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Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?

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Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?

#421

Post by UncleMeat »

Razengan wrote: post #145
FormerBandmate wrote: post #36

They are desperately trying to be TikTok. It will not work and has no chance of working. Look at their hilariously terrible acquisition of Dubsmash for $50 million (they converted it to a subreddit with 1.5k subscribers when they had 200 million users at their peak and touted having 25% of black teens in their acquisition press release. Every post is people saying the Reddit app sucks and asking where Dubsmash went)

Could this all be deliberate to tank Reddit stock as soon as it goes public to make money off shorting?

Execs (and most employees) aren’t allowed to short their own stock.

Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?

#422

Post by o1y32 »

shmoogy wrote: post #381
majani wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And access to push notifications

iOS 17 supports pwa notifications, so it's pretty much exclusively ads at this point

"support" means that user needs to explicitly do something (add as an "app") before you can get notifications which is not as easy as in the app

Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?

#423

Post by lightedman »

Reddit is eating itself alive. The Discord for a couple of subreddits I was in have exploded in growth and participation due to the API nonsense, and the users are finding out that it's more fun and useful to actually engage live with other like-minded people, and are simply not going back to Reddit.

Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?

#424

Post by post-it »

nonethewiser wrote: post #379
klrants wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, everyone has TikTok envy since Musk started to augment Twitter to a video publishing platform. This model does not fit for Reddit with its poor execution (old.reddit.com is still the best) and its user base. More sites will split off and use the old.reddit.com code base.

> More sites will split off and use the old.reddit.com code base. How? Its not open source. And its just a frontend. How would people split it off?

The whole old frontend + backend is a Python app: https://github.com/reddit-archive/reddit/wiki/Install-guide

Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?

#425

Post by o1y32 »

VHRanger wrote: post #404
timbre1234 wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's 100% about being able to stop adblockers

On mobile? Apart from a few geeks using firefox on android, mobile browsers generally dont hinder ads

You can install an ad filter, set up content filtering, and then use Safari without seeing ads.

Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?

#426

Post by Freak_NL »

baq wrote: post #410
veidr wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The web puts the user in control; apps (on all significant platforms currently existing) put the company in control. Yes, Google and (especially) Apple may force Reddit to comply with this or that, but Google and (especially) Apple also prevent the user from doing all sorts of things they can do with an open platform like the web. Users can't block ads in an app. Users can't block telemetry. Users can't prevent track…

This, this and exactly this. Their finance team probably made a projection that if they can get X% of current mobile web users onto the app, they’ll be able to extract Y% more total revenue. They have no idea that they should split users into contributors and lurkers and even if they had, they have absolutely no idea how to model their value, so they don’t, the board sees the numbers and tells them ‘ASAP’ and that’s…

> They have no idea that they should split users into contributors and lurkers […]

They probably did do the maths and conclude that the contributors who'll stick around are driving a significant part of the desired engagement. Dumb memes and culture war potshots and disinformation sure, but engagement.

Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?

#427

Post by sclarisse »

baq wrote: post #410
veidr wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The web puts the user in control; apps (on all significant platforms currently existing) put the company in control. Yes, Google and (especially) Apple may force Reddit to comply with this or that, but Google and (especially) Apple also prevent the user from doing all sorts of things they can do with an open platform like the web. Users can't block ads in an app. Users can't block telemetry. Users can't prevent track…

This, this and exactly this. Their finance team probably made a projection that if they can get X% of current mobile web users onto the app, they’ll be able to extract Y% more total revenue. They have no idea that they should split users into contributors and lurkers and even if they had, they have absolutely no idea how to model their value, so they don’t, the board sees the numbers and tells them ‘ASAP’ and that’s…

It’s less about extracting that revenue and more about extracting that sweet IPO capital with a story about being replacement-TikTok.

Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?

#428

Post by soco »

DiscourseFan wrote: post #349
soco wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this is the same discussion as with communism, where the fans will rush you for saying that real-life communism sucks so badly, and tell you they will do it By The Book (or something). It's always surprising how many people take their truths from books instead of what's in front of their noses...

Unfortunately, Real Capitalism has never been tried before... The point is to show the contradictions of market liberalism, how they never fulfill their ideals and by necessity lead to the conditions under which we live. Communism simply says: let's live in a society without money, without a state, without class. Where one fishes in the morning, hunts in the afternoon, and debates in the evening. Where we live, produ…

This is the same old startup joke of success in three simple steps, just with a million move moving parts:

1. Have an excellent business idea 2. ? 3. Profit!

Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?

#429

Post by efxhoy »

c7b wrote: post #357

There's something that I don't get about forcing mobile browser users into mobile apps - how does it make sense for the company? They're forcing themselves into a walled garden, where the gardener takes a hefty "app store tax" on your revenues and has countless levers to force you to style the app how it suits their interests, not yours. For some apps, this might still be the best way to gain traction. But if have al…

I work at a company trying to get more people into our app. The logic is completely flawed: "we want more engagement, app users show more engagement than web users, so if we get more users from web into the apps we'll get more engagement". It's obviously completely flawed but the product people and analytics department don't seem to get it.

At least we aren't doing hostile stuff to get people into the apps, yet.

Re: Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?

#430

Post by CharlieDigital »

joshribakoff wrote: post #361
c7b wrote: post #357

There's something that I don't get about forcing mobile browser users into mobile apps - how does it make sense for the company? They're forcing themselves into a walled garden, where the gardener takes a hefty "app store tax" on your revenues and has countless levers to force you to style the app how it suits their interests, not yours. For some apps, this might still be the best way to gain traction. But if have al…

The decision maker likely wants the app installed because it increases the friction to users to “replace” the app with a competing one. Amazon used to offer $5 credits to install their app years ago, and I initially struggled to understand the reasoning; however these days its so convenient to buy via the amazon app compared to signing up for an account on different websites (i am more likely to use Amazon which is a…

For Amazon, I prefer the web-app since it's able to open tabs for products I'm comparing. With the app, you're forced into a forward/back/forward navigation pattern that I think is sub-optimal when comparing products.

Is there something I'm missing here? It seems that the app is the less usable experience to me.

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