cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/1032247
Finally tried the official Reddit app. It’s as bad as they say.
The only post visible between ads is one that’s been reposted thousands of times… This perfectly captures the steaming pile of shit that is the official app (and the reddit experience in general).
The official app is a horrible user experience, but the bigger issue is that most of the content is fake. Between commercial shills, political activists, social-media marketing groups hired to “increase engagement”, and various other bad actors, the site is no longer useful or differentiated. The only places that seem unaffected are smaller private subs.
I don’t know how the fediverse will prevent the same thing happening. The bad actors are just going to follow the eyeballs. They don’t care which platform is used to host their actions. There was already an instance of a group of new kbin accounts being used to mass upvote topics to appear in the hot feed here.
Definitely agree that it’s a matter of time. You forgot one thing in your list of primary content producers on reddit; bots…
So much of the front page’s content is just produced by repost/karma farming bots, especially in the biggest subreddits.
Through vigilance and a strong community that looks out for itself. Just like IRL
Seriously, why the fuck has advertising become so incredibly insidious and pervasive in recent years? I can’t go anywhere on the internet and not see ads or a warning to turn off my ad blocker or message telling me to subscribe to view the content. Worse, I can’t even be out in public in the city without having another fucking ad shoved in my face. I was recently walking downtown at 1 am or so waiting on an uber and really enjoying the cool night air, not on my phone or anything, just enjoying the moment, and I saw an insanely bright billboard advertising something.
I feel like ads are just starting to really wear on me. I’m sick of consuming and being told to consume and being manipulated in the death throes of capitalism.
Edit:spelling
Once you get used to an ad-free Reddit experience, it’s truly jarring how many ads the official Reddit app has. Same with Youtube. I have Adblock for Youtube on my computer and when I use the Youtube app on my TV I’m astounded by the number of ads being greedily shoved down my face.
I really can’t do ads. I use Blokada on my android phone and that killed all the ads from reddit regardless of which app I used, but the actual reddit app was just terrible in and of itself. There were so many better choices.
If only more people used ad blockers. Browsers should download with ad blocker extensions automatically installed imo
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I don’t think this is something new… Lots of webpages had tons of ads in the 90s and 2000’s.
Yahoo 2002: Yahoo 2002
Or this one from the wall street journal in 2000: WSJ 2000
Compare those to today: Yahoo Today
I don’t think it’s any worse today really.
It is worse, though. No Yahoo games 😭 I played that flash pool game to death.
Meanwhile my phone literally has ads in its system video player and file explorer
Wtf?? What phone is that so I can avoid it
any redmi it seems
Sounds awful. I am pretty sick of just not being able to spend a single moment without being advertised to.
yeah it sucks like imagine going to the file explorer to see a document and you get some ads like that’s next level bs lmao
Holy fuck, 90% of the screen is dedicated to ads
We found that we can push ads to up to 92% of visible area before the user starts convulsing in violent seizures.
Remember to leave a review and uninstall.
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Most people don’t have time to fritter on new tech, alt clients, etc. Honestly they’re not stupid and I resent the implication–Reddit’s just predatory. If we want an alternative to flourish, we gotta stop treating it like its a “smart people club” and being elitist about it
People go with the default “name brand” unless they have reason to think otherwise.
You search “Reddit” on the App Store, naturally most people are going to pick “Reddit” by “Reddit”. Not Apollo, or boost, or BaconReader, or RIF, or any other (absolutely amazing) third party app, unless they have some reason to think that it’s better than the official app. Which they don’t, unless someone told them otherwise, because they are conditioned to the cluttered ad-ridden garbage interface of new Reddit, and most people don’t need mod tools or accessibility features.
I’ve reclaimed many a PC for folks like you described. So clogged with bloatware, trackers, adware, etc., that the machines could hardly run. Just excruciatingly slow experiences for their owners. Most folks don’t know anything about machines or software. Microsoft’s dominance illustrates the point.
Folks go ignorantly (no offense) where they’re told. They just don’t know better and get prayed upon as a result.
Every one of them knows things I don’t. It’s just that computers are a black box to them.
one post. ONE SINGLE POST on the entire screen…
I felt visceral contempt when I saw that thread. It’s a rerun thread being answered with the wisdom of adults who are still using reddit. No fucking thanks.
most of Reddit on the popular subs are just re-runs these days
And it’s a question that’s been asked every single week for 10 years.
Also it’s kind of crazy to me the amount of traffic it gets every. Single. Time. I know they have a bot issue, but do people just like that they know they have a popular opinion and just want to see rhe up votes or is it just one of those “watch the same movie 15 times for the comfort of it” type things. Either way I find it wild.
Everyone who didn’t get their word in last time is desperate to
farm upvotes‘make themselves visible’ this time instead.
Never used the app, never plan to, but I can’t even handle the main site now. Have (diagnosed) PTSD due to religious trauma, and those fucking unblockable “He Gets Us” ads are intolerable.
As a former user of Baconreader for 11 years, and old.reddit + RES for about the same, this was what did it for me.
I refuse to be served hegetSus ads.
Yeah, it’s honestly quite upsetting. I’ve heard similar complaints from alcoholics who are trying to quit drinking being unable to block or hide ads for alcohol. Reddit’s approach to advertising is terrible as it is, but this sort of thing is just downright irresponsible and not ok at all.
I can’t think of a worse place to advertise religious ideology than reddit.
The worst part to me is the people still on Reddit complaining about the blackout because “you can scroll past the ads”, which completely misses the point
Ive seen a post in programming dev instance that those posts we were seeign, shilling for reddit was proven to be astroturfed using LLM to generate the pro reddit reply
bots reposting bots replying to bots up voting bots
and an ad
JFC. That’s like a 3/5th screen advertisement with enough room for 1 fucking post. Might as well only just show ads at that point.
Tbh I only downloaded the official app because I didn’t know there were 3rd party apps at all I only learned about the 3rd party apps when the protests started
You went from discovering 3rd party reddit apps to posting on lemmy?
Yea I guess that just goes to show just how fast reddit became shitty it’s seems like all the good memes left with the 3rd party apps Edit: spelling corrections
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Pretty sure they bought one of the 3rd parties, and then made it worse.
I’m a little shocked that RIF showed so few downloads considering how much older it was than the official app, and it originally was named “Reddit is Fun.”
Can’t quite remember when I joined reddit but I do recall it was shortly before the pandemic and I learned about reddit via YouTubers like the click and one topic
It was this bad a few months ago when I used it as well. I saw almost nothing but gambling ads.
It makes you feel that something is wrong with your device.
