Surely at some point some team that writes this has to demo it and someone checks it. After however many years of it not working, surely that's strategic, not accidental.

It's such a pervasive pattern and somehow always in the direction: the app works better than the website. If there even is a website.

Sometimes it goes the other way, in fact enough it's a running gag that the banner that says "Download our app for a better experience" at sites like Reddit ought to have one of these

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poop_emoji