Finally tried the official Reddit app. It’s as bad as they say.
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Oh god it’s hideous
At first I thought that was someone posting on lemmy… freaked me out, and I started looking for how to ban the content. 😂😂
now what if someone hacked the official reddit app to work on lemmy
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.
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.
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.
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.apkBoth the APK I download directly from F-Droid and the one I pulled from my phone via ADB share this SHA256SUM hash.
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?
deleted by creator
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.
It’s a cesspool
But there’s Cash Prizes!
Gives me the heebie jeebies. Glad never had to use that and now never will.
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!
Baconreader was a perfect app in every regard
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
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.
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.
11 years on Reddit and I didn’t know karma helped get to frontpage faster. I had 660k comment karma…
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.
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.
Wow I’m sorry. My Reddit app just stopped working and the app said “hey what about Lemmy” so now I’m here.
My guess is someone who really, really, really wants you to see the advertisements. With a little bit of content on the side.
Would you like some usable content with your ads?
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).
I was so confused for a few seconds, thought there were ads in my Lemmy app…
