Ask HN: Why is Reddit the only major platform with rich third party mobile apps? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why is Reddit the only major platform with rich third party mobile apps?

5 pointslopkeny12ko6 comments

For Reddit, there's Infinity, Boost, Relay, Now, among many other third party mobile apps. They're all quite good and much better than the official first party Android app. I've been using Infinity for years, after having migrated from the official app.

This got me thinking: why does no other major social media platform have an ecosystem of third party apps?

* Facebook * Twitter * Instagram * Facebook * Snapchat * Pinterest

Adjacently, why don't they allow non-first-party apps? Aren't mobile apps just a thin client? Anything that gets more users using the service sounds like a net positive, regardless of first or third party origin.

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Because it's the only major platform with a robust API.

In 2022 I don't think any other major service has a public API that lets you perform as many actions as the official website or app.

> Adjacently, why don't they allow non-first-party apps?

Because if they are the only option, then people will only use their app, which means they can do whatever they want with it and people will still use it. Additionally, they no longer have to maintain or work on a public API.

Reddit is already aggressively pushing for users to go to their official app when browsing on mobile. I would not be suprised that custom-made apps will be more limited in the future, up to the point of being pointless. Twitter did it. Reddit may do it (only allow read-only as a first step?). They also may disable old.reddit.com at some point. Enjoy the ride while it lasts.

Twitter actively, intentionally, hamstrung third party clients. First in 2010 with the stupid “Twitter inflection point" and subsequent multiyear decay in the API, followed by enforcing a hard limit of 100k on application tokens (ie, your app could have up to 100k Twitter accounts authenticated to it, no more). Ostensibly done to drive more traffic to the official timeline for ad insertions.

Meta actively discourages third party clients for Facebook and Instagram, IIRC an iOS Instragram client was just spiked in the app store after a complaint from Meta.

IMO, as a huge amount of information of user behaviour (scrolling time, post viewing time, clicks etc.) is collected from the frontend apps, losing that kind of visibility is a no-no for them.

This also explains app size, IMO. Querying an API and displaying remote videos/images should not require 40+ MiB Android apps. I think most of the app size is the tracking code that analyze how much time you glare at ads.

Twitter used to like 10 years ago but killed them all.

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