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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?

#61

Post by mlang23 »

aphroz wrote: post #33

Because they need your data. I don't understand how a website with such bad UX can rank so well when Google is now calculating CLS and other parameters like this. Reddit is a mystery to me.

The UX made me quit reddit. I delt with it (with a screen reader) for a few months. Then, I submitted a PR on GitHub to improve the accessibility of the site (just a very small addition). Then my PR got ignored for a few months. So I commented that I will delete my PR since it is obviously not welcome. Then I got some comments asking me to not do so, because accessibility is supposedly important now. A few months later, still no action. So I deleted my reddit account, because there was really no point in continuing to hurt myself with their terrible UX.

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

#62

Post by veqz »

Yeah, it's annoying. I've also seen them block entire subreddits for mobile. E.g. this is what I see on my Android phone when trying to read r/Europe: https://veqz.net/reddit_block_europe.jpg («This community is available in the app»).

My two go-to solutions are: 1. Use old.reddit.com/ 2. Stop using reddit

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

#64

Post by polote »

Reddit as a social network has two goals:

- Make more money than last quarter

- Having more user engaged than last quarter

Having user engaged is much easier when you have the app installed, as they can send you push notification. As a result of that, the number of users on the mobile web version is probably very low, so they don't put a lot of effort on the product and would probably love to deprecate it.

They also probably don't make the effort to optimize the monetization of those users, as they are so few, so they push them to use the app.

And above all HN users are probably not the ones who click the most on ads, so they don't care if you use reddit or not as you will not bring them any revenue.

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

#65

Post by Cthulhu_ »

jamil7 wrote: post #30
varbhat wrote: post #29

On mobile, I use 1) https://i.reddit.com 2) https://github.com/Docile-Alligator/Infinity-For-Reddit I don't use neither the official bloated site nor official Android app. They are way much animated, bloated,slow. 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.

> 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.

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

#66

Post by julianwachholz »

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…

Yet all of this could also be easily done with a PWA that could present with a much less intrusive "add to homescreen" bar.

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

#67

Post by anoncake »

simias wrote: post #56

Reddit has been very aggressive over the past few years to increase retention. They're barely a link aggregator anymore, they try to self-host as much content as possible. Images, videos, they even attempted to make user-pages à la Facebook (no idea if this caught on). They're competing with Facebook and Instagram, not Hacker News. On paper that's not necessarily bad, but they don't hesitate to make the user experien…

> And yeah, as you point out, the mobile experience on a browser is atrocious. Especially if like me you're only a lurker, if you're not logged in you can't even browse a subreddit, it forces you to install the app (or alternatively, you can go to i.reddit.com that still works, and is much faster to boot).

Or a different client (Reddit hasn't gone full Twitter yet), or enable Request Desktop Site.

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

#69

Post by tmikaeld »

tjpnz wrote: post #48

What's sad is that the mobile app is perfectly usable and it's obvious that a lot of thought and care has gone into it. I feel bad for the people maintaining it.

While the UI is fine, I'm concerned about optimization and loading.

Is it really required to keep ALL previous scroll history in memory and on-screen?

If they only showed what you're currently scrolling, it wouldn't be the most battery sucking app on my phones.

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

#70

Post by indigochill »

I read somewhere just the other day that the benefit (to the developer) of an app vs a mobile website is that apps can collect more data on the user than mobile websites in their sandboxed browsers can. I haven't looked into this to verify for myself and there are other reasons, like push notifications, but I'm inclined to believe it.
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