I tried looking at the reviews for a monitor, and when I clicked “see more reviews” I got redirected to a page asking me to login and to provide my mobile phone number (which I didn’t do for privacy reasons).
On Instagram I was confused at everyone else mentioning Instagram stories because I only have the option of uploading pictures and videos. Then I found out that it’s something you can only do if you use Instagram on a phone… I swear I’ve came across a few sites that wouldn’t even let you sign up if you were using a PC
I only ever browse social media on a PC and that’s the way it will always be. Sometimes I can’t help but feel like desktop/computer users are becoming an afterthought. Anyone else have similar feelings? 🫠
I never really need Uber, but I was going to set it up for a trip. Even though I knew I would be using my phone to get the rides, I still will only enter credit card info on a desktop with proper blockers installed. Yeah, you can’t setup an account on desktop at all.
There are Instagram proxies like imginn that you can use to new stories and posts
It’s because the apps work as black boxes stopping the end user from blocking their telemetry, advertising and tracking.
What I hate more is how companies deliberately add blocks to their websites if you’re on mobile so as to force the user to download the app.
Two of the most egregious samples I’ve seen so far is Microsoft teams that shows a banner saying “this browser is not supported”, but switching your user agent or enabling desktop mode from within your phone’s browser makes it work perfectly fine.
Another is Facebook (yuck) which displays a fake loading bar that never finishes unless you trick it the same way as with teams. Their mobile site prevents you from posting anything, commenting, viewing random posts, uploading files, or seeing notifications. If you don’t have the app installed, you’re essentially locked out of messenger because it is reluctant at opening any shared files or posts as that has to be opened through the facebook app (obviously). What’s worse is I’m prompted to log in to Facebook every time I open any link Facebook or not from within messenger.
I’d love to fully uninstall meta’s apps but I have family members that only use their apps (fuck the networking effect)
Another bad one is reddit. The amount it pushes the mobile interface while on mobile is painful, but switch to desktop mode and it all goes away.
I don’t go on it a lot anymore, but when I do it’s typically from my phone and its really gotten worse.
Shoutout to spotify who have a perfectly functional HTTP interface that inexplicably breaks when viewed on a phone. I end up using a modded client.
Facebook on mobile web is buggy AF, but the adblocker works so it’s still better.
I’d honestly love a wall of shame for websites and “tech products” that showcases their hostility to users trying to circumvent their tracking
Louis Rossmann just launched a database for something related to that. Go check it out, it might be what you’re looking for.
Yes, I hate it. In fact, I hate most of the impact of smartphones on the internet:
- I’m not giving you my phone number. Shu’up. Stop asking.
- I’m not installing your broken browser made for a single site. Aka, your “app”. And if you don’t let me check your site without that “app”, I am not doing it.
- Smart web devs can deal with different screen ratios, but those are a minority. So guess what - I get blank space on both sides of my screen!
- I’ve noticed (based on myself + acquaintances) that people have worse basic reading comprehension when using a phone than a computer. And I’m tempted to blame the sorry state of social media partially on that.
I think they get more data from your usage on mobile.
yep. tons of telemetry.
Even moreso for apps, you can still retain some control through Firefox and others on mobile, but it’s still limited.
They want to push people to apps because you have no control over how you view the site, unlike on a traditional web browser where you can tweak such things and block advertiser connections.
I think it’s also that just significantly more people own a phone than a laptop.
It’s like those demographics maps that are really just population maps.
Phones have web browsers. You can view websites easily from your phone.
Apps give them access to everything. You can request access to contact lists, even, and most people won’t even think twice to allowing access.
Ayup. Iphones at least sandbox, but even then, you’re still talking a sieve over a bucket leak-wise
Use RTINGS next time for electronics reviews. They’re so much more in-depth than any other review site; they test every single aspect of the products and lay out the info in a manner that’s easy to understand, while still providing all the technical jargon for geeks like me. And no mobile number needed, either. The site is well-optimized for desktop.
no. its one of my pet peeves that we spent decades creating sites with dynamic viewports (mobile friendly/any screen size) only for kids to wonder where the ‘app’ is for your site.
and conversely, server products created with such minimal features as to require an external app to fulfill basic functionality.
god i hate apps.
On the flip side, applications now suck because everything is a shit web wrapper. Nobody wants to develop using native UI on desktop anymore.
its the trend of everything being a service. organizations dont have on-prem data centers anymore, its all web services tied to other web services.
its all about that subscription revenue, per-process nickel-and-diming and super fast development cycles.
But they already have APIs in a lot of cases, so just wire the application to the API? Why the random HTML/JavaScript trash?
By the way I’m a web application developer. I understand SaaS, infrastructure and why it’s easier to wrap it all up but I don’t care. Why do application developers tolerate this? In some cases I produced a better version of their application by just creating the wrapper myself—they can’t even make the wrapper itself clean.
Honestly, it’s just because most native UI libraries suck to use compared to HTML/CSS/JS. For all the hate modern web stacks get, it’s brain-dead simple to get something good-looking in it.
Then there’s the business aspect of “Well, if the people who make our web UI can also make our app UI, why not?”
Fret not! Lots and lots of apps are just PWAs packaged into thin wrappers so they can be distributed through an app store. Humanity gets all, or at least most, of the benefits of the web with unmatched cross-platform support, and our Grandmothers and 12 year olds still get to tap on the Spotify and Starbucks icons. Win-win!
I’d way rather use a pwa than an election/react native/whatever app
I’m also frustrated. But at work the other day I learned that like 75% of our usage is from mobile phone users. Sometimes you just have to realize you’re in the minority; and that other people will make bad choices.
On Instagram
Funny you describe all the annoyances of web vs mobile, but visit this awful site. Instagram wont let me see anything at all, web, mobile or otherwise because I don’t and won’t have an account.
Maybe avoiding social media all together is a better idea.
They don’t prioritize mobile users, they prioritize mobile apps - easier to track and gather telemetry, easier to show ads (harder to use adblock), easier to send notifications, you can expect the user to return if they already downloaded an app.
I feel this. I prefer desktop for almost all of my posting and reading online. I only use phone when I am out and about.
Prefering a system over another is just bad design. Probably more profitable, but they shouldn’t care if I upload from my self build phone, desktop, tablet or what ever.
Agreed.
This shouldn’t really be surprising, I’d think most people’s internet usage is probably on their phone, and has been for some time.
People don’t want to sit at a desk or whatever and browse or do their socials stuff, they want to do it sat on the sofa while the TV is on or in between chores in the house.
I think the last two companies I’ve worked for, both B2C have had mobile web and app usage way higher than desktop web.
It’s all attempts at vendor lock-in because phones are more locked down than computers and more people only have just a phone.
It’s up there with how I think Youtube/Tiktok videos are an absolutely terrible way to explore deep problems.
If I have to watch a three hour video with only spoken references, I’m sorry, I’d way rather have a 300-page document with figures, graphs, and most fucking importantly god damned footnotes and endnotes.
Especially since this is the fucking internet that was built on hypertext which is like a footnote on steroids since you can directly link to the original document instead of just referencing it.
Videos are fine for lots of things, but not always long-form deep-dives into difficult and complex subjects. Often it makes sense to have a video in a lecture set up, if you’re actually trying to educate people and not just inform them, but otherwise text does fine for research.
Fuck apps and their spyware bullshit, fuck all knowledge being in videos you can’t footnote, fuck trying to turn the internet into a one-way-medium like cable TV.
there is NO social media that’s worth getting frustrated over
the first time a site does something stupid (“enter your ph # to continue!” or “disable your adblocker to continue!”) i’m out and never going back. the internet exists to provide me with things, not the other way around
Same.
There’s almost never only a single option to offer me what I’m after, so I’ll just go back to my search results or whatever and pick the next link and move on.
There’s no way in hell I’m giving some jackasses my phone number, though. I don’t even like giving people who really actually need to be able to call me my number, so why would I give some sketchy-ass website it?
Because “mobile first” design, means “PC last (if at all)”.
