Felt like they were doing that for a while. It's why I went on Boost. I refused to be pushed onto their mobile app.

Actually yes. When i began ussing reddit about some years ago i was a lurker on the mobile browser. Then they started pesterin for me to make an account at very much every turn of the corner. Then they started blocking various fucktionalities like visiting subs and blocking nsfw stuff. So i made an account and the subs where still unaccsesible saying something like "this comunity is abailable in the app" an at random too. So i downloaded the app. Used it a couple of months, then learned rif existed and never looked back. Tl;DR: Yes redit has been realistcally unusable on moblie browser for years now. At least for me. Dont know how others manage to use it like that.

Oh, for sure! Reddit was the only thing making Google searches tolerable. I have a feeling it's only going to get worse before it gets better. Lemmy seems to be growing rapidly though, so with any luck it'll become the go to site for searches.

In the meantime, have you heard of Archive.org? It's a giant archive of things on the internet, it's a phenomenal resource for deleted Reddit posts or comments (I've found that old.reddit links tend to work better because of how comments are loaded). Google's search cache is also handy (especially if no one thought to have the page you need archived, but Google keeps directing you to it). It's a fair bit faster than Archive.org and usually has what you're looking for if google directed you the the page, but it can be hit or miss for older content because it's less of an archive and more the last time the search engine looked at the page. CachedView.Com makes it super easy to check both and has been invaluable the last few weeks.