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Comment by bboygravity | Hacker News Reader

Even if you do use a standard browser, companies will force you to use an app by making there website broken (on purpose?).

Random recent example: Nike. Popping useless errors upon checkout in the webshop. Support: "oh, we're so sorry, just try the app, k bye".

Another example of major companies with broken websites more often than not: (European) airline booking websites.

And major companies think this is totally fine and doesn't damage their brand? I mean not being able to create a functioning website with unlimited funds in 2024 is not a bad look?!

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I can show some forgiveness to airlines, because they simply outsource it to some agency somewhere.

But I have zero sympathy for giants, like Slack. If I do a "Request the Desktop Site", then it suddenly works(albeit with lot of scrolling) on my Firefox(iOS), but if I disable the "Request the Desktop Site", then it blocks everything and forces me to download the app from AppStore.

Sadly, the downloaded app looks like an optimized mobile version of the site.

That seems backwards to me. Airlines are far more important than Slack, which is why they are regulated and Slack is not. They deserve no forgiveness for denying you service if you use an ad blocker, making you jump through ridiculous hoops to get a good recaptcha score, rejecting transactions so you have to re-buy a at higher price, or any other kind of easily fixable accessibility offence.

Reddit is another example where they've broken the mobile browser experience, to send you to another app. Arguably broken, but in different ways.

LinkedIn, leaders in deceptive design (though given recent HN on internal situation, a more favorable interpretation may be that they can't handle their own bloat and it shows).

> LinkedIn, leaders in deceptive design

Oh, absolutely. One example: You want to connect with someone, and it'll throw up a dialog box on whether you want to add a note, with two buttons "Add Note", "Send". If you now decide that you don't want to connect after all, or want to look up something before composing the note, and close the dialog instead - it still sends the connection request.

My response, "why should I trust you with greater access to my phone when you can't make your website work? How do I know you aren't bundling malware? Considering you are obviously using unqualified developers."

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