MIT economists Acemoglu and Robinson wrote a book "Why Nations Fail" that analyzes why countries at similar starting points can have extremely divergent paths in terms of economic development. One example is South and North Korea. Their conclusion is that some countries have established extractive institutions, while others inclusive. The extractive ones exclude the population from the decision making process and seek to divvy up and redistribute the scarce available resources, while the inclusive ones seek to involve the broadest possible strata of the population in the decision making and wealth-producing activities. Looks like Reddit is turning into the North Korea of social websites.

Yes, they used crowd-sourcing to build their empire, yet they seem surprised that the crowd wants to have a say in how things work.

What does it say about the United States?

The extractive rent-seeking (slavery being the most extractive economic and political institution possible) South was significantly lagging even before the rebellion, which was crushed by the United States whose other regions had more inclusive economic institutions.

In more recent times the authors compare two towns across the US-Mexico border: Nogales, AZ to to Nogales, Mexico. Even thought the language and ethnicity is mostly the same (95% Hispanic), with same climate and what not - Nogales in the United States has three times the GDP per capita of Nogales, Sonora. The difference is more inclusive economic and political institutions in the United States - while Mexico has suffered under one party rule for decades.

> while Mexico has suffered under one party rule for decades

Yet now we suffer under two-party rule.

Which has been the case since almost the inception of the country, as it is a direct consequence of the First-past-the-post voting system that the US government has implemented.

You're correct, and I've love to have something other than first-past-the-post.

However, throughout our history, our two-party system has generally (with some notable exceptions) been able to work and work together. That's no longer the case. As such, it's hard to tell if the political polarization is a reflection of society, or if society is just adopting the polarization of our political elites.

So I stand by my original statement.

This is a tremulously rose colored portrait of history. The most openly hostile, contentious election in American history didn't happen in 2016, or 2008, or 2000, it happened in 1828. Many American institutional families would say that Jackson being a jackbooted thug was the very least damning of his odious traits. Meanwhile Jackson's largely populist supporters would go on to accuse the current poltical body of being wholly corrupt, and hellbent on creating a new feudal aristocracy, where the people's wills and desires were controlled through the national bank. Honestly 2016 just reads like a rerun of 1828, except Clinton wasn't publishing articles about how Trump was likely to gun her down in cold blood if he lost.

I suggest reading more carefully. I wrote “with some notable exceptions” very deliberately. I had exactly the Jackson presidency and the 1850s-1860s in mind.

But I figured that HN is an educated audience, so no need to specify the few exceptions I had in mind.

BTW, 2008 and 2000 don’t even compare with 1828, or 2016. The election of 2016, and the (only partially merited) furor that has followed it will unquestionably stand out in US history, quite possibly as a prelude to our descent into another civil conflict.

And what’s rose-colored is making an oblique claim that our current political situation is nothing more than business as usual.

While I think a slow trend of increasing contention exists, I don't buy that hostilities were really so much better in '08 than in '16, and I think we've a ways to go yet before we starting debating whether capping our political enemies is a barbaric but necessary practice.

Ironically, I believe it's the increase in democratic processes in American politics that's responsible for this.

See, historically, when we spoke about parties, we really spoke about their respective establishments. The voters decided which one would be running the show at any given moment, but internal party politics were not readily accessible to the outsiders, and thus candidates and platforms were also vetted by the party establishment. Since establishment tends to be conservative by its very nature, this provided a screen against more extreme positions. To be clear: the politicians would still run on extreme positions, if they saw it as advantageous - but that didn't mean they'd govern accordingly if they won.

Then we got primaries. It's not that they didn't exist before - the first ones date back to before the Civil War. But they weren't anywhere near as common until the second half of the 20th century, and even then most were non-binding (and their results were often ignored when the "wrong" candidate won them).

And the primaries themselves changed over time, generally so as to broaden eligibility. In most other countries (where primaries are internal party matters), you have to actually be a member of the party in good standing in order to participate in that party's primary. The American system, where you merely need to register party affiliation in advance, is much more lax - and by now, even that formality is no longer necessary in many states.

So, voters now have a lot more influence over party politics. And this caused a nasty feedback loop, where agitprop that's thrown by the establishment at the voters, solely for the purpose of convincing them to vote one way or the other (appealing to emotions, especially fear and anger, since it's the most effective way), is regurgitated and injected into internal party matters and policies. So the party platform moves further away from the center, and its agitprop shifts accordingly, creating even more radicalized supporters, who again feed it back into the party etc.

Tea Party was a wake-up call in that sense, when a bunch of traditional Republican candidates lost to grassroots crazies who said mostly the same things, but who also sincerely believed in those things. Trump is also part of the same phenomenon - he might not be a sincere believer, but he appears as one to his followers. And there's some evidence of similar processes happening in the Democratic party. Slower, because its electorate is a broader coalition with more conflicting goals, and so the direction in which the voters move the party is less clearly defined. But you can see the internal radicalization spill out on some issues already, and there's more to come.

I more or less agree with you. I think social media has also played a large role.

But don’t fool yourself that this kind of populism is only occuring on the right.

It has nothing to do with first-past-the-post. You can have 10 parties, 100 parties, in fact first past the post is designed for more than two parties.

If you have people in 5 parties to vote for in your riding(district?), then first past the post is the only way it works easily! Seldom will one of those 5, get 50.1% of the vote!

And why would they? The most popular wins, the people have spoken.

I... think you may have some reading to do. The subject is pretty well studied.

The main reason FPTP ensures at most 2 parties is that, say you have parties 1, A, and B, where A and B are relatively similar to each other. And say A and B are together more populous than 1, like a 40/30/30 split.

By splitting those 60% mostly-similar votes between A and B, both lose to the less-popular 1. It becomes in A and B's best interest to not cannibalize each other's votes, i.e. merge and dominate (or at least compete). The less fragmented ideology wins, not the most desired.

It's even more compelling during the formation of new parties when there are only 2: by not voting for one of the two dominant ones, you are literally throwing your vote away because it has no chance, and it's worse for your ideology than if you had chosen the most-similar of the dominant party.

Yet, empirically, you're 100% wrong.

Canada has both Federal, and Provincial FPTP parliaments. On the Provincial level, new parties appear, and are elected , minority or majority, all the time. Constantly.

On the Federal level, things move more slowly. Yet new parties are appear, grow in popularity, and replace older parties.

Canada is not only a place of multiple parties, it is a place of constant party renewal.

And as a Canuck, I am all too familiar with vote splitting. We have party mergers. Parties that split and form new parties.

We know all about strategic voting, but because we have the concept of minority governments, and because we don't vote for who our Prime Minister is, the dynamic changes a bit.

FPTP isn't what causes two parties only, it is certain methods of government that do, mayhap combined with FPTP.

It seems the split President (prime minister) and House voting leads to more issues compared to Canadas system. Canada also has no confidence votes vs fixed elections ...

"... by not voting for one of the two dominant ones, you are literally throwing your vote away ..."

That is incorrect. In your scenario, you would be figuratively throwing your vote away.

That makes sense if you think in terms of parties. But if you're interested in policies instead, I think it might be wrong.

For example, if you want them to do something about climate change you might vote for the Green party instead of Democrat. They won't win but your "stolen" vote might cause the Democrat party to lose. They don't want to lose so they might adopt policies from the Green party to attract you and all Green voters. That would be as good an outcome as multiple parties.

If someone is looking for a good explanation i must recommend this playlist by CGP Grey explaining different voting systems.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo&list=PLNCHVwtpeB...

> FPTP ensures at most 2 parties

Canada uses FPTP, and yet there are five parties represented in the house of commons [0].

While it's true that two parties have the lion's share of seats (155 for the liberals, 121 for the conservatives), as there are 338 seats, the liberals can't just steamroll legislation unopposed; they have to get at least some approval from other parties.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Commons_of_Canada

Worth noting that Wikipedia uses Canada as its first example of "disadvantages" of the system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting#Dis...

But yes, Canada has soldiered on remarkably well in spite of it. USA used to be multi-party as well, the transition to 2-party takes time and there's nothing that truly guarantees it, just innately encourages. There are ways to slow it down / isolate sections... but the dominant parties can also whittle away at those over time.

Yet Canada doesn't really have two dominant parties. Neither provincially, nor federally.

For example, the Conservative Party of Canada:

- formed from a merger between Progressive Conservative Party - and the Canadian Alliance

Of which, the "Canadian Alliance" appeared entirely from grass roots.

It started with the Reform Party, where the PC party lost all but two seats, but the new "Reform" party obtained significant seats:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_Canadian_federal_election

Which then morphed into the Alliance Party:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Canadian_federal_election

Which then, after the merger, with what was left of the PCs, formed the minority:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Canadian_federal_election

And then formed the government:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Canadian_federal_election

It should be noted that the merger between the older PC party, and the reform/alliance party was with the Alliance party at massive strength, in the House of Commons with a respectable number of seats, and 100% in charge of the future of the merged party.

My point here is ; the willingness for people to embrace new parties, new ideas, and vote for people .. not parties, helps with real political renewal in Canada.

Further, while some provinces aren't, most are MORE dynamic than the federal level at party change. Take Quebec, which has had new parties appear and then even form governments, in a period of two election cycles.

FPTP does NOT mean 2 parties. At all.

USA was never truly multi-party, except for very brief transition periods (like when Whigs collapsed and GOP appeared).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_electoral_system#Firs... > An absolute majority of the electorate is not needed, and is rarely achieved. As a result, power has been held by either of two parties for most of Canada's history. The party whose candidates win the second largest number of seats becomes the Official Opposition.

This is untrue. It takes the position that any conservative party, is the same party as its predecessor. See here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24219888

It doesn't ensure at most two parties. The UK has at least four major parties: Conservatives, Labour, Lib Dems, SNP, and then one or two other smaller parties.

Districts are drawn more or less arbitrarily, and so their residents don't necessarily represent a single coherent political bloc. In practice, this means that you can have a party getting 30-40% of the vote in literally every district, and end up with zero representation.

Worse yet, because most FPTP elections only require plurality for victory, you can have a party get less than 50% of the vote in each district (but more than any other party), and still take all the seats. In which case you literally have the minority running the country - so much for "people have spoken".

>first past the post is the only way it works easily

The key word there is easily. Now that we have computers and instant communication we can do things that would be/used to be considered hard but give better outcomes.

I'll also point out you don't need a winning party in an election you just need to be able to form a government and there's no reason 2 closely aligned parties can't work together or even traditionally opposing parties.

Point #1 -- computers have no place in an election. Or voting.

#2? Canadian parties do this all of the time. We have parties from coalitions, and then form the government.

Why not have a runoff election or instant runoff voting?

Additionally, why do we need to have a single representative for any individual instead of say 10 people representing a larger district?

Why does someone need a magic number of 50.1% to be valid?

Why is that "the number"? Because it's more than 1/2? You're thinking "two parties".

If you're worried about "most people's support", then why isn't the number 80%? 99%? 100%? Why does '50.1%' make it 'OK' and less 'not'?

I don't get this arbitrary fixation on "but, that guy didn't get 50.1% of the vote!!". So?

Let's say there are 5 parties. One gets 40% of the vote. Yet if each party had equal votes, that would be 20% each. The party with 40% of the vote, received 2x the votes compared to the number of parties.

Is that OK? Why not?

I don't get what's wrong with a number less than 50%. I don't get why anything above 50% is fine.

Let's say you have 10 people, and 4 plans. Plans to defend the city from invasion. Each plan has its merits. You ask people to vote. 2 abstain. The next 2 receive two votes each. The last receives 4 votes.

4/10 is less than 50%, yes? Yet, clearly it is the most popular. Must the 2 abstainers vote? Must those that don't agree, be forced to vote for a plan they don't agree with?

How is this undemocratic? Were the people's voices heard? Was the most popular plan voted on?

I literally don't get it, or understand the issue.

Two parties at least can compete with each other.

One party would only have internal competition.

Indeed. This seems to be a natural progression of yin-yang where these processes will unfold as part of an education process, and then once policy is implemented to counter the two party system then I can only imagine society beginning to thrive immensely relative to before; ranked choice voting, $100/year budgeted for each eligible voter to contribute to politician of their choice, etc - a few ideas Andrew Yang was running on.

Two parties, but one set of rulers - the oligarch elites.

Is this a real book someone wrote? Incredible to me how you can call yourself an economist and just write basic observations and conclude they are the root cause of everything without even taking a cursory look at the history of things.

It's kind of like how you can read a post on the internet that mentions two economists and draw any kind of conclusions about the work they've done without even taking a cursory look at it.

Ouch.

I felt that

I would imagine the book contains a bit more justification for its arguments than what was presented by the person you are responding to.

What makes you believe that the author just "wrote basic observations and concluded they are the root cause of everything"? Most ideas are easy to dismiss when you assume that a blurb posted to HN is all there is to them.

Here's a 1hr talk by the author of the book. Knock yourself out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcUKP1sAto8

The most enraging thing is Reddit took over video hosting themselves, but simply declined to have a mobile/text share option.

Links from any 3rd party service show up in the phone as the content i want to share.

Reddit? You try to send someone a Reddit video link and they get affronted by a pop up banner to download the mobile app when they click through. WTF!

I sent a reddit link to a video to my dad, once. He replied 'cant open it.' So f* off reddit. Allow rehosting or change your content policies. Stop making the internet worse.

On top of this, v.reddit.com is abysmal. Videos stop streaming, the cursor is impossible to use, I don't know how its allowed to exist in its current state.

Videos show the wrong duration, sometimes, as well.

A couple of weeks ago, someone was asking for the full video of what looked like a 10s clip (which also played just 10s). Someone else replied, that it was literally the post. He got downvoted to hell (like below 100). He was right. After checking his comment, I went to the video and by seeking I got it to show the whole 2m and something. This was not the first time this issue has appeared for me.

v.reddit.com is abysmal. I agree.

I have a greasemonkey script to filter out such posts. There is enough content without them.

https://pastebin.com/5fFyiiM7

Nice I'm not the only one still using grease monkey :)

It's also useful to auto-redirect to old.reddit without having to log in.

Their video hosting service is pure garbage. It is slow and very often I see pixelated videos even though internet speed is not an issue.

Most people use the reddit downloader bot to download and send the video. You'll see it summoned in every popular video thread.

What's frustrating is that many subs will ban the bot, so getting the mirror link requires actually private messaging it. Every once in a while someone who did this will reply to the empty in-thread request with the download / mirror link though.

v.reddit videos are nearly impossible to watch on the browser version of Reddit. If you download direct you don't get audio because they stream video and audio independently (I Think). They removed the shortlink to the hosted site on the browser version too. They're really doing a lot of user hostile things for monetization.

Furthermore, over the long term it can change the texture of the Reddit community. What sort of person quits using Reddit after becoming frustrated with yet another imposed hassle? What sort of person stays, or is retained by pop-up notifications and whatever other tedious blandishments their app/redesign provides?

There are other sites with similar features and layout to Reddit (Voat, Ruqqus, Saidit, Raddle, communities.win, etc.) but none are really in competition to be "the front page of the Internet". This is because Reddit has a huge community with varied interests which provides self-perpetuating advantages. For example: the activity level is generally higher; if you start a subreddit for a niche topic you have a chance at finding an audience; great comments/submissions will garner thousands of upvotes rather than a few dozen (smaller sites have a proportionately tinier vote ceiling, making it hard to differentiate between "good" and "amazing").

I can see increased retention/monetization maybe leading to a larger user-base in the short term, but if it makes good content less likely to crop up, or leads to less discerning users (ingenious effortposts lose out to low-effort pandering memes), or even if it just narrows the interests/hobbies represented on there, then over time it will destroy Reddit's main source of value.

I'm sure good subreddits still exists, but it has gone way past eternal September at this point and Gresham's law is in full effect. Once an organization reaches a certain size, vested interests on all sides have perverse incentives, and it starts a terminal slide to the lowest common denominator. I suspect the issue is largely in the inherent zero marginal cost to entry for most social media platforms.

Ruqqus is generally better as an alternative and has been doing a better job navigating the line between free speech and not letting neo nazis invade every sub.

Like old school reddit, people do say inflammatory things to get reactions but usually get downvoted. There are also good tools for muting people.

Really? Communities featured on the Ruqqus front page:

* EnoughTransgenderSpam: Transgender ideology makes no sense.

* SimpsInAction: Simp - A man who foolishly overvalues and defers to a woman, putting ...

* JustBeWhite: A place to discuss racial dynamics in the dating market.

* JewishQuestion: This community is dedicated to discussing and exposing Jewish control...

* SoyBoys

...looks like all the worst supremacy and hate channels from reddit.

To be honest, it's a breath of fresh air.

"JewishQuestion: This community is dedicated to discussing and exposing Jewish control.."

This is fresh air?

Fresh? Since the_donald and the other white supremacy reddits got big the air has been stagnant with that kind of hate.

I dunno, just went to the site and the front page is 80% alt-right conspiracy theories. Also, the second DDG result for “ruqqus” is a Qanon sub.

Agreed. I tried consistently visiting and posting for a week or two,and while I feel like the site has been getting more popular, it's not a place for adult conversations.

What finally made me quit was a post of a meme involving Kamala Harris in a non-political section which was one of the most upvoted things I'd seen on the site, yet the meme itself was childish and racist.

I dislike censorship, but if the initial source of people visiting a site which has these anti moderation policies are low quality, good luck climbing out of that hole. Smart people are attracted to smart people, so your initial userbase is paramount. This isn't a condemnation of all on ruqqus, but the majority are looking for a right wing echo chamber.

The site is nowhere near as bad as voat, but give it a little time, it'll get there.

But it'll only avoid becoming voat if people invest time to grow the community into a place of meaningful discussion and beneficial discourse. There are some sub mods who are trying very hard to build welcoming (and non-political) subs but they can't do it singlehandedly.

If you want something to grow, you have to invest in it.

I don't know why anyone would bother with the first party app when there are a bunch of really nice 3rd party ones with all sorts of additional features. All the one's I've used have been free with premium versions that only cost a few bucks.

Which of course leaves me wondering how long it is before reddit pulls the plug on their API and forces people to use the busted mobile site or their app.

I hope they don't do it. If this happens I probably won't Reddit anymore. Apollo is not only the best Reddit client I've ever used, but is actually the most well-crafted iOS app I ever had the pleasure to use.

I keep thinking Reddit just needs to buy Apollo already. But there's no way they could do that and not ruin the the app within 6 months.

This is exactly what happened with Alien Blue.

Which is the client I used before Apollo.

>Which of course leaves me wondering how long it is before reddit pulls the plug on their API and forces people to use the busted mobile site or their app.

Of course. How will they do it? That's yet to be seen. Instead of pulling the API entirely, I'd bet they simply wont introduce API for new features. This will leave 3rd party apps as inferior while Reddit doesn't have to deal with the backlash of pulling the API entirely. I'd argue this is already occurring.

Link for the lazy: https://apolloapp.io/

Slide is a good Android alternative

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.ccrama.redd...

Slide is also on iOS.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/slide-for-reddit/id1260626828

Relay is so good I've never tried any alternatives

> (...) and then expect users to engage with it because it exists.

This is indeed a troubling trend, so many annoying popups, banners, and notifications only seem to serve to forcefully try and push a small percentage of users towards some feature. If adoption is poor, it's probably because it's not wanted. Of course, in some SaaS contexts, it makes a lot of sense to keep users informed of features that might be of benefit to them and they may have otherwise not discovered, but that's a completely different game from just shoving stuff down their throats.

What's even more frustrating is the dark UX design they implemented. If you make it past their "Continue" pop-up which shows you multiple versions with the options reversed (to work against impulse memory skips), if you touch ANYTHING on the page after that point, it will STILL open up in the app.

What's worse is that once it opens, that post is now permanently in your account's history. Reddit provides NO WAY to remove things from your account history.

Whenever any website says "works better in the app" I always roll my eyes and consider it to be really saying "we really just want to spy on your data (apps installed, wifi networks, geolocation, accelerometer to determine your life habits, ...)"

For a site like reddit there is literally nothing they can't do with pure HTML/CSS/JavaScript.

Also, I like Firefox on mobile because you can block ads and install other extensions.

I use Redreader on android. The experience is magnitudes better than the "real" app

It's free and opensource, available on f-droid or if you are so inclined google playstore.

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.quantumbadger.redreader/

In a similar vein, I use Apollo for iOS[1] and it's also magnitudes better. The official reddit app is starting to catch up, but it's designed with advertisers in mind, whereas you can use a different app and pay for ads to go away, or use the old, web version with a blocker.

[1] https://apolloapp.io/

Apollo is among the best. The developer Christian is super engaged with his user base, and the local animal shelter. He has donated $10,000s to them through fundraising!

I second this. Big fan of Apollo and I have bought it as well.

Reddit Is Fun app gang represent!

Redreader is awesome.

The interface is a little clumsy, it is open source and verifiably not making unrequested connections to the Internet is amazing.

I use Alien Blue, but that doesn't stop the popup from showing when you browse to a Reddit page on Safari.

RedReader is ok but a bit basic

"Slide for Reddit" is also open source and has a lot more features

Sync gang rise

Take heart, they're actually doing you a favour. Once it becomes a hassle, you'll stop visiting, and along the way you'll wonder why you ever did. We should be thanking them for helping break the cycle of looking at a bottomless pit of drivel, our time on earth is not without end.

Anything that helps you escape garbage companies run by garbage employees is good!

The same thing happened to Imgur where they slowly stripped features from the mobile site to force users onto the app, culminating in preventing mobile users from even logging in at all.

The worst part about mobile apps is it destroys tabbed browsing.

There's an option in your reddit settings to force them to serve you the old design rather than the redesign, which is remembered for future sessions. The old design isn't "mobile friendly", i.e. it requires a bunch of zooming in and out, but other than that it's completely functional, unlike the redesign which simply doesn't even work on mobile.

The old mobile design is still there. You can add .compact to the end of any Reddit URL to get it.

Reddit is now in a position where they pull a Digg and not suffer the consequences of Digg meaning they can be considered too big to fail. I guess this can allow them to pull whatever they want. Break api used by Android developer. Shove meaningless prompts on users face.

> then expect users to engage with it because it exists

Kinda like saying something must be done because it is "company policy"; passing the buck in the hope you don't question it, and realise company policy is also decided by the company.

It exists, because they decided it does.

> Users are able to identify when something is valuable to them.

I strongly disagree with this. Users are just responding to dopamine sensors that have triggers that they don't understand. "Value" extracted can be detrimental to a person's well-being, even if they chose it for themselves. Gambling addicts at casinos, obese people at fast food restaurants, pay-to-win whales and the newest version of Candy Crush. Reddit is just a casino where you gamble with your time and win addicting emotions like novelty and outrage.

That's not what "valuable" means in this argument. Reddit is huge because Reddit's diverse and novel content is valuable to people, as in, it's valued by them, that is what that phrase means. Doesn't matter if _you_ think it is _actually good for them_ or if it "produces value" economically. Yeah, it hits dopamine buttons, so what.

Using the same sense of value, Reddit's _app_ is not valuable to people relative to reddit-on-mobile which is why so many people in this thread agree with the claim.

> I'm never going to install it

There are third-party apps. I have been using Sync (Android) for years, and it's bloody fantastic.

I wonder when they will cut third-party apps off.

> I don't understand why companies constantly do stuff that serves only _themselves_, and then expect users to engage with it because it exists.

Probably because most users don’t really care and those that do make excuses like “what else am I going to use?” or “I can’t stop using reddit, how will I stay in the loop?” or any one of many other excuses. If you want reddit to change, stop using them. Entirely.

I see a lot of HN users living in HN bubble completely forgetting that we are a minority of consumers. Most of Reddit audience is either not educated enough, don't have enough exposure to see the difference or simply don't care. Did we all forgot about eternal September already? So, unfortunately, no - users won't even notice this because they have no idea what's valuable to them and they will buy anything as long as it's packaged nicely. For the same reason they also won't vote with their wallets even when (as you say) "everyone" knows that testimonials are garbage.

> I see a lot of HN users living in HN bubble completely forgetting that we are a minority of consumers. Most of Reddit audience is either not educated enough ...

Actually, Reddit users are quiet educated. Source: https://social.techjunkie.com/demographics-reddit/

As someone who’s worked with the Marketing Dept. a lot in my prior role, the reason e-commerce sites (and possibly Reddit) do the things you mentioned is because they’re overly focused on new user/customer acquisition vs keeping current customers/users who know the the products’ value happy.

There’s almost always a bit of political drama behind the decision too: Marketing gets to say that they’re acquiring new users in short term (thereby increasing their budget and clout in the Org) while destroying customer value in the long run

What's equally absurd is that I assumed they ruined the web experience with their redesign in order to make it mobile compatible. It just goes to show they're ruining both web and mobile experience to pigeonhole users into environments where they can force feedback loops of their users so they have to spend more time in either platform.

Wait, you are saying that they redesigned their web experience for mobile usability to then show users a popup that they should use the app?

Our only hope now is that Google downranks them, until they fix the web interface.

Mobile "compatible". In reality it's pretty bad on mobile too.