<story><title>Reddit app got 50M downloads by making mobile web experience miserable</title><url>https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/09/02/reddit-gets-its-app-to-50-million-play-store-downloads-mostly-by-making-the-mobile-web-experience-miserable/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ragnese</author><text>I genuinely wonder if the people in charge of Reddit ever come around to places like this to read these sentiments. Hell, they actually only need to read actual Reddit posts to understand that many people are utterly disgusted by their tactics to try and force you onto their mobile app, they&amp;#x27;re upset at how slow the (default) site is, etc.&lt;p&gt;Maybe it doesn&amp;#x27;t matter. Maybe people will keep using it forever. But I doubt it. They&amp;#x27;ve turned Reddit from something that had potential to exist for a long time into something closer to TikTok (which, even without the current drama, was never going to be more than a fad IMO). There are more efficient ways to get low-effort shitposts and memes than Reddit. Those who want that will move on, and the people who were interested in more than that are leaving now.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>screye</author><text>I have come to the conclusion that reddit is 2 apps&amp;#x2F;websites.&lt;p&gt;The first is a tiktok-esque waste of time, instant gratification meme machine. Everyone on this app uses the reddit native app and doesn&amp;#x27;t care about dark patterns. They would never know that reddit&amp;#x27;s app is shit, because they literally don&amp;#x27;t care enough.&lt;p&gt;The 2nd is a Hackernews-esque collection of hobbyist sub-forums. These people are invested in their hobbies and sub-reddits. They use reddit to interact and discuss, but also a source of niche-news for their hobby. Every one here has a 3rd party reddit app or uses RES. (if you don&amp;#x27;t, please do). Unlike twitter, reddit lets 3rd parties offer feature complete wrappers for reddit. This group has ad-block, but will occasionally give someone gold. This group hates reddit, but also has no where to go.&lt;p&gt;If a person tries to make reddit both, then it is an annoying experience. I use reddit entirely as the latter. The front-page and r&amp;#x2F;all are garbage to me. Every super popular (barring sports) subreddit is trash. But, my niche subreddits are literally the best places on the internet to gain niche information.&lt;p&gt;Examples where the subreddit is the best source of open discussion on the internet for that niche: dota2, manga, soccer, metal, prog, civilized discourse, history, male fashion (kinda), calisthenics, small cities, fantasy fiction, niche YT channels, super authentic cooking....and that&amp;#x27;s just for me.&lt;p&gt;PSA : Use a 3rd party reddit app (SYNC is my preferred. Pay up the 2$ dollars. It is worth it). Use RES, and enforce filters strongly. Use RedditProTools to detect trolls, bias and top contributors. Use Imagus (hoverzoom has malware) for pop-image&amp;#x2F;video viewer. These will greatly enhance your reddit experience.</text></comment>
<story><title>Reddit app got 50M downloads by making mobile web experience miserable</title><url>https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/09/02/reddit-gets-its-app-to-50-million-play-store-downloads-mostly-by-making-the-mobile-web-experience-miserable/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ragnese</author><text>I genuinely wonder if the people in charge of Reddit ever come around to places like this to read these sentiments. Hell, they actually only need to read actual Reddit posts to understand that many people are utterly disgusted by their tactics to try and force you onto their mobile app, they&amp;#x27;re upset at how slow the (default) site is, etc.&lt;p&gt;Maybe it doesn&amp;#x27;t matter. Maybe people will keep using it forever. But I doubt it. They&amp;#x27;ve turned Reddit from something that had potential to exist for a long time into something closer to TikTok (which, even without the current drama, was never going to be more than a fad IMO). There are more efficient ways to get low-effort shitposts and memes than Reddit. Those who want that will move on, and the people who were interested in more than that are leaving now.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hoorayimhelping</author><text>My time at Etsy (2012-2015) taught me that people will rationalize &lt;i&gt;anything&lt;/i&gt; to avoid dealing with the fact that they made a fundamentally bad decision.&lt;p&gt;A big reason Etsy has lost a lot of trust with consumers is their inconsistently applied policies and their allowance of cheap knock off crap. When I was there a few years ago, there were all sorts of forum posts, reddit posts and tweets about the problem all the time. The leadership (and more importantly) the people in the company, absolutely refused to believe it was a problem. We came up with any excuse and rationalization we could for not addressing it. The most common one was, &amp;quot;they (the people complaining) don&amp;#x27;t have access to our data, they don&amp;#x27;t know what we know, therefore their points are irrelevant.&amp;quot; Another was, &amp;quot;they&amp;#x27;re just mad, let them vent, it&amp;#x27;s no big deal.&amp;quot; Pure denial, the simplest reaction to bad news.&lt;p&gt;By continuously shoving their heads in the sand and not addressing the perception (whether it was real or not) the company allowed the perception to become reality. I&amp;#x27;d be pretty surprised if reddit leadership doesn&amp;#x27;t do the same thing when they see messages on HN talking about how shit reddit is. They&amp;#x27;ll rationalize how we&amp;#x27;re a bunch of pedantic, angry nerds who don&amp;#x27;t represent the average user. They&amp;#x27;ll ignore the growing negative trends in favor of looking at the positive ones. They&amp;#x27;ll do anything they can to not change the strategy they&amp;#x27;ve committed to. It smacks of a company that doesn&amp;#x27;t plan, doesn&amp;#x27;t think about the consequences of their decisions, and goes with the first idea that pops into their head.</text></comment>