Finally tried the official Reddit app. It's as bad as they say.
who the fuck designed this?
Also the "actual fucking content" is a mindless repost bot, with a bunch of reposted comments trying to build fake internet points so when the accounts switch to being spam advertising bots they last a little longer.
yeah, was gonna say that's a user issue but it's in the biggest scabreddit so that's kind of on the admins too
It's a symptom of the platform altogether. It has karma, which isn't just 'some number', it actually changes how quickly your post hits hot and the front page. This is why people sell accounts.
I think Lemmy will have a much more organic feel until the major instances realize they can also manipulate posts for cash. However, I feel it will still lack a huge portion of reposts and repost bots
11 years on Reddit and I didn't know karma helped get to frontpage faster. I had 660k comment karma..
it (karma) actually changes how quickly your post hits hot and the front page.
Now I remember I suspected this, before I deleted my account a couple of years ago. I bet that's contributing to reddit getting worse. It breaks the user response mechanic.
okay, that i didn't know. i have come across subreddits with karma requirements and i'm also aware of the logarithmic relation between upvotes and post age (basically for every X amount of time you need 10x the upvotes to stay at the same relevance) but not that account karma actually counted for that one. it can help a lot with comment rate limits though.
By the way, it seems like the comments to that post could be also generated/copy-pasted by other bots… and another set of bots +1 that comments :0/
My 18mth deep depression exacerbated by doom-scrolling Reddit 12hrs per day may have been a fucking bot psyop to make me miserable. Lemmy has been a huge boost to my mood. Feel like I'm waking from a coma since coming here.
Wow I'm sorry. My Reddit app just stopped working and the app said "hey what about Lemmy" so now I'm here.
Me too feel way better than I did on Reddit. The comments and post don't piss me off and I enjoy posting on here. Also nice not worrying over karma and if my post our comments are getting attention.
A weight off my shoulders.
My guess is someone who really, really, really wants you to see the advertisements. With a little bit of content on the side.
just reminds me to Nolan Sorrento from ready player one
This is the first of our planned upgrades. Once we can roll back some of Halliday's ad restrictions, we estimate we can sell up to 80% of an individual's visual field before inducing seizures
idk which one is more sad, that reddit is actually doing this or that i had to specify "ready player one" when looking up the exact quote because otherwise it referred me to completely serious marketing articles
Hell the screen from Idiocracy rings a fucking bell seeing this.
Or for really old-school nerds, Max Headroom. There were the Zik Zak "Blipvert" ads that were hyper-accelerated until they literally made people's heads explode (like in Scanners).
Would you like some usable content with your ads?
I’m one of the few that never used the third party apps for Reddit during my time there. Only the official app. And even I could tell you that app was miserable. No exaggeration, every third post is a massive ad. Once you’ve scrolled far enough your entire feed becomes ads. You have to close out/refresh to make it go back to normal.
Wefwef is a glitchy web app that doesn’t let me scroll or post comments sometimes made and maintained by some dude in his basement, and it’s still preferable to the official app of a company seeking a multimillion dollar IPO
That’s not wefwef—that’s on lemmy.world; it’s not keeping up.
Ah, good point- I was mostly being hyperbolic to illustrate just how shitty the Reddit app was.
I think all the previous redditors did the same thing I did when signing up. Lemmy.world sounds the most general, so that’s the instance I used. I’ll give a smaller/more local one a try and see if that improves the performance!
That’s how I wound up on lemm.ee—US hosted, not the biggest one, with admins that seem to give a damn was good enough for me.
I lucked into lemm.ee and it's been great. I decided to kick a few dollars in a month because hey why not? Highly recommend.
Same. Started on lemmy.world which was great and all, but switched to feddit.nl since it's closest to me, smaller and works faster for me. There are a lot of servers out there so we can spread the workload.
I ran into the same issue with Lemmy.World. Tried switching to Beehaw.org first (before I learned that they had defederated from some of the bigger instances) and had my “application” rejected. Appears I didn’t provide good enough reasons for why I wanted to join their particular instance. To me, it just shouldn’t be that serious. Tried sh.it just.works and well, it works!
I ended up just setting up my own instance. Wefwef is speedy since I'm not hosting other users or any communities. I tried the native iOS apps but prefer wefwef.
Yeah I'll probably end up doing this eventually, just hope there's a way to migrate my account when I do.
Yeah I'll probably end up doing this eventually, just hope there's a way to migrate my account when I do.
lemm.ee is really good, fast, mature instance with good admin. Not ad, unfortunately 😁
Try Liftoff it's what I've been using and it's wonderful. Elegant in its simplicity.
I’ll check it out, thanks!
Regardless, I really don’t care much about the glitches or slowdown if it means I don’t have to see a full screen “He Gets Us” ad every two goddamn seconds.
I gotta ask, why did you never look at third-party options if you found it so miserable?
I’m a strong creature of habit :/
Fair enough. Glad you got out!
On Liftoff it's needed to be logged in on every instance (it handles multiple accounts), so I don't find it convenient even though I admire how polished the interface is.
Looks like this is Android only. Us iOS users stuck using wefwef.
Memmy or mlem on iOS. Try those.
The Memmy TestFlight is full at the moment, but should be on the App Store soon. I highly recommend it.
Mlem and wefwef started good, but imo, they’re not there yet. They both look good, but are still missing a lot of my preferred functionality. Development also seems slow compared to Memmy too, but Memmy’s dev is also a machine pumping out updates every day.
not saying wefwef is perfect(i personally can't use it bc use kbin and not lemmy) but it will probably improve a ton since there are many new people joining lemmy/kbin
Give Connect a try. Also try Liftoff. Both very good apps.
Connect is working well for me atm.
The regular Lemmy web UI is pretty decent IMO
this. the corpos have pushed us to apps so much that many of us forgot that web browsers are very much an option.
lemmy has been the only thing that made me open the regular firefox in a long time. for the most part, i use firefox focus, because everything you wanna stay logged into makes you use an app. no exaggeration there. but lemmy's web ui actually works because it's been made by people who just want you to be able to use it, not people who want you to sell you on an app instead that can track you way better than your browser would ever allow.
I tried out different apps because of the autoloading of new posts that happens on the site. I think that might have been fixed in the update, but now I'm having issues logging into lemmy.world on the site, because if the update. I keep reminding myself it's early days and things will get smoother soon.
The admin has been dealing with memory leak from what I read earlier
As someone that only used the official app on iOS, I have to disagree. For me every 9 or 10 posts in the feed there was a "promoted" post. Using the compact view they aren't huge ads like OPs one here, just like any other text post but they say "promoted" so you know it's an ad. Also never had this "entire feed becomes ads" either.
Given how buggy it is, it's entirely possible. Also, ad targeting exists. He could be a member of specific demographics (age, income, location) being targeted by a lot of ads, thus he ended up seeing a lot of ads.
I was using Jerboa but just started using wefwef a couple days ago. I really like the look and feel, plus sorting Top by 1/6/12 hours is dope, since I tend to see a lot of new stuff when I was just doing Top by day.
You should try Lift Off for Lemmy, it's really good.
I remember, I was on holiday 4 or 5 years ago. I was sitting at the bar having my morning coffee and browsing reddit and I was getting annoyed that if I went to get a drink from the bar when I came back and turned the screen back on it would reset my position in the comments.
So, I asked around and was recommended RIF. Not only did it keep comment position, but it was just all round in every single way better.
No, I couldn't go back to the official app.
Legit thought Lemmy was serving me an advert for a moment there...!
But yeah, the official R*ddit app is Garbo, they even bought Alien Blue years ago and have just failed to keep pace with Apollo, RIF or BaconReader. This API move is just a monopolisation of their content stream, hugely anti-competition.
Even if they sorted out their app, rolled back API to free, I'd never go back. Fuck Spez.
While spez is indeed a truly horrible piece of work, we should also keep in mind that he wouldn't be doing this without having some serious backing from shareholders. CEOs are the public figure presented to us for the 2 minutes' hate but let's not forget that these decisions are taken in huge boardrooms. So maybe we should say 'fuck spez et al' instead of just 'fuck spez'.
Just dropping in to say I noticed your 1984 reference, and appreciated it especially in the context of this particular discussion.
Thanks!
Never thought the telescreens would be in our pockets though -_-
Yeah spez is just the figure head, if he got replaced nothing would be resolved.
It's not Fuck Spez, it's Fuck Reddit Inc.
Does no one remember the Ellen Pao era
Maybe, but it was spez who lied and gaslighted.
isnt that what happened to Ellen Pao and how we got Spez? they promoted Pao, she took heat for firing Victoria, then Spez stepped in and "saved the day" (i.e., the board discarded Pao after the ritual sacrifice was complete and put in their new puppet)?
I will be real with you here Spider - if you follow anything objectionable up stream you'll always end up with a handful of ethically and morally bankrupt capitalists. My emphatic "fuck Spez" isn't just groupthink on this occasion. I appreciate that CEO is a job, and ultimately there's a level of corporate responsibility - but Spez lied to us, ignored us (the AmA was laughably bad, answered 6 comments disingenuously and then dipped), attempted to defame or gaslight 3rd party Devs, violated data protection laws to preserve the sinking ship and has directed the entire company to basically dig in and starve us out. Users are the only thing bringing value to the platform - and this change is only harming the most productive users.
He might have the faith of the greed council backing his idiotic decision - but they weren't the ones pissing off of the top diving board into our swimming pool.
He could have stood with us, we could have had transparent communication and even if we didn't get compromise we could have had at least a conversation about why this is happening. but instead of any good faith engagement he decided to tell a bunch of transparent lies and throw a tantrum and then change the rules of moderation to reduce our power to fight for what we wanted.
Fuck Spez specifically for these reasons.
Fuck capitalism for everything else.
I'm using wefwef and the preview was perfectly cropped it looked like an ad as well. I was relieved it wasn't.
Imagine signing up to Reddit to discuss your gambling problems and then on the first sign on you get hit with this 💀💀
You're browsing /r/stopgambling? Here are some gambling ads for you!
This sort of thing happened several times over there. I'm making up this example (I think), but there were a few posts on the mod subs begging reddit not to do things like that.
If you use any subs related to eating disorders you’ll probably get diet stuff as well
Yep since the first party app's primary goal is to generate revenue (over actually providing a good user experience), it's packed full of everything to achieve revenue generation:
Ads
Tons of tracking to figure out how long you viewed something, what you clicked on, and so on to build an advertising profile that can be sold
Obtrusive Ads
Lots of suggested/recommended stuff to get you to keep your eyeballs on the app longer
Ads masquerading as real submissions
Paid promotions
Third party apps don't have revenue generation as their sole highest priority (if at all), so naturally they strip out all of that stuff which makes for a terrible user experience.
What would fit perfectly now is Snapchat-like short vertical videos on repeat. Do it Reddit
The problem is that Reddit Shorts is something I could ABSOLUTELY see happening in the near future
Kinda already exists. It’s called watch
Every tech company currently is moving towards being a shitty Douyin/TikTok clone. How innovative.
The doomscroll is all there is. The good news about that is that anyone can emulate it.
I mean, that's what a lot of people like, can't really blame them. And besides, more competition/less revenue to TikTok is always a plus.
They already had RPAN which was basically the livestreaming part of Reddit. It was okay, some fun shitposty streams. I stopped using it after I started using old.reddit + Apollo.
and it'll just be photos of dudes in cargo shorts.
At first I thought that was someone posting on lemmy… freaked me out, and I started looking for how to ban the content. 😂😂
I had nearly the same reaction! Assumed it was Lemmy as well but on a specific app. Hopped in the comments to figure out which one to avoid, very relieved it's one that I'm already not using.
It was the top post in my feed so I thought I had somehow opened the reddit app by accident even though I've uninstalled it.
now what if someone hacked the official reddit app to work on lemmy
Thank you for your sacrifice. If I ever had a hint of an inclination to disregard the common wisdom and try reddit's official app, now it's permanently gone.
The only thing I miss about the official app is seeing those ads promoting Christianity and promptly reporting them as hate speech.
That doesnt do anything anyway. You alwere kinda wasting your own time.
I dunno, if it feels cathartic then maybe it was worth it to them.
My god, I now realize that when I was on reddit it was just super depressing posts about horrible events, on lemmy its actually ppl having fun
/r/all was unusable without Apollo letting me filter out 90% of the subs that show up there, all ragebait and reposts.
If you didn't log into the apps, official or third party, r/All was absolutely depressing. Apollo at least gave me the ability to filter r/All when I did check it.
Sometimes I get a glimpse of what experiencing the Internet without an ad blocker looks like today and it kinda blows me away.
It's baffling how most people just rawdogs the internet like that and are absolutely fine with it
Don't post that junk on here! ;)
Plug in your phone!
Okay 15% is not the worst it could be at lol
Yeah, it could be at 14%! D:
Btw the optimal charging percentage is 30-90
Nah he's on Android, he still has half a day left.
It's simple, really.
if you have Reddit app installed, uninstall it first
find Reddit app's apk in apkmirror.com and download it
open revanced manager and select Patcher -> "select an application" -> storage and select the downloaded Reddit apk.
make sure "disable ads" is in the list of selected patches
run the patcher, wait until it completed
don't install the resulting apk right away yet. Instead, open the "..." menu on the top right of the screen and backup the patched apk
close the revanced manager app and open your file manager. Locate the patched apk you just backed up in the download folder, then install it.
Note that I haven't actually tested this with actual Reddit app.
Edit: oops, replied to a wrong thread
Instructions unclear: iPhone now running Windows Subsystem for Android. Plz help.
Very simple. Download now an Android Subsystem for iOS and you can use an iPhone in an Android in an iPhone.
Deeper. We have to go deeper!
That fixes the ads but still the official reddit app is a huge backstep from the now cutoff apps that made browsing reddit a pleasure. It's just a rippoff off all the terible algorihtm based Facebook, Twitter and Instagram apps that constantly show me posts that i've neither subscribed to nor I am interested to see. It's a shame.
There is an option in revanced manager to patch reddit sync to use your own oauth client id. I just tried it out and the patched reddit sync just crashed when it start loading the frontpage. oh well.
Works perfectly fine for me. Did you use the right APK that's linked in the Google Docs with the instructions?
I actually tried with latest version of Sync Dev already installed in my phone. What version are you using? Also, which google docs? I only follow the instruction in revanced manager that said to put the client id string in /data/storage/emulated/0/reddit_client_id_revanced.txt
Here's the full instructions.
Also, you have to uninstall all versions of Sync before you start patching. The guide I linked has everything from creating your own API key to running the patcher.
Tried using one version behind instead of the most recent version and it works!
Does this work for YouTube?
Yes, it's initially made to patch youtube. The recommended youtube apk to patch right now is v18.19.35, or you can download pre-patched apk of youtube here: https://github.com/revanced-apks/build-apps/releases . You'll also need to install Vanced MicroG if your phone is not rooted.
I also saw patched reddit apk there fwiw.
Wow it looks awful. I miss RIF
Tears roll down my cheeks when I think of RIF
Rest in power
We don't go to Ravenholm
Apollo for lemmy when?
if u liked RiF, Connect to Lemmy is a p good app. After messing w the settings browsing lemmy feels so much cleaner.
I've been having some html errors in Connect, I'm back on Jerboa for now. I like Connect's UI a lot more though
Same here, I like Connect but I can't load a single comment on there so for now I'm on Jerboa. TBD where I end up permanently though.
That might be fixed now, I had the same issue on Connect a short while ago, and it's working now. I'm just waiting for Sync to come out for Lemmy.
I downloaded latest .apk on apkpure a few mins ago, not fixed. Maybe it is on playstore though, but I'm not touching that
I'm trying Thunder right now and this one is very nice as well. But I'm getting the same problems as Connect.. I click on a post from my profile and it says the post doesn't exist.
At least on Thunder, it still loads the main post and I can scroll to my comment (which is how I'm replying to you. On Connect, my comment doesn't even show up and other comments are missing.
I really do like thunder though so far it's #1
I switched to the browser on my phone. All these apps are half finished right now. Which is completely fine, and understandable. But the actual site on a browser is "feature complete" and easy to use.
Was having alot of the same with Connect, then there was an update on the play store and seems soo much more stable now.
I have not gone there. I will not go there. Thank you for the post. It feels like an expose into a part of society that I will never cross paths with.
That’s exactly why they want you to use it.
I just saw the ad at first and froze up, thinking "shit Lemmy, already???"
Me too!
not yet but hopefully soon 😎
But did you get your cash price?
The reddit app is garbage compared to other offerings. Too bad they fucked the whole API thing for the 3rd party apps
Right now Relay for Reddit is working on a subscription model and has been granted a extension period. It's currently free to use. Not sure if I'll bother paying for it to stay on Reddit, but for now I can still use Reddit without the official app.
Cool. I didn't know this! At least some good news for now. I'm digging the Lemmy. It's pretty easy
You don't need to care about posters leaving if you don't show content in your app taps forehead
Good god, that content is so awful. Sports, shootings, parenting. So glad we have Lemmy. It feels more like the old internet where it's mostly tech nerd focused.
It truly is garbage
That 15% battery status is giving me anxiety by proxy.
You should be used to it by now. One of the first rules when the internet was created is all phone screenshots must be taken while the battery is low.
When the Internet was created, not only did phones not have batteries, they had their own power grid, separate from that used by other appliances.
Dude, scrolling by this on connect and panicked that the ads were already hitting Lemmy!
At this point you might as well design an app that is 100% ads and give the users a cut of the ad revenue.
Whoa there cowboy, not so fast. The users will pay to see all 100% of the ads. Heh this guy, 'give the users a cut', am I right? PATY WHERE IS MY K? WHAT DO I PAY YOU FOR?
I got rid of it 2 years ago for Apollo and tried it again briefly last month.
Somehow it got significantly worse, you can’t even choose how to sort your feed anymore.
I couldn't even get pass the login screen since I only lurked and never made an account (despite spending over a decade browsing reddit). I remember they used to let you use the app without logging in.
Holy fuck, that's what that shit looks like? That is horrible. RIP rif.
Oh wow I've not seen the official app in years. That's insane, who on earth is happy using this!?
Sadly, there's a shit ton of people who don't know any better and will stick with reddit as it slowly dies
I was so confused for a few seconds, thought there were ads in my Lemmy app…
I'd rather take the barely functioning lemmy apps over the invasive adds of the reddit app
Holy wow, I had actually forgotten how shitty the site had become. I was always ready to open it and quickly scroll a couple times to get past the initial garbage, to hopefully find something worthwhile. That ask reddit post is peak "help the AI write an article" trash.
Even ignoring the ads, it’s just an astonishingly bad piece of software. It feels like it was written in a weekend by someone who’d just finished reading Programming for Dummies.
It started as alien blue which was actually a good app back in the day. Reddit bought it and enshittified the hell out of it.
Did it even start as that? Or did Reddit just bought it and put it away and made something completely different?
This is the official Reddit app? Ewwwww.
Ooof. I'd rather use old.reddit.com on my phone's browser and that looks like shit. Really looking forward to the Sync for Lemmy app.
Me, using cleaned-up reddit on browser is the only way I'd use it. I preferred it even to RIF sometimes.
How would you clean it up for a mobile browser?
adblock everything except content on mobile browser, that's how i used to do it, nowadays i don't use reddit much so idk how it would go with the new status, i know they returned the old mobile web app but they may have removed access to nsfw on it. i even adblocked awards, chat, anything that wasn't vanilla reddit.
Back in 2021 Reddit released an update for the official app that caused scrolling to stutter, instantly heating up my battery and deplete battery life at an absurd rate. This was on Apple’s newest top phone at the time (12 Pro Max.)
I immediately knew something was fucky, so I switched to Apollo that same night. I checked back for about 3 more updates over a few weeks. During that time, Reddit never acknowledged the bug or fixed it. Since then, it looks like they’ve repeatedly caused the same issue with iOS and some android phones.
If they didn’t shit the bed back then, I’d never have discovered Apollo or realized it was better in every way - not just at not physically destroying my new phone.
And now here we are again, discovering new and better alternatives in Lemmy and decentralization thanks to Reddit’s incompetent fuckery. Thanks Reddit!
They said you can patch out the ads using revanced manager, but I'm not going to try it.
I've tried revanced but I'm not tech savvy enough to figure it out. I can't even find where to download from some of those repositories 😞
It's simple, really.
if you have Reddit app installed, uninstall it first
find Reddit app's apk in apkmirror.com and download it
open revanced manager and select Patcher -> "select an application" -> storage and select the downloaded Reddit apk.
make sure "disable ads" is in the list of selected patches
run the patcher, wait until it completed
don't install the resulting apk right away yet. Instead, open the "..." menu on the top right of the screen and backup the patched apk
close the revanced manager app and open your file manager. Locate the patched apk you just backed up in the download folder, then install it.
Note that I haven't actually tested this with actual Reddit app.
That's a great tutorial! Will I need to redo this process with every app update?
I hadn't used anything except my account logged in through RiF for 13 years. When I checked the front page as a guest I realized finally just how bad reddit is. All the posts were hot garbage surrounded by ads. I honestly don't know how people use reddit now.
More and more I think that might be the point. In the absence of users having control over the content they see, the only users left will be the ones who are naive, not tech savvy, and who have very high tolerances for manipulation: people who don't leave because either they don't know how, can't understand or remember a possible better alternative, or can't muster the effort.
These are incidentally also the same people who are most likely to be unable to distinguish ads from content, most likely to click on ads, and most likely to engage with click- and rage- bait content. That is: people most vulnerable to corporate predation.
It's just like scam robocalls. It's bad by design, because half the point is to immediately weed out anybody smart enough not to fall for it.
Babe charge your phone you're making me nervous
Thanks for saving me that install. Been loving Connect for Lemmy anyway
Baconreader was a perfect app in every regard
If you are on Android and have to use the official app, I recommend patching it with Revanced Manager. There's a patch that will remove the ads.
Why would you have to use the app though? What kooky series of events would line up that you able to only use it and nothing else?
Oh yeah, wait. that's why I'm here.
Something I liked about the official app, that no other seemed to have, was the ability to flip through posts, one to the next, without having to return to your feed. If anyone knows of a Lemmy app that can do this, let me know please!
The official reddit app would frequently not load images/posts/comments etc or even sometimes fully stop loading anything at all. I have never had these kind of issues with the third party apps, or much of any other apps of any type for that matter.
🤢🤮
why do you think sites want you to use apps so badly? To get around browser ad blockers.
It was absolutely unbearable to use. Had it on my phone for all of 10 minutes. Left a 1 star review and uninstalled it
Ha I'm not touching that shit
Random ads in the official reddit app appear way too often.
The Reddit app is such unusable garbage filled with annoying ads.
Oh god it's hideous
what really makes me sick is -- these fucking people are completely devoid of any taste or pride or care. it looks like absolute fucking garbage and they do not care; they're wealthy beyond belief WITH OR WITHOUT destroying reddit, but still, they must.
The official Reddit app is ill. I think it needs a chemo.
F-Droid keeps nagging me to update Infinity (which I refuse to do). Currently my Galaxy A32 5G is running v5.4.2 and it's still showing up-to-date content every time I refresh. I know from a security standpoint this is a bad idea, but until we come up with a better solution, F-Droidstill has it.
who the fuck designed this?
Also the "actual fucking content" is a mindless repost bot, with a bunch of reposted comments trying to build fake internet points so when the accounts switch to being spam advertising bots they last a little longer.
yeah, was gonna say that's a user issue but it's in the biggest scabreddit so that's kind of on the admins too
It's a symptom of the platform altogether. It has karma, which isn't just 'some number', it actually changes how quickly your post hits hot and the front page. This is why people sell accounts.
I think Lemmy will have a much more organic feel until the major instances realize they can also manipulate posts for cash. However, I feel it will still lack a huge portion of reposts and repost bots
11 years on Reddit and I didn't know karma helped get to frontpage faster. I had 660k comment karma..
Now I remember I suspected this, before I deleted my account a couple of years ago. I bet that's contributing to reddit getting worse. It breaks the user response mechanic.
okay, that i didn't know. i have come across subreddits with karma requirements and i'm also aware of the logarithmic relation between upvotes and post age (basically for every X amount of time you need 10x the upvotes to stay at the same relevance) but not that account karma actually counted for that one. it can help a lot with comment rate limits though.
By the way, it seems like the comments to that post could be also generated/copy-pasted by other bots… and another set of bots +1 that comments :0/
My 18mth deep depression exacerbated by doom-scrolling Reddit 12hrs per day may have been a fucking bot psyop to make me miserable. Lemmy has been a huge boost to my mood. Feel like I'm waking from a coma since coming here.
Wow I'm sorry. My Reddit app just stopped working and the app said "hey what about Lemmy" so now I'm here.
Me too feel way better than I did on Reddit. The comments and post don't piss me off and I enjoy posting on here. Also nice not worrying over karma and if my post our comments are getting attention.
A weight off my shoulders.
My guess is someone who really, really, really wants you to see the advertisements. With a little bit of content on the side.
just reminds me to Nolan Sorrento from ready player one
idk which one is more sad, that reddit is actually doing this or that i had to specify "ready player one" when looking up the exact quote because otherwise it referred me to completely serious marketing articles
Hell the screen from Idiocracy rings a fucking bell seeing this.
Or for really old-school nerds, Max Headroom. There were the Zik Zak "Blipvert" ads that were hyper-accelerated until they literally made people's heads explode (like in Scanners).
Would you like some usable content with your ads?
I’m one of the few that never used the third party apps for Reddit during my time there. Only the official app. And even I could tell you that app was miserable. No exaggeration, every third post is a massive ad. Once you’ve scrolled far enough your entire feed becomes ads. You have to close out/refresh to make it go back to normal.
Wefwef is a glitchy web app that doesn’t let me scroll or post comments sometimes made and maintained by some dude in his basement, and it’s still preferable to the official app of a company seeking a multimillion dollar IPO
That’s not wefwef—that’s on lemmy.world; it’s not keeping up.
Ah, good point- I was mostly being hyperbolic to illustrate just how shitty the Reddit app was.
I think all the previous redditors did the same thing I did when signing up. Lemmy.world sounds the most general, so that’s the instance I used. I’ll give a smaller/more local one a try and see if that improves the performance!
That’s how I wound up on lemm.ee—US hosted, not the biggest one, with admins that seem to give a damn was good enough for me.
I lucked into lemm.ee and it's been great. I decided to kick a few dollars in a month because hey why not? Highly recommend.
Aussie.zone for me.
Same. Started on lemmy.world which was great and all, but switched to feddit.nl since it's closest to me, smaller and works faster for me. There are a lot of servers out there so we can spread the workload.
I ran into the same issue with Lemmy.World. Tried switching to Beehaw.org first (before I learned that they had defederated from some of the bigger instances) and had my “application” rejected. Appears I didn’t provide good enough reasons for why I wanted to join their particular instance. To me, it just shouldn’t be that serious. Tried sh.it just.works and well, it works!
Fixed link: https://sh.itjust.works/
lol, it's spez
Even he knows reddit is a sinking ship.
I ended up just setting up my own instance. Wefwef is speedy since I'm not hosting other users or any communities. I tried the native iOS apps but prefer wefwef.
Yeah I'll probably end up doing this eventually, just hope there's a way to migrate my account when I do.
Yeah I'll probably end up doing this eventually, just hope there's a way to migrate my account when I do.
lemm.ee is really good, fast, mature instance with good admin. Not ad, unfortunately 😁
Try Liftoff it's what I've been using and it's wonderful. Elegant in its simplicity.
I’ll check it out, thanks!
Regardless, I really don’t care much about the glitches or slowdown if it means I don’t have to see a full screen “He Gets Us” ad every two goddamn seconds.
I gotta ask, why did you never look at third-party options if you found it so miserable?
I’m a strong creature of habit :/
Fair enough. Glad you got out!
On Liftoff it's needed to be logged in on every instance (it handles multiple accounts), so I don't find it convenient even though I admire how polished the interface is.
Looks like this is Android only. Us iOS users stuck using wefwef.
Memmy or mlem on iOS. Try those.
The Memmy TestFlight is full at the moment, but should be on the App Store soon. I highly recommend it.
Mlem and wefwef started good, but imo, they’re not there yet. They both look good, but are still missing a lot of my preferred functionality. Development also seems slow compared to Memmy too, but Memmy’s dev is also a machine pumping out updates every day.
not saying wefwef is perfect(i personally can't use it bc use kbin and not lemmy) but it will probably improve a ton since there are many new people joining lemmy/kbin
Give Connect a try. Also try Liftoff. Both very good apps.
Connect is working well for me atm.
The regular Lemmy web UI is pretty decent IMO
this. the corpos have pushed us to apps so much that many of us forgot that web browsers are very much an option.
lemmy has been the only thing that made me open the regular firefox in a long time. for the most part, i use firefox focus, because everything you wanna stay logged into makes you use an app. no exaggeration there. but lemmy's web ui actually works because it's been made by people who just want you to be able to use it, not people who want you to sell you on an app instead that can track you way better than your browser would ever allow.
I tried out different apps because of the autoloading of new posts that happens on the site. I think that might have been fixed in the update, but now I'm having issues logging into lemmy.world on the site, because if the update. I keep reminding myself it's early days and things will get smoother soon.
The admin has been dealing with memory leak from what I read earlier
As someone that only used the official app on iOS, I have to disagree. For me every 9 or 10 posts in the feed there was a "promoted" post. Using the compact view they aren't huge ads like OPs one here, just like any other text post but they say "promoted" so you know it's an ad. Also never had this "entire feed becomes ads" either.
Given how buggy it is, it's entirely possible. Also, ad targeting exists. He could be a member of specific demographics (age, income, location) being targeted by a lot of ads, thus he ended up seeing a lot of ads.
I was using Jerboa but just started using wefwef a couple days ago. I really like the look and feel, plus sorting Top by 1/6/12 hours is dope, since I tend to see a lot of new stuff when I was just doing Top by day.
You should try Lift Off for Lemmy, it's really good.
I remember, I was on holiday 4 or 5 years ago. I was sitting at the bar having my morning coffee and browsing reddit and I was getting annoyed that if I went to get a drink from the bar when I came back and turned the screen back on it would reset my position in the comments.
So, I asked around and was recommended RIF. Not only did it keep comment position, but it was just all round in every single way better.
No, I couldn't go back to the official app.
Legit thought Lemmy was serving me an advert for a moment there...!
But yeah, the official R*ddit app is Garbo, they even bought Alien Blue years ago and have just failed to keep pace with Apollo, RIF or BaconReader. This API move is just a monopolisation of their content stream, hugely anti-competition.
Even if they sorted out their app, rolled back API to free, I'd never go back. Fuck Spez.
While spez is indeed a truly horrible piece of work, we should also keep in mind that he wouldn't be doing this without having some serious backing from shareholders. CEOs are the public figure presented to us for the 2 minutes' hate but let's not forget that these decisions are taken in huge boardrooms. So maybe we should say 'fuck spez et al' instead of just 'fuck spez'.
Just dropping in to say I noticed your 1984 reference, and appreciated it especially in the context of this particular discussion.
Thanks!
Never thought the telescreens would be in our pockets though -_-
Yeah spez is just the figure head, if he got replaced nothing would be resolved.
It's not Fuck Spez, it's Fuck Reddit Inc.
Does no one remember the Ellen Pao era
Maybe, but it was spez who lied and gaslighted.
isnt that what happened to Ellen Pao and how we got Spez? they promoted Pao, she took heat for firing Victoria, then Spez stepped in and "saved the day" (i.e., the board discarded Pao after the ritual sacrifice was complete and put in their new puppet)?
I will be real with you here Spider - if you follow anything objectionable up stream you'll always end up with a handful of ethically and morally bankrupt capitalists. My emphatic "fuck Spez" isn't just groupthink on this occasion. I appreciate that CEO is a job, and ultimately there's a level of corporate responsibility - but Spez lied to us, ignored us (the AmA was laughably bad, answered 6 comments disingenuously and then dipped), attempted to defame or gaslight 3rd party Devs, violated data protection laws to preserve the sinking ship and has directed the entire company to basically dig in and starve us out. Users are the only thing bringing value to the platform - and this change is only harming the most productive users.
He might have the faith of the greed council backing his idiotic decision - but they weren't the ones pissing off of the top diving board into our swimming pool.
He could have stood with us, we could have had transparent communication and even if we didn't get compromise we could have had at least a conversation about why this is happening. but instead of any good faith engagement he decided to tell a bunch of transparent lies and throw a tantrum and then change the rules of moderation to reduce our power to fight for what we wanted.
Fuck Spez specifically for these reasons.
Fuck capitalism for everything else.
I'm using wefwef and the preview was perfectly cropped it looked like an ad as well. I was relieved it wasn't.
Imagine signing up to Reddit to discuss your gambling problems and then on the first sign on you get hit with this 💀💀
You're browsing /r/stopgambling? Here are some gambling ads for you!
This sort of thing happened several times over there. I'm making up this example (I think), but there were a few posts on the mod subs begging reddit not to do things like that.
If you use any subs related to eating disorders you’ll probably get diet stuff as well
Yep since the first party app's primary goal is to generate revenue (over actually providing a good user experience), it's packed full of everything to achieve revenue generation:
Third party apps don't have revenue generation as their sole highest priority (if at all), so naturally they strip out all of that stuff which makes for a terrible user experience.
What would fit perfectly now is Snapchat-like short vertical videos on repeat. Do it Reddit
The problem is that Reddit Shorts is something I could ABSOLUTELY see happening in the near future
Kinda already exists. It’s called watch
Every tech company currently is moving towards being a shitty Douyin/TikTok clone. How innovative.
The doomscroll is all there is. The good news about that is that anyone can emulate it.
I mean, that's what a lot of people like, can't really blame them. And besides, more competition/less revenue to TikTok is always a plus.
They already had RPAN which was basically the livestreaming part of Reddit. It was okay, some fun shitposty streams. I stopped using it after I started using old.reddit + Apollo.
and it'll just be photos of dudes in cargo shorts.
At first I thought that was someone posting on lemmy… freaked me out, and I started looking for how to ban the content. 😂😂
I had nearly the same reaction! Assumed it was Lemmy as well but on a specific app. Hopped in the comments to figure out which one to avoid, very relieved it's one that I'm already not using.
It was the top post in my feed so I thought I had somehow opened the reddit app by accident even though I've uninstalled it.
now what if someone hacked the official reddit app to work on lemmy
Thank you for your sacrifice. If I ever had a hint of an inclination to disregard the common wisdom and try reddit's official app, now it's permanently gone.
The only thing I miss about the official app is seeing those ads promoting Christianity and promptly reporting them as hate speech.
That doesnt do anything anyway. You alwere kinda wasting your own time.
I dunno, if it feels cathartic then maybe it was worth it to them.
My god, I now realize that when I was on reddit it was just super depressing posts about horrible events, on lemmy its actually ppl having fun
/r/all was unusable without Apollo letting me filter out 90% of the subs that show up there, all ragebait and reposts.
If you didn't log into the apps, official or third party, r/All was absolutely depressing. Apollo at least gave me the ability to filter r/All when I did check it.
Sometimes I get a glimpse of what experiencing the Internet without an ad blocker looks like today and it kinda blows me away.
It's baffling how most people just rawdogs the internet like that and are absolutely fine with it
Don't post that junk on here! ;)
Plug in your phone!
Okay 15% is not the worst it could be at lol
Yeah, it could be at 14%! D:
Btw the optimal charging percentage is 30-90
Nah he's on Android, he still has half a day left.
It's simple, really.
Note that I haven't actually tested this with actual Reddit app.
Edit: oops, replied to a wrong thread
Instructions unclear: iPhone now running Windows Subsystem for Android. Plz help.
Very simple. Download now an Android Subsystem for iOS and you can use an iPhone in an Android in an iPhone.
Deeper. We have to go deeper!
That fixes the ads but still the official reddit app is a huge backstep from the now cutoff apps that made browsing reddit a pleasure. It's just a rippoff off all the terible algorihtm based Facebook, Twitter and Instagram apps that constantly show me posts that i've neither subscribed to nor I am interested to see. It's a shame.
There is an option in revanced manager to patch reddit sync to use your own oauth client id. I just tried it out and the patched reddit sync just crashed when it start loading the frontpage. oh well.
Works perfectly fine for me. Did you use the right APK that's linked in the Google Docs with the instructions?
I actually tried with latest version of Sync Dev already installed in my phone. What version are you using? Also, which google docs? I only follow the instruction in revanced manager that said to put the client id string in
/data/storage/emulated/0/reddit_client_id_revanced.txtHere's the full instructions. Also, you have to uninstall all versions of Sync before you start patching. The guide I linked has everything from creating your own API key to running the patcher.
Tried using one version behind instead of the most recent version and it works!
Does this work for YouTube?
Yes, it's initially made to patch youtube. The recommended youtube apk to patch right now is v18.19.35, or you can download pre-patched apk of youtube here: https://github.com/revanced-apks/build-apps/releases . You'll also need to install Vanced MicroG if your phone is not rooted.
I also saw patched reddit apk there fwiw.
Wow it looks awful. I miss RIF
Tears roll down my cheeks when I think of RIF
Rest in power
We don't go to Ravenholm
Apollo for lemmy when?
if u liked RiF, Connect to Lemmy is a p good app. After messing w the settings browsing lemmy feels so much cleaner.
I've been having some html errors in Connect, I'm back on Jerboa for now. I like Connect's UI a lot more though
Same here, I like Connect but I can't load a single comment on there so for now I'm on Jerboa. TBD where I end up permanently though.
That might be fixed now, I had the same issue on Connect a short while ago, and it's working now. I'm just waiting for Sync to come out for Lemmy.
I downloaded latest .apk on apkpure a few mins ago, not fixed. Maybe it is on playstore though, but I'm not touching that
I'm trying Thunder right now and this one is very nice as well. But I'm getting the same problems as Connect.. I click on a post from my profile and it says the post doesn't exist.
At least on Thunder, it still loads the main post and I can scroll to my comment (which is how I'm replying to you. On Connect, my comment doesn't even show up and other comments are missing.
I really do like thunder though so far it's #1
I switched to the browser on my phone. All these apps are half finished right now. Which is completely fine, and understandable. But the actual site on a browser is "feature complete" and easy to use.
Was having alot of the same with Connect, then there was an update on the play store and seems soo much more stable now.
Try www.wefwef.app!
The World economic forum world economic forum app?
Wefwef is pretty much exactly that
Man I hate the official reddit app so much. Random ads look like real posts.
If you really need to access Reddit, I've been using libreddit.nl which you can install as an app like wefwef and it's ad-free :) but long live lemmy
Redreader is still working. Seems like a weird loophole, but Reddit is allowing it.
Yeah it was white listed for accessibility
hmmmm…
You can use mine
Just use another instance. You can find a list at https://farside.link
I have not gone there. I will not go there. Thank you for the post. It feels like an expose into a part of society that I will never cross paths with.
That’s exactly why they want you to use it.
I just saw the ad at first and froze up, thinking "shit Lemmy, already???"
Me too!
not yet but hopefully soon 😎
But did you get your cash price?
The reddit app is garbage compared to other offerings. Too bad they fucked the whole API thing for the 3rd party apps
Right now Relay for Reddit is working on a subscription model and has been granted a extension period. It's currently free to use. Not sure if I'll bother paying for it to stay on Reddit, but for now I can still use Reddit without the official app.
Cool. I didn't know this! At least some good news for now. I'm digging the Lemmy. It's pretty easy
You don't need to care about posters leaving if you don't show content in your app taps forehead
Good god, that content is so awful. Sports, shootings, parenting. So glad we have Lemmy. It feels more like the old internet where it's mostly tech nerd focused.
It truly is garbage
That 15% battery status is giving me anxiety by proxy.
You should be used to it by now. One of the first rules when the internet was created is all phone screenshots must be taken while the battery is low.
When the Internet was created, not only did phones not have batteries, they had their own power grid, separate from that used by other appliances.
Dude, scrolling by this on connect and panicked that the ads were already hitting Lemmy!
At this point you might as well design an app that is 100% ads and give the users a cut of the ad revenue.
Whoa there cowboy, not so fast. The users will pay to see all 100% of the ads. Heh this guy, 'give the users a cut', am I right? PATY WHERE IS MY K? WHAT DO I PAY YOU FOR?
I got rid of it 2 years ago for Apollo and tried it again briefly last month.
Somehow it got significantly worse, you can’t even choose how to sort your feed anymore.
I couldn't even get pass the login screen since I only lurked and never made an account (despite spending over a decade browsing reddit). I remember they used to let you use the app without logging in.
Holy fuck, that's what that shit looks like? That is horrible. RIP rif.
Oh wow I've not seen the official app in years. That's insane, who on earth is happy using this!?
Sadly, there's a shit ton of people who don't know any better and will stick with reddit as it slowly dies
I was so confused for a few seconds, thought there were ads in my Lemmy app…
I'd rather take the barely functioning lemmy apps over the invasive adds of the reddit app
Holy wow, I had actually forgotten how shitty the site had become. I was always ready to open it and quickly scroll a couple times to get past the initial garbage, to hopefully find something worthwhile. That ask reddit post is peak "help the AI write an article" trash.
Even ignoring the ads, it’s just an astonishingly bad piece of software. It feels like it was written in a weekend by someone who’d just finished reading Programming for Dummies.
It started as alien blue which was actually a good app back in the day. Reddit bought it and enshittified the hell out of it.
Did it even start as that? Or did Reddit just bought it and put it away and made something completely different?
This is the official Reddit app? Ewwwww.
Ooof. I'd rather use old.reddit.com on my phone's browser and that looks like shit. Really looking forward to the Sync for Lemmy app.
Me, using cleaned-up reddit on browser is the only way I'd use it. I preferred it even to RIF sometimes.
How would you clean it up for a mobile browser?
adblock everything except content on mobile browser, that's how i used to do it, nowadays i don't use reddit much so idk how it would go with the new status, i know they returned the old mobile web app but they may have removed access to nsfw on it. i even adblocked awards, chat, anything that wasn't vanilla reddit.
Back in 2021 Reddit released an update for the official app that caused scrolling to stutter, instantly heating up my battery and deplete battery life at an absurd rate. This was on Apple’s newest top phone at the time (12 Pro Max.)
I immediately knew something was fucky, so I switched to Apollo that same night. I checked back for about 3 more updates over a few weeks. During that time, Reddit never acknowledged the bug or fixed it. Since then, it looks like they’ve repeatedly caused the same issue with iOS and some android phones.
If they didn’t shit the bed back then, I’d never have discovered Apollo or realized it was better in every way - not just at not physically destroying my new phone.
And now here we are again, discovering new and better alternatives in Lemmy and decentralization thanks to Reddit’s incompetent fuckery. Thanks Reddit!
They said you can patch out the ads using revanced manager, but I'm not going to try it.
I've tried revanced but I'm not tech savvy enough to figure it out. I can't even find where to download from some of those repositories 😞
It's simple, really.
Note that I haven't actually tested this with actual Reddit app.
That's a great tutorial! Will I need to redo this process with every app update?
I hadn't used anything except my account logged in through RiF for 13 years. When I checked the front page as a guest I realized finally just how bad reddit is. All the posts were hot garbage surrounded by ads. I honestly don't know how people use reddit now.
More and more I think that might be the point. In the absence of users having control over the content they see, the only users left will be the ones who are naive, not tech savvy, and who have very high tolerances for manipulation: people who don't leave because either they don't know how, can't understand or remember a possible better alternative, or can't muster the effort.
These are incidentally also the same people who are most likely to be unable to distinguish ads from content, most likely to click on ads, and most likely to engage with click- and rage- bait content. That is: people most vulnerable to corporate predation.
It's just like scam robocalls. It's bad by design, because half the point is to immediately weed out anybody smart enough not to fall for it.
Babe charge your phone you're making me nervous
Thanks for saving me that install. Been loving Connect for Lemmy anyway
Baconreader was a perfect app in every regard
If you are on Android and have to use the official app, I recommend patching it with Revanced Manager. There's a patch that will remove the ads.
Why would you have to use the app though? What kooky series of events would line up that you able to only use it and nothing else?
Oh yeah, wait. that's why I'm here.
Something I liked about the official app, that no other seemed to have, was the ability to flip through posts, one to the next, without having to return to your feed. If anyone knows of a Lemmy app that can do this, let me know please!
The official reddit app would frequently not load images/posts/comments etc or even sometimes fully stop loading anything at all. I have never had these kind of issues with the third party apps, or much of any other apps of any type for that matter.
🤢🤮
why do you think sites want you to use apps so badly? To get around browser ad blockers.
It was absolutely unbearable to use. Had it on my phone for all of 10 minutes. Left a 1 star review and uninstalled it
Ha I'm not touching that shit
Random ads in the official reddit app appear way too often.
The Reddit app is such unusable garbage filled with annoying ads.
Oh god it's hideous
what really makes me sick is -- these fucking people are completely devoid of any taste or pride or care. it looks like absolute fucking garbage and they do not care; they're wealthy beyond belief WITH OR WITHOUT destroying reddit, but still, they must.
The official Reddit app is ill. I think it needs a chemo.
Mate, just put it to sleep.
Béééééééé...p
For me it’s all the stupid nfts.
But there's Cash Prizes!
It looks disgusting.
I’m on wefwef and was about to instantly uninstall
Same, saw the huge ad and promoted post and did a double take, like "Did I open the wrong app?".
UPDATE: Apparently Infinity still works across-the-board.
F-Droid keeps nagging me to update Infinity (which I refuse to do). Currently my Galaxy A32 5G is running v5.4.2 and it's still showing up-to-date content every time I refresh. I know from a security standpoint this is a bad idea, but until we come up with a better solution, F-Droid still has it.
ml.docilealligator.infinityforredit
SHA256
0e788e7fd58ef583b32613c61efbba5898ded0ac2aaf7c4919a3b67e61182588 *base.apk
Both the APK I download directly from F-Droid and the one I pulled from my phone via ADB share this SHA256SUM hash.
For a moment i thought i got an ad and was about to uninstall my current lemmy app instantly lol
It’s a cesspool
Def trash.
Gives me the heebie jeebies. Glad never had to use that and now never will.
Gross
Like less than 10% of the screen is covered in content, lmao
They try to justify this by claiming they’re not profitable, while at the same time wasting so much time and money on terrible features and changes.
The reason why Reddit is not profitable is because of terrible management that tries to justify their existence.
Less than - if you look OP isn't subscribed to AskReddit, so it's 0% content they actually have subscribed to.
There is literally more content in OPs battery