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Comment by Hoyadonis | Hacker News Reader

>If the traffic to their site is primarily from the web

Of course it's not. According to this site, around 3/4 of their traffic is from mobile.

https://www.semrush.com/website/reddit.com/overview/

HackerNews, I love you, but some of the comments in here are detached from reality. You'd be hard pressed to find any social media company that gets more traffic from desktop than mobile in the year 2023. This site is the exception, not the rule.

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Mobile includes mobile web browsers.

And I can guarantee that there are approximately five people using Reddit via a browser on mobile. Mobile means the app, to a precision of two or three significant digits.

I’m one of those five people then. Very casual use, but that’s probably the large majority of Reddit users.

I'd wager that most Reddit users these days, casual or not, are only dimly aware that the platform even exists as a website. Or at least a large plurality.

According to [1], Reddit has 52 million daily active users (and 430 monthly users), while according to [2] the Reddit app has 17 million daily active users. Both numbers are from 2021. So only about a third of DAUs would be using the Reddit app. Apollo has 50,000 yearly subscribers, so is probably more on the negligible side.

[1] https://www.businessofapps.com/data/reddit-statistics/

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1255714/reddit-app-dau-w...

> Apollo has 50,000 yearly subscribers, so is probably more on the negligible side overall.

Note this figure does not include free users, nor the users of the plethora of other clients... But regardless

Clearly, Reddit has deemed 3rd party clients pose a huge cost to their platform, otherwise they wouldn't charge through the roof. IMO, all these numbers are meaningless given this fact.

I’m not sure what Reddit’s rationale is here. Third-party app users are less than 1% (can’t find the link where I read this). The most plausible explanation is that they want to get rid of a potential future threat, because I don’t believe that current third-party usage constitutes any substantial loss. Otherwise buying out Apollo as mentioned in TFA should have been an easy decision.

Maybe I am a little naive here but…

Wouldn’t an ad support guideline be enough for third party apps to continue coexisting with the official Reddit app?

Call it that, or sdk. But if ad based revenue is so important for Reddit, getting Apollo and the rest to properly display and track ads is imho a no brainer and would totally solve the issue at hand.

As I said maybe I am too naive, and I only see part of the picture.

You assume they act rationally. As mentioned in the post, the API costs are orders of magnitude more than the expected value from an average user.

In the post further down they discuss that. Reddit’s rationale is opportunity cost per user, not the price of serving the api.

We’ve got lots of web devs and startup space folks on this site, I guess somebody must know how to look this sort of thing up?

I googled “percentage of reddit mobile traffic in app” but got a bunch of marketing sites, and wasn’t able to sort out which ones were bullshit. I bet there’s a good source for this sort of thing though.

In any case, we don’t need to wager right? It seems like this ought to be measurable.

I’m one of those five as well. I have the Reddit app but still use mobile web.

I'd wager you're completely wrong. Reddit at this point gets a ton of traffic from search. Remember the old 90/9/1 rule. 90% of users are just browsing cat pictures and are eyeball fodder for ads.

As one of the five, I didn't believe this so went trying to determine more realistic numbers.

Per the link below, mobile web is anywhere from 15 to 60% of mobile traffic. Reddit isn't listed, and it's 4 years old, so who knows, but I'd imagine it falls somewhere in the same range, probably closer to the lower end?

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1019768/us-retailers-app...

I am one of the five. I use the Reddit website on iOS Safari and have for years. I only read one subreddit, so my usage pattern may be different than a normal reddit user. The only thing that annoys me is the ever persistent ‘website or app’ modal dialogue but I’m used to it now.

I try to use mobile websites instead of apps because I feel like the tracking data a company can get from a web browser is less granular than app tracking data.

I use old.reddit on my mobile browser.

The app sucks.

old.reddit is starting to come apart at the seams, tho. (maybe it's because r/subs don't keep the style sheets up to date or something? i dunno) in many cases you can't up or downvote, there's no search button, there's no sidebar with the flair and the rules/mods, etc.

You might be the only person that browses old.reddit with subreddit CSS turned on

Err why? The css adds a lot of flavor, generally doesn’t get in the way of functionality.

I don't want any flavor, that's the entire point of old.reddit. I use it to consume information, not for eye candy.

I used "style sheet" in a generic sense, rather than to mean CSS (I remember Microsoft (Multitool) Word v1.0) and I was referring to the layout of a subreddit home page which I've never played with but I'm aware the moderators have some control over.

I know how to turn off Page Style in Firefox (manually for every page) which is CSS related, but otherwise have no idea what you are referring to

Wrong. Their mobile crapp is well, crap. That's why they try to shove it up everybody's arse with the "Open this page in our app" blurbs.

> And I can guarantee that there are approximately five people using Reddit via a browser on mobile.

Apparently all five of them use my little web browser extension with Reddit-specific features, requested by users.

But I can guarantee that your estimate is totally wrong.

Using Reddit via browser here, never used an app for it yet as I like tabs.

Another web browser mobile here.

You cant use reddit website on mobile. It will force you to install the app to view most subreddits

I use it all the time on my phone old.reddit.com

The only way I use is through old.reddit.com. I won’t be going there if that is shutdown.

This is false. I only browse reddit in the browser version on my phone. It annoys you all the time to install their app, but you can read and post perfectly fine.

If you use a browser that supports uBlock (e.g. Firefox or Kiwi) you can easily block the app advertisement as well.

Your rebuttal is false and the parent is accurate. Reddit will throw up a full screen interstitial on most popular subreddits preventing even viewing and redirect you to download the app. This is on the mobile (not old.reddit desktop-only) site. Their UX is shite and full of dark patterns.

If you log in, the mobile site is perfectly usable. You might also have to set a preference as well (like the old.reddit preference). It has been so many years of using it this way I don't remember.

Not forced, if you are logged in. You'll get notified to install it but you can click it away.

It's possible, they just make it as annoying and difficult as possible.

You absolutely can. Old reddit still works.

And .compact is gone

You can on old.reddit.com. Their redesign was so unpopular with users they agreed to keep supporting the old design which doesn't nag you into downloading the app.

old.reddit.com is primarily kept around because the majority of moderators use it.

Works in Firefox on Android without logging in or using old. for me.

I use reddit, as I do most of my surfing, very successful with my smartphone browser.

I know reddit is pushing it's all but even that is not 3th party apps.

Yeah I've used reddit daily for over a decade. I just use a mobile browser. I tried a couple apps a few years back, but just when back to mobile browser after a few weeks.

I just hope they don't get rid of old.reddit.com

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