They don't want you to use their mobile website, I don't remember any site being more hostile and anti user friendly even after saying 100 times I'm OK using browser, not an app.

Facebook messenger (messenger.com) is way more hostile; you can open it with "view desktop site", but whenever you tap the input box it focuses and unfocuses immediately, making it mostly unusable.

Is mbasic facebook still a thing (for messaging)? I'm in the fortunate position of not having to use fb messenger for most of my contacts.

Edit: despite what I said, I think the mobile reddit browser experience is horrible indeed. Usually I change the url to go to i.reddit.com instead, which is much more usable.

I use mbasic whenever my mom texts me that she sent something on Facebook, it's my only interaction with the site. It works fine, though.

Since they only do that on the mobile website, I'd assume this is just another way of wanting to track users and push them to the mobile app.