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Reddit experimenting with blocking mobile browsers (old.reddit.com)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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As quoted from the linked post.

It looks like you’re part of one of our experiments. The logged-in mobile web experience is currently unavailable for a portion of users. To access the site you can log on via desktop, the mobile apps, or wait for the experiment to conclude.

This is separate from the API issue. The are actually going to BLOCK you from even viewing reddit on your phone without using the official app.

Archive.org link in case the post is removed.

https://web.archive.org/save/https%3A%2F%2Fold.reddit.com%2Fr%2Fhelp%2Fcomments%2F135tly1%2Fhelpdid_reddit_just_destroy_mobile_browser_access%2Fjim40zg%2F

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I had no idea that this was happening. But it makes sense with the decision they just made. I'm guessing they disabled X number of users on the mobile site that logged in, and tracked how many X users were converted to the Official Reddit App because of that.

That way they can predict how many users they will lose to the API change (roughly) and made a business calculation that the lost users were worth it. I'd be astounded if they didn't also have a sorting for 'value' of users as well and weighted the calculation with how many high value vs low value users didn't convert.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Yeah… except that users that only use Reddit on mobile browsers are going to be the ones who refused to use any app at all and will probably not use it on mobile any longer.