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

Post by dageshi » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 2:08 PM UTC

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #211

halfFact wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the issue that I find Reddit extremely useful to become proficient. I knew what problems my tomatoes were having the moment it started. I learned about blueberries needing something stronger than coffee.(and more) I learned what microcontrollers are popular in the enterprise world by lurking. I got some extremely useful information in a table form which was impossible to find in a Google search. I suppose I ju…

I completely and totally disagree. Reddit is of no benefit for anything you could just Google. Reddit's commenting dynamics create a false consensus around whatever the first thing that a bunch of people who Googled it can not disagree to. That's bad enough but when you start talking about subjects that have any degree of subjectiveness people's desire to have their world view confirmed abounds and it becomes even wo…

Post by badassiel » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 2:09 PM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #55

nevf1 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, I think ads is just another way of saying monetization. The app has lots of annoying notifications like "You might like...", "You got 100 upvotes", etc which, when you engage with more, they make more money through ads, coins etc. Your attention, retention and engagement is a lot easier to manage and increase through an app than it is through website.

Instead of direct monetization, they probably measure by engagement. If a service has a permanent presence on your device, you get a LOT more engagement and recurring visits than a web version. Websites on mobile are one-time, visit-and-forget/move on things. I'd love to be proven wrong though; what websites see daily, recurring, long time active usage? Also not to be underestimated is that a mobile app will always h…

Post by whywhywhywhy » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 2:12 PM UTC

SimeVidas wrote: post #212

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…

The problem is that they don’t let you pay for the service. They show that algorithmic stuff to increase engagement. Of course, if they show related content so close by, people are going to check it out more often. You can’t really argue against that. What they could do is have a paid tier. Instead of paying with engagement, you’d pay money to have the better UI. But they don’t want to provide that option at all.

Post by Macha » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 2:12 PM UTC

jamil7 wrote: post #5

Yeah ads. If you're on iOS check out Apollo, made by a solo developer and does not display ads. I'm not sure what the equivalent on Android would be (someone chime in if you know).

Post by jw1224 » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 2:14 PM UTC

chiyc wrote: post #232

braythwayt wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s interesting to compare Quora and Stack Overflow. They both are about questions and answers, and they both set out to use interaction design and aggressive curation to create a high-quality Q&A resource. But despite having similar goals and a willingness to experiment with behavioural patterns, they ended up with incredibly different experiences.

I used to really enjoy reading responses on Quora, but at some point, it seems to have devolved into pretty low quality spam and self-promotion.