I deleted the app because it was too much of a skinners box for me, but it worked well. The mobile site on iOS works well, and I literally never get popup prompts or blockers guiding me towards the app. Perhaps those people aren’t logged in? On desktop I use the redesign happily - the biggest complaint I’ve heard from power users is that it’s not as information dense, but that’s super easily fixed by changing the default layout from ‘card’ to ‘classic’ or ‘compact’. I suspect those people skipped the popup walkthrough that explained this when the transition happened, because I’ve run across
many bitter people who used the old site a lot and didn’t know you could change the new one away from the massive cards. IMO that’s pretty ironic.
Reddit’s current UIs get a lot of hate, but I’ve been using the site at least weekly for the last 11 years and I really don’t get the complaints. The old site was ugly (albeit familiar), and the new skin doesn’t subtract from the functionality in any way besides a few obscure subreddits with wild styling. If that has helped bring people to my niche interest subs, that’s a huge win in my book.