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Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?

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Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?

#191

Post by bemmu »

jakevoytko wrote: post #10

Other people are saying "ads," but the story is probably more expansive. Mobile apps have better hooks for pulling people back into the app, like popup notifications. Reddit has natural lifecycle points where they can do this: when people respond to your comments or comment on your posts. They could also notify users of events like their yearly Secret Santa. I wouldn't be surprised if their engagement numbers were mu…

Also Reddit can offer IAP more easily, since users won't need to input their CC info again inside Reddit.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?

#192

Post by spians »

YPCrumble wrote: post #153
robinduckett wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A feature of the app that you can't use without buying a monthly subscription or paying £10.49, to whom it may concern.

Interestingly parent’s plug is a dark pattern to avoid dark patterns! It’s also surprising that even on HN, a place where many people write software for a living, people are avoidant of advertising paid features.

> Interestingly parent’s plug is a dark pattern to avoid dark patterns!

Sorry I didn't find any dark patterns here. If you can elaborate more on this, that would be really helpful.

> It’s also surprising that even on HN, a place where many people write software for a living, people are avoidant of advertising paid features.

Exactly! A lot of users want privacy focused - no ads apps. But many of them are hesitant to pay for it. For them, all apps should be FOSS (that means relying on good will of the developer that he will have motivation to maintain the app regularly or relying on some bug foundations) and no dev should generate revenue from their apps.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?

#193

Post by jrsdav »

bhupy wrote: post #128
nokya wrote: post #38

Reddit's obsession to constantly show me an "ad" to install the app has basically cured me from drifting and spending more time than strictly necessary on the website. I hate it so much that it triggers a negative experience everytime I visit the website and I just tend to watch links shared to me. Honestly, I thank them for that and I hope they don't remove it.

I thought I was the only one. For a while I really struggled with a crippling addiction to Reddit, and no amount of Screen Time blockers seemed to help (it’s too easy to override). Simply uninstalling the app did the trick. In the beginning I would open the mobile browser out of compulsion, but the UI was so revolting that it’s essentially cured my addiction.

I was having a similar problem, so I turned to blocking on the network level (pihole). The work arounds were annoying enough to finally deter me off the platform, circa 2016. It was such a relief to have those wasted hours of my life back, as well as abandon some of the echo chambers. It’s also shocking to see how hostile the design choices have gotten since then, so I’m glad I got out when I did.

One handy tip: Reddit I find, is still one of the best sources of user submitted content for niche hobbies, traveling, consumer advice, etc. So I use Google’s cached search results for those instances where I want to take advantage of Reddit’s information, but don’t want to actually go to the site.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?

#194

Post by simias »

dylz wrote: post #179
drawkbox wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reddit video player is one of the worst/lagging experiences of any video player since Real Player, and that had bad internet to deal with and Microsoft messing with it constantly. I usually don't like to rag on bad but highlight good, but in reddit's video player they are obviously doing too much tracking in it or it was rushed because it is not responsive many times even on a fast connection on a massive desktop…

It uses adaptive streaming (MPEG-DASH), iirc. Starts at a low bitrate and scales upward over time. Works great for Twitch-length stuff. For a 10 second gif-equivalent, you don't get enough scale up time.

There's no excuse to get such a bad quality for even low-res videos. Imgur, gfycat and Youtube manage to stream higher quality video faster on the same device on the same connection.

I also think they shouldn't even attempt to stream video under a certain bitrate, I'd sooner have a video buffer for 10s than end up with something that's unwatchable because the resolution is like 10x10.

And I'm barely exaggerating, I don't have an amazing connection but I can stream Netflix and Amazon Prime in 720p without any issue, yet I just got this on Reddit:

https://svkt.org/~simias/up/20200819-142013_redditvideo.jpg

This is not upscaled or anything, that's literally what I saw on my screen as the video was playing.

It's just half-assed, there's no other explanation really.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?

#195

Post by bjo590 »

krn wrote: post #76

The fundamental answer to what changed with Reddit over the last 3-5 years – an IPO became the main goal of the company[1](2017): > Reddit may go public by 2020, said CEO and co-founder Steve Huffman during a keynote conversation at the Internet Association’s Virtuous Circle Summit on Monday. “The time frame is pretty far out,” he admitted. However, he also argued that going public was inevitable for Reddit to both r…

Are there any other tech companies that have IPOed with the same amount of pornography content as reddit has?

Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?

#197

Post by simias »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #65
jamil7 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think that current focus of reddit is to become social media. Earlier days,reddit was focused on creating better forum,discussion platform. There is gradual change in focus ,i guess. Theres a few people talking about the "unbundling of reddit" that's going on at the moment. I forget where I read it but basically some larger communities are starting to break off again into their own platforms.

There's a lot of subreddits now that advertise their own Discord server, omitting Reddit's own attempt at hosting a chat service.

Trading a centralized proprietary platform for a different centralized proprietary platform. Sounds familiar somehow.

Beyond that, Discord is not really the same thing as Reddit. It's true that reddit tried to compete with Discord by offering their own chat service when they realized that many communities also had a Discord server, but they don't really offer the same service.

Discord is IRC, reddit is BBS/usenet/PHPBB.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?

#199

Post by nikanj »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #85

That and the layout of their "new" redesign where you go to a post and it'll show the post, 2 comments (out of 500), not even the full threads of those comments either and then just some unrelated posts and you have to click on more links just to read the actual comments and you can feel your browser choke under the weight of whatever framework they use trying to render a few bits of text. Noticed Twitter switching t…

> you can feel your browser choke under the weight of whatever framework they use trying to render a few bits of text.

Marketing is extremely pleased with the accuracy of the new metrics and analytics, even if the numbers are going down. Large ad-driven companies seem to prefer accuracy of tracking to user comfort

Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?

#200

Post by TheRealWatson »

jakevoytko wrote: post #10

Other people are saying "ads," but the story is probably more expansive. Mobile apps have better hooks for pulling people back into the app, like popup notifications. Reddit has natural lifecycle points where they can do this: when people respond to your comments or comment on your posts. They could also notify users of events like their yearly Secret Santa. I wouldn't be surprised if their engagement numbers were mu…

What you said is all true but it still boils down to getting people to see more ads. I'm not sure how big a part of their revenue Reddit Gold is.
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