Web push is a prerequisite for moving a ton of apps out of app stores and into the platform agnostic thin client model of the web: messaging clients, timers, background tasks, transaction/shipping status updates, trading tools, etc
The reason is just that I visit many more websites only once and expect no ongoing relationship with them: that means that I am much less likely to want their notifications AND they are much more likely to want me to have notifications AND they have less to lose by being spammy.
Apps can assume higher organic revisits and also being too spammy can result in the downside of the me the app. A website I had no plan to revisit has no punishment for attempting not spam.
Why would I want to turn my powerful computer into a thin client where I don't have my own software?
Or maybe it’s because either cross platform web apps are never as good as mobile apps or that the entire web development ecosystem is a clusterfuck of dependency hell, security vulnerabilities in dependencies, complexity, and “ooh shiny” new framework of the week?
Reddit has certainly asked me to download the app, but never forced me.
You just made their point for them.
My point was maybe they should try just not installing the apps and not getting push notifications, etc.
I don’t want the things the developers want. Reddit’s mistake is thinking that I want anything more than headlines, thumbnails, and interstitial advertising.
Reddit is text with images. That is literally the core of what web is.
The only reason Reddit breaks their web version and pushes you towards the app is because Reddit wants to monetize the hell out of reddit, and doing that through the app is easier.