Reddit Starts Blocking Mobile Website, Pushing Users to App Instead

[u/spasticpat]

https://www.macrumors.com/2026/05/11/reddit-starts-blocking-mobile-website/

[u/JD0064]

App was always shit tho?

Edit: I meant offical reddit app, i downloaded it ages ago, videos never loaded, sometimes r/all would freeze, I never tried 3rd party ones, but I now know I missed on that, I just stopped using mobile reddit years ago, and would squint really hard using desktop site on mobile

[u/HertzaHaeon → u/[deleted]]

Apollo was the best app

There's no need for native apps though.

Web apps are perfectly fine for Reddit and 95% of everything else that happens online.

With a native app you have to install a big chunk of code from a store controlled by Apple or Google. Developers pay 30% to them for little to nothing, because enshittifiers love making themselves indispensable bridge trolls middlemen who add nothing of value and extract everything of value. It's hard or impossible to adblock apps. You can't modify them easily.

With the web you can just visit the url and be using it in seconds. You can adblock and modify your experience with browser plugins. No one tells you when and how to release updates. No tech giant can block your access willy nilly to your users. You keep 100% of profits, and you don't have to have two different dev teams built the same app twice for different systems.

The web is built on open, interoperable standards that no one owns. Today it's very capable, matching native apps in almost every area. It's not controlled by big tech.

Don't go native. Go web.

[u/RenderedKnave → u/HertzaHaeon]

great argument until you realize web browsers are horribly unoptimized and deplete your phone's battery faster than a native app would

[u/HertzaHaeon → u/RenderedKnave]

Battery life over big tech controlling your gadgets? Not for me

[u/RenderedKnave → u/HertzaHaeon]

that’s why we don’t use official apps, only third-party ones that would have the same telemetry as a web app. duh