I just don’t understand the thought process. They could’ve just shelled out $10M for Apollo and made that the official Reddit app. Then give users the choice of ads or pay for ad free experience.
so basically they’re making a massive gamble that most people will just switch over to their garbage app. Maybe they will, but for sure the power users, big sub moderators & regular posters are all coming to Lemmy. You know, all the people that made Reddit worth visiting.
Personally I think this will be the end of Reddit.
Some of the communities I was in on Reddit don’t seem to want to move. They’re ones where users don’t go to Reddit, they go to r/whatever, and have usernames matched to the sub.
I doubt Reddit can survive on those sort of users, in those sort of subs, but many of them will stay on Reddit as long as it keeps working
I now only use Reddit for those subs, but rarely since I now only use Reddit thorough it’s old web interface with Reddit Enhancement Suite
Well, Reddit did shell out money for a third party client. They bought the iOS app Alien Blue in 2014 and turned that into an official app before quickly abandoning it for their client in 2016.
Worth mentioning that mobile ≠ app. Many people use Reddit in their browsers. Or the official app for that matter. This article doesn’t really give those numbers which I’m sure unfortunately place the third party app users in a smaller minority. Still, I never used a third party app personally and I was still outraged enough at Reddit’s behavior to leave. Hopefully more will follow suit.
Aren’t they also pushing changes to have mobile browsers redirect to the app with no option for staying in the browser?
Felt like they were doing that for a while. It’s why I went on Boost. I refused to be pushed onto their mobile app.
You can just enable “desktop site” checkbook in your mobile browser, it would send non-mobile user agent to the server. That’s the only way a server can detect a mobile browser.
While that’s an option the desktop site is barely navigable on a desktop let alone on a mobile device
old.reddit.com is still an option, for now at least.
But honestly? I’m going to stick to lemmy as much as I can.
old.reddit.com sucks on a phone though. It’s very difficult to navigate without zooming in and out all the time to click on links.
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What an unnecessarily user-hostile move. No wonder they’re going to implement it.
It could stop you from using the browser altogether and point you to the app.
That’s what they’re currently testing out, yes.
*TIL that 70% of US traffic on reddit WAS from users on a mobile device
Until July 1 2023 🪦