Sep 07, 2020 23:00:00

Reddit deliberately uses the mobile website as a bad UI to increase the number of installed apps

Reddit is the largest social bookmarking site in the English-speaking world where anyone can post news articles, image links, texts, etc. and comment on the posts. Reddit released a dedicated mobile application in 2016, but it is pointed out that 'the mobile version of the website is being corrupted' in order to increase the number of installations of this dedicated application.

Reddit gets its app to 50 million Play Store downloads, mostly by making the mobile web experience miserable
https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/09/02/reddit-gets-its-app-to-50-million-play-store-downloads-mostly-by-making-the-mobile-web-experience- miserable/

One of the bad things Reddit is doing to mobile websites is a forced pop-up that prompts you to install the app version. When you try to access Reddit from your smartphone browser, immediately after loading the page, the following pop-up prompting you to download the application version of Reddit appears. This popup cannot be ignored and you will have to tap either 'Open' or 'Continue'.

In addition to this popup, some pages not only display the popup 'This page is easier to see on the application version' as shown below.

In February 2020, some pages appeared that could not be viewed without using the application version or logging in.

Android Police, who handles Android news, pointed out that the Reddit app for Android reached 50 million installs in a short period from 2016 to 2020 because it effectively disabled the mobile website, He said there are many third-party apps that are better than the official ones.