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Comment by mgraczyk | Hacker News Reader

Off topic: Why does Scribd have a perfectly functional mobile site that allows me to read half the PDF before rudely graying out my screen and insisting that I download their app to finish? I was reading with my phone rotated to landscape so at first I couldn't even see the pop up, the PDF just went gray. I call that borderline psychological abuse. At the very least I'm going to subconsciously associate the Scribd brand with that horrible experience.

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I'm actually really unclear on what alleged value Scribd might bring to users. Why do people even use it and/or link to it?

As others said, I already have a PDF reader, and unsurprisingly, it works better than Scribd.

It's free pdf hosting.

Actually, PDFy is way, way better ...

https://pdf.yt

I believe it used to be quite useful when your only option to read PDFs was Acrobat which was slow and would often lock up your browser while the plugin loaded.

Now that both Firefox and Chrome include built in PDF readers and we've also got other options like SumatraPDF, I see little value in Scribd any more.

It's easy to host a pdf on it. Most file sharing sites have countdowns / ads / gates to entry instead of just showing the content.

Except Scribd just doesn't show it on mobile...

> I'm actually really unclear on what alleged value Scribd might bring to users. Why do people even use it and/or link to it?

I think it's got something to do with how it's a Y Combinator graduate.

PDF submissions get mirrored to Scribd, as a YC perk. This submission was Scribd first.

The software used to put an additional link to Scribd after each pdf link, but we stopped that a long time ago. I assume that's what you're referring to, because there was never (and isn't) anything else along those lines that I know of.

I think that a link to a PDF will be converted to a Scribd link by the YCombinator software because scribd is a ycombinator company.

That might not still happen.

They have a mistaken belief that it's a PDF host. It's not, in the words of its founder.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8034431

If users disagree with the founder about what the utility of the product is, the founder is wrong, not the users.

I hope you got a lot of upvotes for mentioning this invaluable wisdom.

Restricted access and thereby monetization.

Some years ago, while helping a relative out, I saw this first hand with a bunch of Joomla documentation that had been removed to behind its paywall.

(Not that I hadn't already reached this opinion, on a more general basis.)

P.S. I would welcome a non-Scribd link to the letter. I've reached the point where I refuse to run/use Scribd. The monetization is one thing; the horrible UI and my lack of trust in it is another and is the basis for this decision.

I've always associated them with horrible experience. I groan whenever I see Scribd instead of just a link to the PDFs. I have a good PDF viewer, thank you. In fact, I have several.

Scribd is "Hacker News" quality. They're one of the HN venture capital funded companies.

Puts a different spin on it, doesn't it?

Not really. It's still a sucky site that's worse than what we had before.

You must have a much lower expectation of "Hacker News" quality than I do. Has scribd ever had a good user experience? I've come across them once in a while for years and never liked it at all.

No? I don't expect every such company to be amazing.

This. So many solutions in search of problems.

For years I've been avoiding Scribd. They are like experts exchange or quora: doing anything they can to get you to sign up and become beholden to their well furnished cage. Many times I've been in search of an odd PDF, found it on Scribd, only to have 99% of it unreadable.

I hate Scribd.

Scribd is a terrible service and never once in my life have I said "oh good a Scribd link!". Every modern browser has a PDF viewer built in and I would hope people on HN are using updated browsers. It continues to baffle me as to why people use Scribd.

Perfectly functional? Not for me [1]. I had to open the document on a laptop because all I got on mobile was pixelated half-rendered gibberish. Attn: dang, HN should pop a dialog recommending against a submission to scribd.

There's also weighing that against getting the content onto HN if scribd is the only place it is found.

[1] Android 4.2.2, Firefox Android 33.1, Opera Mini 7.6.1

kefka said:

> Scribd is "Hacker News" quality. They're one of the HN venture capital funded companies.

I agree with @nsomaru that it would be great to submit PDFs rather that Scribd links, especially since the HN guidelines say the original document should be submitted. On the other hand, I'm not sure if HN wants to bypass a YC-funded company.

I don't think it should make any difference what relations the companies have. Scribd was less bad than Adobe plugin lockups. Scribd is more bad than current solutions. They can improve their experience, or not. Right now, I don't see the usefulness.

HN rehosts PDF links on Scribd, last I checked.

I mean except that it's not actually meant to be a pdf host. Hasn't been in years.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8034431

I opened it on my desktop, and I for one thought the 720 point font was a lovely and refreshing departure from the standard web-presented text so many sites seem to lazily impose on us. :/

The same here. Very, very frustrating.

Because OMG APPS!

Seriously, apps are great but 90% of the apps out there would be just fine as mobile websites.

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