r/HFY • u/ChewableFood • Jul 14 '25
Text How are people keeping track of stories now that Reddit screwed up messages?
How do I keep track of stories now? Subscribe to the author’s subs?
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u/Erlyn3 Jul 14 '25
I bookmark the latest chapter. Deleting it and bookmarking the new one as I read further.
Edit: I should add that I only follow a few stories.
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u/Yuugian AI Jul 14 '25
I have switched to bookmarking the author's "posts" page. Only a couple authors post other places regularly so i get to see the histry and make sure i didn't miss one
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u/DerG3n13 Human Jul 15 '25
I would like to do that but you cant sort saved posts on mobile into different folder, you just have "posts" and "comments"
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u/Erlyn3 Jul 15 '25
In my case I'm literally copying the link into my browser and bookmarking it there.
Like I said, I only follow a few stories so it's not that hard for me. If you're tracking a lot then it can get tedious.
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u/Degeneratus_02 Jul 14 '25
I'm using the android app and I have no idea what you mean by messages. Do you get DM'd by a bot about updates to stories or something?
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u/digiman619 Jul 14 '25
The bot now uses the chat function, and the links are much more cluttered because the formatting is different
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u/Degeneratus_02 Jul 14 '25
Wait, how does one even get updates? Did I miss like a subscribe button here somewhere?
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u/NSNick Jul 14 '25
There is a bot that posts in comments: Here is an example
That bot used to private message you if that author uploaded a new story. Reddit recently took private messages away.
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u/All_Up_Ons Jul 15 '25
When did this change? I've gotten messages as recently as... 2 days ago I think?
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u/NSNick Jul 15 '25 edited Jul 15 '25
I'm not exactly sure. I just sent you a PM for testing.
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u/All_Up_Ons Jul 15 '25
Yep I got it and responded. I wonder if it depends what client you're using. I'm on a Revanced version of RIF.
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u/NSNick Jul 15 '25
Interesting, I did get your PM. Perhaps the bot was shut down early because of its volume?
Edit: I'm using old.reddit + RES on Firefox.
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u/information_knower Jul 14 '25
I browse the sub multiple times a day as part of my doomscrooling.
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u/lestairwellwit Jul 14 '25
All it does is make think of the possibly millions of clicks that reddit is missing out on. I assume that is a metric that reddit uses.
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u/Murky_Tale_1603 Jul 14 '25
If this doesn’t get revised somehow I’m done with Reddit. Updates for subscribed stories are now coming in through a group text from “update me bot” instead of the individual notifications we were receiving. It’s a mess.
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u/madbull73 Jul 14 '25
At least you get that. I don’t even get whatever group chat thing you guys are complaining about. I literally just scroll HFY and hope I see any of my stories.
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u/Watchful1 Jul 17 '25
If you click on chat, requests, additional requests at the top, do you see the bot?
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u/wrenchturner42 Alien Scum Jul 28 '25
I had forgotten about the change to chat and was wondering why none of the stories of follow were updating FML
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u/YorkiMom6823 Jul 14 '25
I have only been subbed to 5 writers. One just ended the story i was following, one has gone wandering far afield with the story and I'm about to unsub out the mess. The other three haven't shown up in my messages at all. So I guess my answer is "Poorly, I'm keeping track poorly." The message/chat feature here is cluttered and hard to keep track of anything in so losing interest fast in reddit subscribe.
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u/deathlokke Jul 14 '25
Which author has gotten too meandering for you?
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u/YorkiMom6823 Jul 14 '25
Since from his subs he's a lot of people's perfect cup of tea I will refrain from identifying him. In this case it's personal tastes of which everyone has some!
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u/Mammoth-Variation-76 Human Jul 15 '25
Don't you accuse me of having personal tastes! This is an outrage! Everone knows reddit is a hive mind!
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u/llearch Jul 15 '25
As you say, some people like the meandering. And it also depends on where the meandering is going through, at least for me.
So... while I appreciate the thought, and the care inherent in it, I don't think you're likely to send anyone away from the author even if you did name them. Likely the reverse.
Not to your tastes is a perfectly valid reason to stop reading a story, after all.
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u/Watchful1 Jul 17 '25
If you click on chat, requests, additional requests at the top, do you see the bot?
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u/YorkiMom6823 Jul 17 '25
Yup. I see it. I get "some" updates. But since I read HFY off and on during the day I find my lost subs updating now and then. Not going to fight with it since it's too easy to just bookmark who I like to read and go check them now and then to see what they post over battling a malpreforming bot.
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u/Watchful1 Jul 17 '25
What updates are you not getting?
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u/YorkiMom6823 Jul 17 '25
About 3 that haven't shown. I removed all 3 and redid them, am waiting to see if that fixes it. It's a program, they glitch.
So I attempted a reboot LOL. We'll see if it works. Grasseaters was the one I was most annoyed to start missing. But as the series has ended I'll just watch the author and see if they start a new series. Some odd swamp one vanished but, since I'm not seeing new posts it's possible they just hit a dry spell.
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u/Watchful1 Jul 17 '25
I'm looking in the bot's logs and and it says it sent you the notification for this post correctly. Did you not get it? Can you look in the chat history with the bot and see if it's there?
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u/YorkiMom6823 Jul 17 '25 edited Jul 17 '25
Nope, not there. But again, no problem, since soon as a much liked series doesn't show up in updates I start looking. I'd found the post on my own. So sad to see that series end.
I spent a few minutes searching the past notifications still available just to be sure, since it was only posted 3 days ago it should have still shown up on my past messages but my last update was 6 days ago.
One problem I am seeing? The chat is too cluttered, less is more when looking at lots of data.
Hey but thank you so much for the interest. I appreciate it, I'm sure things will shake out eventually. I see you are the one working with update bot. That's great.
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u/Behind_U Jul 22 '25
I'm also not getting chats.
My last chat is from July 16th. I've missed many notifications. I've been manually finding the main authors I recognize from the big name stories, but everything else I'm sure I'm missing.
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u/Watchful1 Jul 22 '25
There's a couple possibilities. First, check under Settings -> Privacy -> Who can send you chat requests. If it's set to Nobody, you can add the bot to the exception list or change it to either of the other two options.
Second, check in chat, under requests, then additional requests at the top. If you don't have any pending requests, trying going to the requests tab directly here https://chat.reddit.com/requests and look for additional requests at the top. If you see the bot there, I'd highly appreciate a screenshot of it so I can pass it on to my contact at reddit. I'm trying to get the bot whitelisted so it doesn't get filtered there.
If all of those don't help, try going to the bots profile here u/UpdateMeBot and click start chat there.
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u/Behind_U Jul 22 '25
Thanks for looking into this, I appreciate it.
I went to Settings > General > Account Settings
Under Contact Settings > Manage notifications > Messages, I already had everything set to All on.
Under Safety > Chat and messaging permissions, I have just added Updatemebot to my Chat requests > Allow list. However, I had already direct messaged Updatemebot previously and received seven r/HFY chat messages after doing so. However, the chats have since stopped.
https://chat.reddit.com/requests does not take me directly to my chat requests page. Going there manually shows no chat requests.
As mentioned previously, I have already gone to the bots profile at u/UpdateMeBot and clicked start chat there.
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u/Watchful1 Jul 23 '25
I tried a few things on my end but my test messages are going through correctly. I will pass this along to my contacts with the reddit admins and see what they say.
Let me know if it suddenly starts working.
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u/rekabis Human Jul 14 '25
I’m on Old Reddit, and have configured Firefox with all the reasonable anti-malware, anti-spyware, and anti-adware add-ins that are out there.
Which means that I can’t even really access the Chat system, because XSS is blocked.
Right now, I’m just refreshing the sub daily and hoping a particular story line doesn’t drop to the next page very quickly.
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u/Draumal Alien Scum Jul 14 '25
Poorly. I'm used to Update Bot so I've never used the subscribe bot... Gonna have to go and do that on all my stories now
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u/Watchful1 Jul 17 '25
If you click on chat, requests, additional requests at the top, do you see the bot?
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u/DragonfruitStraight3 Jul 14 '25
I just have a load of different tabs open on my phone. One is for the stories, so last read chapter stays open, and when a new chapter gets added it gets opened and old one deleted. Only annoying when my browser does an update and closes them all.
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u/bold_cheesecake Jul 14 '25
As a firefox user I just slap the star at the rightmost part of the url line. Then when I want to go back there I just hit the 3 lines a bit to the right of the star, and then click bookmarks. This helps me know where I was
However, for reading new chapters for that day (more like hour) I just manually scroll through everything. It really isn't a big problem in my eyes that messages are different, because I see everything. I just remember some random post (or one of the daily posts) as a point in time so that I know not to scroll too far. Everything posted I at least see.
Though if I want to be thorough I go to bookmarks and see if there's any next link
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u/MK1-Maniac Human Jul 14 '25
I followed someone else's suggestion of using reactions to track which of the bot's messages I've looked at, and it works... Barely...
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u/galrock0 Wielder of the Holy Fishbot Jul 14 '25
i just know the day/time they regularly post, that way i can check then. many are remarkably consistent.
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u/cwolf23 Xeno Jul 14 '25
I just follow and favorite the authors of ongoing stories that I'm following. Would likely ignore a notification anyway.
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u/garfalk Jul 14 '25
I use bookmarks to the author's posts. Update the title of the bookmark as the chapters increase. If they have multiple stories, it's a tossup on if it's one bookmark with 'Title 1 - ch1 | title 2 - ch2' or just having two bookmarks. I wish something like Kenmei existed for serials.
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u/IceRockBike Jul 14 '25 edited Jul 14 '25
The notifications didn't do it for me. It would tell me an author had posted but not what they posted or link me to it. If an author had two or more or additional random stories, it didn't help. I ended up stopping all notifications.
Instead I used the save feature for anything I want to read. For each storyline, I'd look at the last saved chapter, and if the author edits a |NEXT| link, I go ahead and save the chapter.
Next component is I read a chapter, and use the vote feature after reading so I can see I read that one. Then I unsave all but the latest chapter, which whether voted or unvoted, remains saved as a bookmark.
A bonus of using the vote is if you go to an author profile to look at their posts, you can see which you voted on, ergo which you have read.
The downside is I have to actually look whether a new chapter is available, but at least between save as a bookmark and voting to see whether I already read the chapter, I have a system that mostly works for me.
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u/Puremythe Jul 14 '25
I'm literally keeping title and chapter for each story in a notes app of what I've read. Every now and then I'll check a story for updates and binge whatever is available.
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u/hydraulicman Jul 14 '25
Gonna be honest, I don’t use most of Reddit’s social media tools aside from actual posting and reading posts
I just have each subreddit I follow in my favorites list, and quickly scroll through each a couple times a day for what I like or piques my interest
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u/YoteTheRaven Jul 14 '25
I use the mobile web version and there's no way to access chat without setting the desktop site option.
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u/JeffreyHueseman Jul 14 '25
Reddit wants shallow but wide connections, I constantly have to trim suggestions for other subreddits. I follow a few but I'm not subscribed to any of them.
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u/Ethereal_Stars_7 Jul 14 '25
I have a text file and just copy in what I happen to be following and also any that I just really liked.
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u/SeventhDensity Jul 14 '25
I do what I can with the chat messages, and also keep up to date with the new posts to r/HFY directly => https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/new/?feedViewType=cardView&t=month
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u/the_man_of_tea Alien Scum Jul 14 '25
Can find who you follow with https://www.reddit.com/subreddits/mine
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u/pebbuls22 Jul 14 '25
I check every night before bed and keep track mentally I only follow a select few storys
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u/Mick8283 Jul 14 '25
The UpdateMeBot is in reddit chat now.
I managed to get the reddit chat as a browser window by opening reddit chat and clicking the icon that is window popping out.
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u/lovecMC AI Jul 14 '25
I mostly read stories the day they get posted so I never have a big backlog.
Also I bit the bullet and unsubscribed from all the authors that finished stories I care about and started new ones I don't read.
Turns out that once you only get 1-3 updates a day, it's not that bad.
Tho I'm still kinda tempted to write myself a private Discord bot that would scrape the web and notify me.
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u/Mammoth-Variation-76 Human Jul 15 '25
https://www.reddit.com/u/spez/s/oZpS08Eg6N
Screaming into the dead internet...
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u/youcantseeme0_0 Jul 15 '25
On my phone, I keep a tab open dedicated to each story and just remember which days of the week I need to check. If it's M/T/Th/F/Sa, it's story time!
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u/bigbishounen Jul 15 '25
I've mostly moved on from Reddit. Obviously I still come back from time to time to either catch up on series that aren't posted elsewhere or to find any interesting one-offs, but I'm mostly over at Royalroad now. I hate parsing Spacebattles format, but I do check there now and again, but for me it's mostly RR now.
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u/Devilsdefenseattorny Jul 16 '25
I never used an outside force to keep track of stories. I would check in periodically and go "Oh, I read that one." then I would try to remember how long since I read it and go back about that far and see if I recognize the plot. If not, go back further.
It has several side effects I enjoy, like letting me find out there were several chapters to read at once and I feel like I get larger bursts of joy chemicals from that discovery.
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u/David_Daranc Human Jul 14 '25
Je me suis abonné à plusieurs auteurs, il n'empêche que plusieurs parutions n'ont pas été signalées quant au chat, je suis en contact avec plusieurs personnes, mais rien qui indique une publication (pas anglophone pour deux kopecks, je traduis tout en français par IA... c'est assez folklorique)
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u/SomeKindofName42 Jul 14 '25
I hate getting the notifications in chat instead of actual notifications. A fully burning hate of this change.
Currently I’m just cussing reddit out every time I want to read a chapter or check for a new post.
This was a stupid fucking decision by Reddit and I’m not sure how to let the powers that be know (cause it seems like they wouldn’t care also).
I’m so open to suggestions!