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The Reddit mobile web experience is so obviously bad that I can only assume it's intentional. There must be some huge incentive for Reddit to push users toward
by PragmaticPulp 5y ago
The Reddit mobile web experience is so obviously bad that I can only assume it's intentional.
There must be some huge incentive for Reddit to push users toward the mobile app. Most likely, the app allows for higher or more accurate monthly active user counts and enables more targeted advertising, both of which are critical to increasing advertising revenues.
Reddit is in a difficult spot because they're mostly an ad-supported business but their users are vehemently opposed to advertising and any forms of tracking. They have to tip-toe around all of the advertising and user tracking that they do. Strangely, their users mostly seem to give them a pass on the tracking. Their users are relatively trustworth, viewing Reddit as far more trustworthy of a company than Facbeook, despite the two companies having largely similar business models.
- ethbr0 5y agoI'd phrase it as "Reddit, the product" is fine. "Reddit, the investors who bought the product" are in a difficult spot. And certainly haven't shown an overabundance of creativity in monetization approaches. Suffice to say, you probably don't deserve a "front page of the Internet" tagline if your first display is a redirect request to your app.
- toomuchtodo 5y agoReddit is a potential B Corp or non profit masquerading as a VC backed tech startup with exit or ad revenue potential. Bag holders get tired eventually.
- intended 5y agoReddit is building the best content moderation tools for humans - by blundering in every possible direction, often in direct opposition to potential progress. Mod tools and the data on what works is the untapped resource. Every other major data or tool set for moderation is behind an NDA.
- valparaiso 5y agoYeah and you can't appeal if some crazy mod got offended and permanently banned your on every sub he's mod because he didn't like your comment about China or you mentioned that BLM riots killed people, left burned and looted shops or that George Floyd got killed by drugs and was holding a gun on pregnant woman's stomach.
- dehrmann 5y agoThis was my take at one point, but a lot of actions made it clear that's no longer the case, and it's now more of a social media site/app that also has porn.
- tayo42 5y agoMaybe more like porn ads, its like all attention seeking to direct people to only fans.
- Seattle3503 5y agoWhat bothers me about OF is that it has turned authentic communities into billboards. "Why are you entitled to free porn?" OFs defenders will ask as they completely miss the point of the communities they have hijacked. As the saying goes: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
- erhk 5y agoOwning reddit allows ypu to own public opinion through censorship,thats a pretty important bit of value and im sure tencent would agree
- MomoXenosaga 5y agoReddit moderation is not unlike what China does only it's not considered onerous because it's self-censorhip.
- freebuju 5y agoHate to break it to ya but the court of public opinion is strongly held by other platforms, most notably Twitter.
- hi5eyes 5y agoreddit regularly gets mocked by every other corner of the internet
- rxhernandez 5y agoHate to break to you but, every corner of the internet mocks every other corner of the internet. Even HN is heavily mocked on other sites.
- alexvoda 5y agoI am curious if you have examples. What is hn or the hn community mocked for?
- rxhernandez 5y agohttps://www.reddit.com/r/ShitHNSays/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ShitHNSays/
- maest 5y agoIf the changes are driven by their investor's desire to somehow monetise it, then this must be part of a longer term plan. So two questions: 1. How well is this working for them 2. If the answer to 1. is "not very", how long will they stick to this strategy. They've been going at it for a couple of years now, so I imagine they're approaching the moment when they have to reassess how well things are going. I wonder if we'll see a change of direction any time soon.
- 8ytecoder 5y agoI downloaded the app alright. Just not theirs. Apollo for iOS is such a pleasure to use compared to the Reddit app. They can’t even get the app experience right.
- farisjarrah 5y agoApollo is probably one of the highest quality iOS and iPadOS apps around, Reddit or otherwise. The developer is super responsive to requests or criticism, and the app just works insanely well. It doesn’t have quite the same feature set as some of the other 3rd party android Reddit apps, like Sync, but everything on the app is exceptionally well designed and thought out.
- rognjen 5y agoI'd assume it's going well. They aren't backing down in the slightest.
- zozbot234 5y ago> There must be some huge incentive for Reddit to push users toward the mobile app. From what we hear, the app isn't even that well designed. It seems that many users are still using unofficial clients because the app can feel heavy and sluggish, with only a barely acceptable UX.
- Qwertious 5y agoRedReader user here, can confirm. I don't even know what half of the complaints in the link are talking about, as they're largely problems with the "official" mobile experience.
- Seattle3503 5y agoRIF is fun user myself. Like others have said, I haven't experienced these issues. If reddit shuts of the API I'm probably out.
- cranekam 5y agoHonestly I'm pretty glad that Reddit's UI is so terrible. I don't need more places to waste time on the internet.
- webmobdev 5y agoThere must be some huge incentive for Reddit to push users toward the mobile app. - Data-mining: a mobile phone is a major repository of personal information that every advertising platform wants access to. - Ad-Targeting: a mobile app has a lot of data points to create a unique "finger print" for each user. - Conserving resources: a well designed mobile app can really save a lot of bandwidth and server resources for an online platform like Reddit.
- ss2f 5y agoWhich is why I think alternatives like Lemmy[0] ought to up their UX/UI and mobile applications because on the backend, they offer much respectful design and since they are not after money, operate under less duress. Such alternatives offer real possibilities to challenge Reddit but they have a long way to go on user interface. [0] https://join-lemmy.org/instances https://join-lemmy.org/instances
- mirko22 5y agoIt’s much easier to track user and adds they see on mobile apps then mobile web... So more money from advertising and selling people usage patterns and info would be my guess...
- MomoXenosaga 5y agoPrecisely. Reddit's customers are not the users but the advertisers.
- KeepFlying 5y agoAs a dev who works with telemetry in my day job I HATE when "better metrics" gets in the way of a feature or product improving. (I also hate the pervasiveness of identifiable tracking but that's a whole different rant.) You don't need to perfectly A:B test your two different offerings if that means preventing users from using the product in a way that best suits them. Stop putting shit behind "read more" buttons just because you want to see if people are actually reading your articles. Stop breaking things into multiple screens just so you can track your damn funnels. Better MAU _tracking_ (not even better MAU) does nothing for user experience and pursuing that at the expense of everything else is just plain foolish.
- rognjen 5y agoYeah, it becomes just about getting a "better metric" which is in fact a number that sounds better to others instead of using metrics to improve user experience.