this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2023
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It's one thing to test a new idea or a UX tweak or similar on a small portion of users - but just turning off a key way to access your service is so just so weird to me. How many of Reddit's decisions at this point are some version of, "hey, how angry do they get? What can we get away with?"
People need to understand that this is about tracking your eyeballs. Reddit viewed on a webpage does not provide the metadata they want. What metadata does the app provide? Things you wouldn't think about wanting as a human, but the aggregate is very valuable.
Stuff like how long did you watch that video Ad? Where did you click on screen and at what time? What content were you viewing and what course of action did you take to get there? Web viewing only shows the landing page you arrived on reddit from and the exit page that took you away from reddit. Performing these actions in the app provides metadata cookie crumbs like a trail of roach shit to every single thing you've done on reddit in micro activities.
I'm not sure. I've worked at companies using amplitude and hotjar that can record all click event and sessions on web
Users can block those with extensions so the data isn't as reliable
That's probably a big part. Web browsers can do ad blocking. Within the official Reddit app that's way more difficult.
Funneling the herd into the slaughterhouse.
It sure seems like half the herd has wandered off.
It is not super difficult to do the same type of blocking with a router on software like OpenWRT. This can easily block all of the 3rd party ads type junk. The thing I can't quite figure out is what they are able to do on their server connection. It seems like they are able to setup their own proxy and impact other traffic on the same network when they should be far more sandboxed, but I can't prove that.
Someone REALLY needs to make fully open source and transparent mobile hardware and put Qualcomm under the bus... on a high speed looping track. We have no idea what is really possible under the hood on any existing mobile device. Both the processor and the modem are mostly black boxes. Even with the best custom ROMs like Graphene OS, the whole premise is based on developing a verifiable chain of trust on top of untrusted hardware we don't control.
The thing people fail to put together is that this is an issue of ownership; theft of ownership. Now we are seeing the first layers of neo digital feudalism emerging as a result of the theft.
I noticed a while ago that my Asus WRT with a custom hosts file wasn't blocking ads anymore, too. I'm betting your assessment is correct. Shit sucks. Fuck ads.
I run a whitelist fw for my workstation, and have developed that list for years. Yes, it has been a major PITA. They can never get around a whitelist unless they self host all the ads. I imagine their servers will burn down in a day if they allow that kind of access. Plus who would pay these clowns to unverifiably show the ad in the first place. Then all the ad mongers won't be able to mine data on their servers too.
The loss of net neutrality is still only beginning to show its impact. I think we are on the verge of an internet parallel to the Star Wars death of the Old Republic and beginning of the Rebellion. The Chrome browser is the dissolution of the Senate via Web 3.
If I am correct, welcome to Hoth. Mind your battle stations. Imperial Walkers will likely show up at any time.
I pay for adguard DNS. Rather than use an app on individual devices, I just put the official DNS into my router and problem solved when I'm at home. Works like a charm.
that is not something average people even know about, or would have the skills to attempt. not even close.
Users can block those on desktop without issue. On mobile it's a bit harder so most people I know don't even if they use ublock or something on their PCs/laptops.
So if anything if that was the issue they should've shut off support for the desktop version LOL
It's not as common to push users to apps on desktop, but its a tried-and-true practice on mobile. I'm sure companies would do it if they could, but app stores and app lockin aren't as strong on desktop as on mobile
Sorry that that wasn't obvious, but the desktop bit was mostly a joke!
But yeah; on desktop extra applications you have to download are definitely a hard sell.
I would assume a good amount of the reason has less to do with tracking [though I'm not denying it's a factor], and more with other stuff such as it being an icon on your phone etc, apps just have a different "feel" than websites ultimately imho
good point. one thing to not is revanced supports reddit so you can also block ads that way. and android has a few dns-based blockers.
It's a bizzare move though, given that basically every other social media in the world doesn't block mobile browsers.
Facebook infamously does for Messenger. But yes, I think it's a sign of their desperation.
Not blocking but LinkedIn pushes mobile browsers towards their app.
The more I look at this mess, the more I see elements of speedrunning. Reddit is really trying very hard to loose as many users as possible as fast as possible. It’s as if there’s a competition between Reddit and Twitter.
Maybe they're trying to get a poor valuation so they can reverse course afterward and get a boost.
go cry to the government and VC to get some subsidy
It seems to me that they are telling the investors that they might shrink but what is left will be on a much more profitable basis moving forward.
Spez must have seen that "reverse funnel" episode of IASIP and thought it was an idea worth stealing. "We'll just funnel everyone into our broken app and then endless profit!"
I wonder if it's like malicious compliance with their VCs 😂😂😂
I wonder if some of it is fluffing the metrics too, like "Since we announced that third party apps are going away, we've had X thousand downloads of the official Reddit app" (meanwhile not mentioning that they're forcing a majority of mobile users away from the mobile website)
Bruh, I agree. I'm super interested to see the fallout of the community from this. I know it's super easy to say "fuck /u/spez", but how many people will truly pull through to delete their accounts and/or stop using reddit?
I deleted my 10 year and 5 year old accounts. I didn't purge my posts and comments, as I doubt they're truly deleted from the database and I wanted to leave that content for people who aren't reddit. I've moved to the fediverse, andi think I'm here to stay.
I've heard editing comments is likely more effective, but it's hard to say. I'm guessing they take regular backups anyway, so maybe that's not really a thing anymore.
Regardless, I'm planning on replacing all of my comments with something like "screw you Reddit, use Lemmy instead" or something to that effect. I have a ton, so I'll need a script to do that, which will probably get blocked anyway.
You can user Power Delete Suite for this purpose; that's what I did. It missed some comments/posts, but it got enough that I could go through and manually edit the stragglers.
For those who just want to edit comments to random letters and then delete, redact also works (but requires login) and might be more thorough.
Idk really if my copypasta about deleting my comments/posts in protest of the reddit api changes, and about lemmy, will do any good (I suspect the account may just get quickly banned), buuuuut it sure did feel good to do. I'm glad to no longer be supporting that website in any way, shape, or form. Although I understand the people who think it's better to leave their comments/posts up for the other users, too - that's valid also.
Ideally, it could just let me include a small message at the bottom that recommends switching away from Reddit.
IDK though, I'll have to decide. I'm definitely deleting my accounts though.
There's some communities on Reddit that don't yet exist in other places; so I'm going to continue browsing those rarely; but once they move somewhere else I'm moving with them.
I thought I'd be making a long-tail exit as well, but I've been looking at my feed of mostly niche subs with an especially critical eye this week and concluded that even there, the signal-to-noise ratio had hit the point the web did as a whole that initially drove me to Reddit.
I'll still use it to declutter Google results, but I expect that utility to decline as helpful, detailed posts become fewer and fewer. There's still some distance to Facebook-level network lockdown.