this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2024
680 points (97.8% liked)
Technology
59495 readers
3110 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The fact that the app is still so bad after so much time has gone by indicates that it is the desired product that the company wants to offer. And after realizing that they were still losing users to better competitors, their solution was to destroy the ability to compete in the first place rather than improve the product.
They like the app as-is, with all of the terrible performance and UX that goes along with it. The reason behind that is because they're getting user engagement metrics and other telemetry data, more control over ad delivery and the content users see (including astroturfed sponsored Reddit content), and more monetization.
Third party apps, like Apollo and AlienBlue before it, cared about providing a good user experience. It just happens that users typically prefer experiences that aren't trying to capitalize their every interaction, and companies take that personally.
I've started using Geddit, a 3rd party app that doesn't use the Reddit API. And it's still better than the app they develop in-house.
I rarely visit Reddit, but when searching for something niche there always seems to be a few threads over there sadly.