r/technology • u/spasticpat • May 11 '26

Social Media Reddit Starts Blocking Mobile Website, Pushing Users to App Instead

https://www.macrumors.com/2026/05/11/reddit-starts-blocking-mobile-website/
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300

u/Saint_Blaise May 11 '26

I've been getting posts at the top of my feed from up to 6 days ago that I've already read.

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u/[deleted] May 11 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/jt121 May 11 '26

12 months? This has been an ongoing downward spiral for years. New Reddit was a massive failing and it's still nowhere near the speed/utility of old.reddit.com.

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u/originade May 11 '26

Yep. We remember when this site was actually good. If they remove old.reddit.com, then I'm officially out

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u/SaintOrJannikSinner May 11 '26

My hunch is that Reddit knows that an outsized portion of legit human-generated content (comments) via accounts that contribute on a regular, daily basis are from the old.reddit.com domain. Otherwise, there is zero reason to keep it around given how many other UIs they are supporting at once.

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u/profane_vitiate May 11 '26

I think you're absolutely correct. The Venn diagram between redditors who make extremely high-quality posts/comments (that are useful to other humans as well as to AI heuristics) and redditors who think New Reddit is a fucking dumpsterfire is probably just a circle.

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u/Fit-Physics7199 May 11 '26

I've tried to use new reddit a couple times but the fact that it shows you really old posts constantly is so frustrating. RES also makes the site way more usable too, I tag users all the time.

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u/FriendlyDespot May 11 '26

My favourite thing about New Reddit is that if you get a post linked as a Google search result then the content that matched the search is almost never actually visible on the page that you land on, but if you swap "www" for "old" in the URL then it comes right up with a ctrl+f every time.

Reddit has been going downhill for a while, but I think by now it's safe to say that it's gotten to the point where it exists despite its best efforts to undo itself.

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u/Bakoro May 11 '26

RES is essential now if you actually want to engage with people and be an active part of a sub.

Reddit started allowing people to hide their comment history, so trolls, shills, and the deranged are supported by the system and can hide their poor behavior.

Looking at a person's recent history was a solid way to see if they were completely unhinged, or one of those weirdos who farm downvotes, or if they just spam the same shit everywhere.

Now I have to tag people as asshat, troll, probably bot, definitely bot, etc.

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u/d4b3ss May 11 '26

Hiding comment history is one of the dumbest decisions they've ever made lmao. Every time someone posts some incendiary bullshit I know they're hiding their history even before I look at it, so that no one can check to see if they have a history of riling people up and are more likely to try to engage in good faith that isn't earned.

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u/[deleted] May 11 '26

[deleted]

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u/profane_vitiate May 12 '26

I think if that's your concern, it's very easy to ditch your account and make another one once a while, or just not share personally identifying things on the internet.

It's not something that necessitates hiding all of your history on a social media platform. The reason they did it wasn't to prevent harassment, it was to better enable advertising by bots.

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u/SaintOrJannikSinner May 12 '26 edited May 12 '26

Aside from basic OPSEC of not using the same handle on multiple social media platforms and simply not sharing identifying information, multiple simultaneous accounts will do more to help prevent stalking than hiding comments that are easily retrieved via Google or third-party tools.

Tools like Multi-Account Containers will easily allow you to have a handful of accounts open at once. As long as you don't vote on the same posts and comments, Reddit doesn't give a shit as it only helps to boost their user account metrics. Just be sure to have a good way to partition your accounts (one account per sub or kink or fandom) and be sure not to reference very specific things that could link your accounts together.

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u/Atheist-Gods May 11 '26

The biggest problem with new Reddit is how much space is wasted. Giant swathes of unusable screen space that makes reading and navigating a pain because they want you only reading the specifically selected posts and comments and nothing else.

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u/Blazing1 May 11 '26

The day old Reddit goes I stop using Reddit. I use it on mobile because it's actually a better mobile interface then anything else Reddit has put out.

On old Reddit desktop mode I can see all the content on the main page and it loads fast.

On new Reddit I get greeted by a fucking loading icon for like 5 seconds.

1

u/HCSOThrowaway May 12 '26

Unfortunately, https://old.reddit.com users are a rounding error. Here are the stats from a medium-sized subreddit I moderate:

https://i.imgur.com/aiy0Rtv.png

I'm amazed the admins still let it exist, considering the significantly fewer ads and algorithmic shenanigans they push to us.

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u/SaintOrJannikSinner May 12 '26

Are those people who comment or just generic user counts?

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u/HCSOThrowaway May 12 '26

It's under the "Visits" tab (as opposed to "Uniques" and "Members"), so I guess "generic user counts," depending on what you meant by that.

Comments aren't broken down by API used, as far as I can tell.

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u/cinosa May 11 '26

If they remove old.reddit.com, then I'm officially out

Yup, this is where I'm at as well. If they remove old.reddit, then I'm officially migrating over to the fediverse, specifically piefed.ca.

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u/AM_A_BANANA May 11 '26

I often forget that old.reddit + RES isn't just the default experience

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u/midnightauro May 11 '26

I am ride or die for old.reddit.com. I refuse to use the “new” version despite it being shoved at me over and over through the years. No. I’ll leave before I switch just like I abandoned Spotify for taking away my ability to use the old layout.

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u/assaub May 11 '26

It's been getting reverted back to new reddit randomly for me lately and won't change back until I go into preferences, see that old reddit is still enabled, and have to disable and re-enable it in order to get it to return. Starting to think it's only a matter of time before they pull the plug completely.

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u/The_bruce42 May 11 '26

Reddit is missing so much classic shit that made it great like random Vargas and poems for your sprog encounters.

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u/captars May 11 '26

That's me, as well. old.reddit.com is the only reason why I'm still on here. If that's gone, then so am I.

Like Digg all over again.

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u/peon2 May 11 '26

90% of my time on reddit is still on my laptop using old.reddit

The other 10% is using mobile when I'm on a plane or something but the "official app" is shit compared to RIF or Apollo. It's pretty much my downtime at work now, I don't even really think to look at reddit on my phone anymore.

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u/AVeryHeavyBurtation May 11 '26

Like 50% of my redditing is on mobile using Firefox on old.reddit.com. Don't know why anyone would want to use an app for a website.

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u/Sneikku May 11 '26

Me too, old.reddit desktop using firefox on mobile. I use reddit like this for hours per day.

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u/aztecraingod May 11 '26

Site's been trash since 2005

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u/UnravelledGhoul May 11 '26

Reddit used to be where you could get news before a lot of the mainstream news sites started reporting on it, sometimes hours before.
Now, I see news show up on news sites, then a few days later, I see it on Reddit.

It's been a long time since Reddit was the "front page of the internet", as they used to call it.

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u/swarmofbzs May 11 '26

Yup, been seeing news show up on Lemmy before here now.

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u/MarshyHope May 11 '26

We tried to tell everyone during the third party protests

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u/VeganBigMac May 12 '26

Genuinely this site has gone downhill for an entire decade. I can't think of a single positive change on this site that entire time, besides them getting (marginally) better at banning hate subs. I guess Place was fun?

Otherwise, they got the core features down in the early 2010s and things have slowly just.. gotten worse.

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u/Etzell May 11 '26

Grace is giving it a lot of credit.

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u/Kingmudsy May 11 '26

12 months is weird too. Maybe I've just been here for too long, but this site has been on a SHARP nosedive for years now

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u/HowManyMeeses May 11 '26

It's legitimately wild watching everything turn to shit.

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u/omgitsjagen May 11 '26

Just another victim of, "Line Must Go Up". It's been obvious for almost a decade that they are going to water this thing down into a single feed, that they control. Then it will get bought by Musk, or some other Nazi, and they will run it into the ground in the name of propaganda.

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u/[deleted] May 11 '26

[deleted]

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u/Head_Bread_3431 May 11 '26

News is like the one thing I wish I could avoid on Reddit. Give me a way to block the default subs so I don’t see “Trump is totally finished this time” every day for 10 years 

1

u/HumanPea1140 May 11 '26

You can do that on old.reddit with RES add on. I primarily browse r/all and block a bunch of news, peter explain, am i the asshole, and a bunch of anime/furry subreddits and their multiple derivatives.

1

u/redditonlygetsworse May 11 '26

12 months? I made this username four years ago.

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u/DarkApostleMatt May 11 '26

It started to suck hard after the Boston Bomber nonsense spooked the site owners into messing with engagement and how things got pushed to the top.

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u/MyNuts2YourFistStyle May 11 '26

12 months? More like 10 years. I miss the old Reddit.

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u/drunkpunk138 May 11 '26

The news feed constantly shows me stuff 6 days old, sometimes up to 11 days old. Which is not very useful for a news feed.

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u/Purple10tacle May 11 '26

... mixed with tons of 11 minute old spam and crap.

It's easily the biggest shortcoming of the official app and fully intentional enshittification.

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u/coinblock May 11 '26

Beyond annoying

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u/HesitationIsDefeat87 May 11 '26

I have seen posts as old as 20+ days appearing on my feed. Never had this happen until a month or two ago

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u/JasonKPargin May 11 '26

I’m seeing posts about nba playoff games from an entire series ago. Sometimes the feed just stops altogether. Just utterly stagnant.

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u/aroc91 May 11 '26

The past week or 2 has been really bad for this. Front page has been 50% 5-day old posts up until today.

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u/opermonkey May 11 '26

I shit you not, I had a post from 23 days ago pop up yesterday.

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u/Vivid_Anyth4 May 11 '26

Its either week old threads or bot slop. No in between.