I’ve recently developed a daily habit—perhaps one I should cut back on—of visiting several subreddits to keep up on things like audio production and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But I was surprised this weekend to suddenly find myself cut off; Reddit simply would not let me visit the site on my mobile phone.
Instead, a new overlay popped up, saying, “Get the app to keep using Reddit.”
There was no way to skip, bypass, or close the overlay. It did not provide any instructions or alternatives for continuing to use the mobile web version. What it did offer was a large button I could press to get the app. If I did so, the overlay told me, I would be able to “search better” and “personalize your feed”—two things I don’t care to do.
You are missing a ton of what I said.
First, YOU may not have a subreddit local to your town, but that does not mean that NOBODY does?
Agreed that Facebook is far worse, but then all the more reason to use Reddit as the lesser (albeit still) evil?
And again YOU may not read the political communities, unhelpfully named like “memes” or “comics” or “technology”, but that does not mean that NOBODY does.
The Lemmy “random” instance picker chooses lemmy.ml or hexbear.net sth like >80-90% of the time, last I checked, and if you visit Lemmy.ml you will see how the default view for someone without an account is Local (again iirc, last I checked), not All. Someone visiting from Reddit will have that as their first view, and seeing nothing worth sticking around for, and much reason to leave, your average American centrist aka niche content creator will nope right out and never return, often leaving negative feedback behind everywhere else they go (r/Redditalternatives, Bluesky, Xhitter, etc.) about their experiences on what they saw of “Lemmy”.
YOU have curated an extensive blocklist, and if you are anything at all like myself, tend to forget as time passes what the experience is like for a brand-new visitor.
I agree wholeheartedly that the ultimate goal should be to get off Reddit, but I was adding some context that sometimes people cannot do that so readily, and we here on the Threadiverse do not really welcome non-technical normies anyway. It is what it is.