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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?

#601

Post by int_19h »

Groxx wrote: post #581
jfim wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> FPTP ensures at most 2 parties Canada uses FPTP, and yet there are five parties represented in the house of commons [0]. While it's true that two parties have the lion's share of seats (155 for the liberals, 121 for the conservatives), as there are 338 seats, the liberals can't just steamroll legislation unopposed; they have to get at least some approval from other parties. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_o…

Worth noting that Wikipedia uses Canada as its first example of "disadvantages" of the system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting#Dis... But yes, Canada has soldiered on remarkably well in spite of it. USA used to be multi-party as well, the transition to 2-party takes time and there's nothing that truly guarantees it, just innately encourages . There are ways to slow it down / isolate sections.…

USA was never truly multi-party, except for very brief transition periods (like when Whigs collapsed and GOP appeared).

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

#602

Post by int_19h »

b112 wrote: post #552
nickalaso wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which has been the case since almost the inception of the country, as it is a direct consequence of the First-past-the-post voting system that the US government has implemented.

It has nothing to do with first-past-the-post. You can have 10 parties, 100 parties, in fact first past the post is designed for more than two parties. If you have people in 5 parties to vote for in your riding(district?), then first past the post is the only way it works easily! Seldom will one of those 5, get 50.1% of the vote! And why would they? The most popular wins, the people have spoken.

Districts are drawn more or less arbitrarily, and so their residents don't necessarily represent a single coherent political bloc. In practice, this means that you can have a party getting 30-40% of the vote in literally every district, and end up with zero representation.

Worse yet, because most FPTP elections only require plurality for victory, you can have a party get less than 50% of the vote in each district (but more than any other party), and still take all the seats. In which case you literally have the minority running the country - so much for "people have spoken".

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

#603

Post by m463 »

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…

It is monetization.

A guy I know worked for a PC manufacturer years ago. The offered a windows version of a machine, and folks asked why they didn't offer a linux version.

A linux version would cost more money, because they made a non-trivial amount of money by loading up the PC with shovelware.

I've seen this countless times at companies. The decision makers do not want to greenlight projects that do not make money, or worse that cost them money.

So I think if you follow the money you'll find a mobile app makes them more money.

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

#604

Post by opportune »

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.

Despite reddit getting worse and worse over the years it’s still one of the best indexed sources of non-advertised/SEO/sponsored information.

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

#608

Post by ori_b »

vanviegen wrote: post #593
ori_b wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been on android all along, but I think this just convinced me to give an iPhone a shot for my next device.

Why's that? At least on Android you're free to choose another browser that doesn't support notifications, if they bother you so much. Or you could just turn them of.

I appreciate a platform that doesn't add these kinds of misbehaviors in the first place. It means I have less to watch out for or worry about in the future.

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

#609

Post by vmurthy »

Edit : user https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jakevoytko has a much more concise view of the same. I swear I didn't steal this from him :)

I can speculate a bit but let's look at the product from a VC POV. The key metric for all I know they are tracking is "engagement - a.k.a amount of time spent on site which is a proxy for number of ads viewed/clicked etc". This has a few implications :

1. A mobile site (e.g. on mobile Safari) can't entice a user to view articles when Reddit wants them to. In other words, "I" open reddit when "I" want to.

2. I haven't accessed mobile site in a while but (hopefully) it won't have infinite scrolling which means I tire quickly of clicking "Next" and leave the site. An app removes this possibility

3. As alluded in #1, an app can have all sorts of notifications which entice me to access reddit a lot more and can possibly track a lot more than a browser will allow. This is valuable for Reddit in terms of "targeting ads" and hopefully makes the mobile users more valuable than us plebes.

Thank you reddit for pushing the app so much. I hate it and will not install it.

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