[jchw]

I can only imagine half of the downloads came from people trying to select the “web” option on the popup and missing.

On a serious note, it must really be a good strategy to utterly ruin the web experience, if you want to get more people on your app, because its been the hot new thing for a while. At least with Reddit, third party clients are well-supported, unlike say Twitter. I use Apollo on iOS.

[thewhitetulip]

I've totally stopped using reddit. It is incredibly annoying that every single page has that annoying popup.

[strombofulous]

Change the www in the url to an i

[redd1taway]

Or an "old".

You can use "old.reddit.com" instead of "www.reddit.com", but you might get an SSL error if you try to use "https://www.old.reddit.com/...".

[thewhitetulip]

I did not know the i.reddit.com, I did know the old one but it is not of much use on a mobile phone

[gpderetta]

there's a firefox plugin for that :)

[mcjiggerlog]

Link: https://github.com/tom-james-watson/old-reddit-redirect

[jay3ss]

I made an (experimental) extension for Firefox that lets you choose which version of reddit you want to use

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/reddirect-new...

[nanagojo]

The twitter dark pattern of forcing you to refresh is so stupid

[fouc]

What is that all about?!

I've been wondering, every time I click a twitter link in iOS from say slack, I get the stupid partial load and then the refresh message.

[guessmyname]

Twitter UI uses a token to authenticate all operations with their own API.

When you use the mobile application the token is refreshed automatically.

When you use the web version it does the same but only if you are logged in.

It happens to me all the time. I don’t use Twitter myself but many people in my circle of friends and colleagues do. They constantly share stuff that is posted on Twitter and almost every time I click these links I get the error message because the token in my web browser storage has been invalidated, so I have to reload the page one or two times to force the UI to request a new token so I can see the content and then forget about Twitter for a couple of hours until another friend or colleague shares another link and the circle repeats again.

[ycombinete]

I think it's designed to frustrate you into downloading that app

[jeroenhd]

What pattern is this? I use the PWA with Firefox and I haven't encountered any dark patterns involving refreshing myself.

[rossvor]

Try using nitter -- a no js twitter interface. Reading UX is so much better with it.

[ignoramous]

> it must really be a good strategy to utterly ruin the web experience

Aggressive stance by Safari and Firefox isn't helping online businesses reliant on extensive user-tracking.

Apple controls the AppStore so it is more likely that Apple devices would soon become the de-facto choice for people trying to evade surveillance.

[TechBro8615]

Apollo is great. Reddit should be embarrassed that one solo dev can make a vastly better app than the Reddit team itself.

[WoefullyInept]

I'm genuinely surprised they haven't backtracked on this - it completely ruins the experience.

[rcMgD2BwE72F]

Slide on Android. Available in the F-droid store too.

[calciphus]

Personally a fan of Sync for Reddit. Multiple interface methods (list, card, full-page swipe) and other reader niceties.

[vultour]

Am I the only one that likes the official Reddit app? I used Alien Blue before, which has actually been replaced by the official app, and there's nothing I can complain about in either. The only regression is that now there are ads, but I find them so unintrusive I don't really care.

[sigsergv]

I like it too, it's clean and simple,

[garmaine]

I haven’t noticed any issues with Tweetbot on iOS.

[davejk]

There's a few things it doesn't support (like polls) because Twitter didn't add those features to the API.

[tiborsaas]

I don't think that the new UI is intentionally bad. I can't imagine the team that pulls it off. It must be hell to work there or it's a team of sociopaths. Imagine plannings with power points on how to mess with users.

I agree that the new UI is worse, I'm just baffled by the reasons why it's the case. Probably bad management / structure.

[dageshi]

I can say as someone who runs a small niche subreddit, users have been finding my sub at a much increased rate in the past 6 months, I suspect because of the "related subs" boxes that auto insert themselves in the new design.

If their aim was to improve the discoverability of smaller subs, they've achieved it.

[tiborsaas]

It's not all bad of course, it's a complex product so you can simultaneously delivery useful features while making the design / usability worse.