My guess is because it’s harder to block ads through the app than it is in the browser-based version (at least in iOS). Whatever the actual reason is, the asshole design (which ironically they have an entire subreddit for) actually discourages me from using Reddit, so I’ve been using it a lot less in the past couple of years.

It’s like the Nigerian Prince email scam but the other way around : 99% of the people who receive such an email will identify the scam and ignore it. This is totally fine for the scammers. Working as expected.

Now, in the Reddit scenario 99% of the Reddit users don’t mind downloading an app. It’s just us, techies, that 1% who cares. This is totally fine for Reddit. Working as expected.

I suspect it’s all that and their metrics show that mobile users are the most “engaged” so they want more mobile users to have an even higher count of engaged users. Also, it’s harder to spam notifications without a mobile app.

They deliberately make their mobile web experience awful, so I don’t think that’s why (how can you trust a metric that you’re deliberately sabotaging?). I suspect mobile apps just allow for more data collection than web apps.

I think it's time for lawmakers to start drafting up an "engagement tax" and start penalizing companies for demanding peoples' attention.

They get a lot more data more reliably from the app and have a lot more control of the ad surfaces and how they are served.

This is more or less "social network publisher side monetization" SOP.

I suspect it's for neither. It's to fulfil some metric. They either want investor money or IPO money and either way, they want people in their app because their app is way over-valued compared to monthly impressions.

Likely both. It sure as hell ain't to make your experience any better.

Ads, tracking, notifications, with higher overall engagement due to faster and more content available.

another possibility is to increase traffic, which I guess also increases ad revenue. It's a lot easier to tap an icon on your home screen than it is to open a browser and type in reddit and whichever subreddit you want to browse. The less friction there is, the more likely you are to be a daily user, driving their revenue.

This is my guess — phone-screen real estate and the potential for push notifications.

The answers to questions like this are always extremely simple - it is better for their business.