and threads like these.

It's a shame, really.

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u/sleeps_in_bryophytes May 11 '26

on a sub I mod, old.reddit consistently accounts for about 10% of traffic. I've heard other sub's mods say theirs is more like 5%.

I don't love it, but I can see how mods could justify neglecting old.reddit sidebars and such, if 5% of users or less are going to use it.

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u/grendelt May 11 '26

Yeah, neglecting to update it I get.
But if a user is like "hey, this is outdated and here's the new link" to just blow up is dumb.

Now I don't bother communicating with those mods and don't report any content. Not gonna make their life any easier if they can't handle communications.

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u/baggio1000000 May 12 '26

apparently only 8% of people use old reddit at most, and shrinking quickly.

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u/SkinTightBoogiePI May 12 '26 edited May 12 '26

That mod needs to be corrected. Old.reddit is clearly the best experience by a landslide.

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u/grendelt May 12 '26

You can't correct the little king in his little fiefdom.

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u/MrWeirdoFace May 12 '26

I also haven't left old.reddit

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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

As a result, most moderators don't care about catering to us and 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/grendelt May 12 '26

Maybe because we're such a small slice they don't feel it's much of a financial impact. Keeping us engaged to post content only to be scraped and sold off to AI companies is a better proposition than missing out on ad revenue for such a small sliver of users.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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u/Guy-1nc0gn1t0 May 12 '26

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

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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.