But most purely desktop sites, are in fact, not anywhere close to good on mobile.

A good test is: do you need to zoom in and then pan horizontally to be able to read the content?

Personally, I don't even mind panning around across both axes and zooming in but I may be a minority in that respect. Probably a large minority nonetheless.

On Android/Chrome, the experience is not bad. When you load the desktop site, it looks very small but you see the whole thing. Then you can zoom in and pan using your fingers... Not so different from how you use Google maps. It's just a tiny bit slower than on desktop; but everything on mobile is slower than on desktop anyway including typing.

If you're already loosely familiar with the site's UI, it's not difficult to use. Even if you have big finger, you can just zoom in first and then click. It's a quick two-step gesture which is easy to master.

You are an outlier. Most people will not pan around to read an article - they'll just switch to an app instead of the web.

Are you sure?

Content monitizers are heavily incentivized to switch users from web to app.

So is this user-orginated or owner-pressured?

Even if it is owner-pressured, over time people grow accustomed to the linear presentation that's dominant in apps. People like when new stuff works like stuff they already know.

As another "outlier" who doesn't mind panning around to read an article (though i do prefer if i don't have to), do you have a source about the behavior of those fabled "most people"?

> Personally, I

There's your problem

Reddit is the main site I use on my phone and I certainly use it in desktop mode all the time. I even use Google in desktop mode very often, because desktop mode lets me select arbitrary dates in results, whereas the mobile page gives me a limited selection.