> Anything telling me to install an app whose mobile experience is fine already is very fishy to me. I'm looking at you, Reddit.

So much this.

To add insult to injury, reddit intentionally degrades the site's experience in mobile devices with tons of dark patterns pushing users to their shady mobile app.

I've noticed this too. On top of that, they nag you consistently to install the app. They have an option to disable the nagging. However, even with this option disabled, they still nag you via ads and every time you refresh the page it blinks a distracting "use app" animation at the top right. Reddit is in a downward spiral and I have no problem discontinuing the use of a web site I have been using for over a decade. I've done it before.

I use a Firefox mobile extension which helps greatly (no Reddit mobile ads)

>Anything telling me to install an app whose mobile experience is fine already is very fishy to me.

Facebook is my #1 example of this.

The app bloated up like it's primary purpose was to take up space on your phone. So I removed it and used the mobile website.

At first you had to refresh the page to get new messages. No big deal, but a bit annoying.

Then they updated and didn't even need to refresh the page to get an update to the thread you were in.

Then a few years back they decided you can't get messages in the mobile website, you must use their app. Later I learned about mbasic.facebook.com and have to switch to that when friends message me.

Them not allowing you to use Messenger in a browser is just so disgusting. It’s like bullying. I’m happy people are jumping that ship.

Interesting, iOS has pretty locked down default settings and prompts you when an app tries to access most sensitive data. I think I’d generally prefer mobile apps from a privacy perspective because I don’t have to worry about things like cookies as much.

That's a good point, and maybe my hesitance to use these apps comes from ignorance about what data they have access to. It's just them being so pushy about it really makes me skeptical. Perhaps users are less likely to leave Reddit if they are viewing from the app? Richer ad content? More ad content? Notifications?

Android does that too now but many apps will just refuse to work until you accept.

In a browser you have control about cookies, I'm sure iOS can leak more sensitive data even with default settings.

I have to disagree with you here, even from a social media perspective. Namely, with apps that leverage hardware at a high rate such as the camera features of Snapchat and Instagram.

I agree that reddit might not need an app in the same way, but I'm sure there are ways they could improve their user experience by further leveraging mobile hardware in ways that don't relate to tracking.

Reddit lives on ad revenue. Mobile web reddit is not in fact incredibly optimal which is why a bunch of third party apps exist. These third party apps make it impossible to show ads save for promoted posts which people don't seem to like. Thus the official reddit app.

I prefer "Reddit is Fun" which seems to load faster than mobile web reddit and notify me on comment replies.

> Reddit lives on ad revenue. Mobile web reddit is not in fact incredibly optimal which is why a bunch of third party apps exist.

That's a problem that reddit creates for itself as it purposedly degrades the site's experience on mobile devices with tons of dark patterns to try to push users to install the company's official mobile app.

A primary reason why I don't switch to the app version for websites I visit (like Reddit, occasionally) is that I miss the ad and tracking blocker features I get in my browser.

Both Reddit and Twitter are intentionally designed to be annoying, so as to encourage you to install their apps. So frustrating.

Twitter had this some problem and went with the same solution of cutting out 3rd party apps. This is the age old piracy debate relived. People aren't using 3rd party apps because they want to skip ads, they are using them because they provide better functionality/user experience. Companies stupidly allow a 3rd party to take over all of their market share on mobile, and then make up complaints when they finally get around to making their own app.