Source: @MrLovenstein@mastodon.social
I’m so sick and tired of every single website and service trying to push an app on me. No, I don’t want to download your stupid shitty app, I’ve got dozens and I don’t want another one that I don’t use that interrupts me to push stupid notifications. Now get off my lawn!
Hell yeah. I was furious when I learned that you “nEed To InsTalL tHe McDoNaLds ApP FoR tHe CoDe!” for their monopoly-game. Wtf?! Just give me my fucking mcsundae-coupon right now, goddamn.
What country are you in? Here in Canada you didn’t need an app for McNopoly
Germany. I’m envious!
Same. I have to use bill.com for a contract, I swear they made their website as mobile un-friendly as possible because they push their app so hard. Like, I use you to submit one invoice a month I don’t need an app to do that, fuck off.
They can’t track your every interest to sell to other assholes if you don’t use their software though.
Now, don’t you feel sorry for the poor companies who can’t make money off of you when you’re on sites completely unrelated to theirs?
It just breaks my heart.
Android tried to fix this issue, no clue if anyone uses it through
https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/7683278?hl=en#zippy=
…what issue? It isn’t technical. I just don’t want another stupid shitty app.
The issue of companies wanting to force apps while you don’t want another app. Instant apps are a halfway point between a webpage and having to download an app, the app’s never actually installed on your phone. It’s not much different than a site with heavy CSS.
Screw a midpoint. Those sites push their apps by sabotaging their websites because they have financial incentives to fuck with people and they can scrape more data with an app. No middle ground, no compromise.
- sets browser to request the desktop site instead *
website immediately forgets this setting
Welcome new visitor! Have you subscribed to our newsletter yet?
You have run out of free articles
shudders
laughs in Firefox Mobile
Thank the gods for Firefox.
I will never use Pinterest because of this shit. I just want to see the pic I found on Google, I will not download your bullshit to see it.
Same with tiktok. they used to let you watch videos without the app, now they won’t let you unmute the video. one of my frineds keeps trying to send me tiktoks and i’m like, this is worthless.
No, it works. You just slide a puzzle piece over, then it reloads. Then it plays muted, you have to unmute it and then it’s half-way through so you have to restart the video. There see, easy! And by the time you get to watch it in a tiny ass screen you have already seen it muted about 3-5 times give or take.
Threads is view-only without the app, so no using it on PC. Probably because they wouldn’t be able to get as much data. I would never use it anyway but it’s so stupid.
You can at least view threads without logging in? That’s better than instagram usually forces login. Still won’t use it.
And instagram is still a lot better than Twitter which just redirects you to nothing at all. Now I just wish news sites would stop linking to twitter because I can’t look at any of the garbage that’s been posted.
instagram usually doesn’t for just viewing profiles or posts but anything past that it’ll prompt you and there’s a big ass banner at the bottom asking you to sign in
After viewing a few posts it almost always blocks and asks me to login. For years. I just don’t go on Instagram anymore as a result. Twitter and reddit, take notice
I feel like an idiot for not knowing this, but website do you go to to read Threads?
I tried going to “threads.net” but it’s just a link to download the app?
You can view threads profiles by typing threads.net/@username, for example threads.net/@meta
Sounds about right. Their site is bad, the app is bad… pure profit driven.
Using sh.itjust.works with the compact is actually nice on desktop.
Wefwef on mobile
I actively avoid sites that do this, if I find that I’m on the site enough to Warrant getting the app I’ll get the app. I actually didn’t realize that Reddit enforced this until about 5 or 6 months ago because they didn’t enforce that when I first started using reddit, I had already moved over to third party applications before they implemented the system. Not that it matters much anymore, I uninstalled any apps I had for the platform and blocked it for the house. I’m done with it
I wish I could act so decisively on that, but I still need Reddit access for the wisdom of others on solving issues.
So instead I just make sure I only browse it with Firefox, using uBlock Origin to prevent them from getting ad revenue.
That’s where I’m at with reddit, and where I’ve been with Facebook for years. Though, interestingly, Slim Social for Facebook has gotten around this quite well for Facebook, for everything except for messages until very recently, where you have to ask for the desktop site. Maybe someone can come up with something similar for reddit…
This is the meme that made me create an account here. Barely using reddit now, but I noticed these last days they were pushing lukewarm content to the top. And a lot of content on phone web browsers was/is locked, could only read the first 2 or 3 answers.
And the quality of discussion gets lower every time I go on. Has been for years, incrementally, but the rate really increased after June 30. I used to be able to get pretty far down through 4 or 5 worldnews threads before I ran into something so stupid I closed the entire window, but now it happens on just about every thread I open.
I’ve mainly used Reddit on PC and only used apps for porn (because in-app autoplay is so much better). Them disabling NSFW from API completely makes it completely useless for latter. Really hoping lemmy becomes the new big thing where you can scroll, comment, and jerk off. Possibly at the same time.
App-less bitch has a nice ring to it, I might start using that lol
This is extremely true for modern social media sites. Normal news sites used to push their apps too, but I guess this fad has passed.
Social media? Bitch, this is the average restaurant experience now! OH We HaVe OuR meNu On OuR aPp
Yeah and you have no goddamn signal here GIVE ME A FUCKEN MENU
Ugh for the longest time the investment firm I use had one product locked away on their app. Thankfully I checked today and I can sign up and use it on the web!
Yeah, it sucks because you can do really cool stuff with web apps these days but no, instead I need 140 native apps for basically every mobile service because their mobile websites are abhorrently designed and basically only exist to point you towards the app.
Oh, don’t worry. All those “native” apps are just using chrome webview to display some webapp.
Oh, I’m fully aware. That’s honestly the kicker, they could host those apps on the web and have me be able to access everything through my browser, but no, instead I have to install their stupid apps just so they can harvest my data.
Try Sink It for Reddit, it’s a Safari extension that removes those nuisances
Do you really want to use the website, if you really need an extension because of that bullshit?
It’s so easy nowadays to slap some bootstrap and Angular together to build a web frontend. It will work on every device if you don’t do crazy cutting-edge shit. I cannot comprehend why companies dig native apps so much.
D A T A H A R V E S T I N G
^ this. your browser is a user agent, it’s working for you, to protect you from any schmuck who you have the misfortune of visiting. it has strict built-in privacy and security guarantees, which, while in no way interfere with the app’s primary functionality, do interfere in their marketing bullshit and other kinds of spying.
with apps, you have none of that protective layer, instead there is a certain degree of implied trust which these parties love to abuse.
With a native app, the only thing you really need to send back and forth is some JSON data and let the app do the formatting for you. It’s a much better arrangement when your target demographic includes those with bad internet.
you can do that with a browser too. with service workers, it can also run without an internet connection and/or indefinitely cache the ui part so that it’s also just a json api. most websites already work in a very similar way, and even if it’s not intentionally set up this way, your browser will do its best to make it like this to keep your user experience snappy.
your browser just also protects you from certain level of system access that shouldn’t be granted to any random website you visit, and that’s what these apps want.
How is that any different from a web site? There are multiple caches between the browser and the server. The initial load (assuming a prior visit and no updates since) may be smaller than 1kB.
