Despite site-stopping protests by mods and users, Reddit leadership chose to brute force its way through any reasonable way of...
Despite site-stopping protests by mods and users, Reddit leadership chose to brute force its way through any reasonable way of continuing third-party app support. Instead, the company hopes its luxury-priced API will be its secret shortcut to an overvalued IPO. As a result, Reddit’s official iOS app is being torpedo’d in the App Store.
The final days of Apollo may be upon us, but the ramifications of Reddit’s disdain for its users are here to stay. Look no further than App Store reviews to see the results. As TechCrunch reports, data from Sensor Tower shows how Reddit is sealing its fate as a 1-star reviewed app.
The data shared with TechCrunch shows that nearly 91% of Reddit’s U.S. iOS reviews carried a 1-star rating during the initial phase of the protest between June 12–14, compared to about 53% in the previous two months until May.
There has been some ratings improvement lately as the 1-star reviews of the Reddit U.S. iOS app dropped to about 86% between June 15–26, Sensor Tower’s data shows.
That’s presumably because the App Store doesn’t offer 0-star ratings. It’s also telling that Reddit leadership thought nuking third-party apps made sense when its own app saw more than half of its reviews rank it as low as possible.
Reddit app reviews in the App Store have also become a place for users to voice their frustration with the self-sabotaging company.
The data shared by Sensor Tower also indicates the top three most mentioned terms in all of the Reddit U.S. iOS reviews included keywords “apollo”, “third party” and “3rd party,” suggesting users were bombing review ratings in light of the new API move.
Either users are pissed or they’re hosting a lot of birthday parties for the god of truth.
At any rate, there’s been virtually no good news on the Reddit front since the awesome Apollo client was forced to announce its end date. The best Reddit app is closing up shop on June 30 to avoid owing tens of millions of dollars to Reddit before ever seeing its own revenue.
Yeah I installed the official app because I have to use Reddit for political activism. The app sucks donkey balls. It's genuinely confusing to try and navigate. It's never clear where you are. The app SUCKS.
I socialize here now, I only go to Reddit if I have to.
I’ve found that Reddit’s website works on the Brave browser just fine due to its popup blocker blocking the “view this nonce in the app” popup. But, then you’re stuck posting through the mobile site, which, while fairly straightforward, also sucks.
Why not use Re-Reddit instead of ad-ridden official app? It's by the Revanced team and has no ads. I don't know if it also tracks like the official app.
If you have it installed and still can't find the place to rate it, (took me a couple minutes myself) search it on the play store and then tap on the logo or the words to the left of where it says "open" and you should find a spot to rate it on the new page.
Apple removes all legitimate reviews, Google is the only one that allows it but removes it a few days later. None of these stores show real reviews for new people.
As a heads up, apparently the people who manage revanced (the app you can use to repackage YouTube to bypass ads) have added a repack for reddit sync, letting you use your own API key in place of the devs. I'm still waiting on my dev key but that's something that might interest people.
Also, while using one's own dev key is a nice workaround, it's disappointing to hear that jerome is having to 'wait' for their dev key. I've used other apps (eg, GitHub) where I can create an API key within moments.
Notably, using a personal API key like that is against the terms of service and may get your account banned. Not that it bothers me though, I'm essentially on Lemmy full-time now.
I think companies are so experienced with brigades like this (whether justified or not) when emotions are running high that we can always expect the mass low-star reviews to be removed. I think the 53% 1 star reviews in the two months prior is more telling for those who haven't had the misfortune of installing the default app.
That true, but surely theres a way they could only target the most recent reviews? After all, you’d want to maintain the integrity of the original score prior to the brigade.
It looks as though they didn’t do that in this case. They removed nearly all the one star reviews. The score appears to be higher than before. That’s equally misleading.
Many many months ago I downloaded it, and I couldn't even get it to connect to reddits servers, so I uninstalled it moved on with my life, I should have reviewed it.
Now it'll look like I'm jumping on the bandwagon, I don't want that. I want it known that the app, independent of any decision management are taking, is ready really crap.
It's sad that Reddit is dying, but in a way I'm happy to be free of it. It is an addicting but ultimately vapid way to spend your time, and the amount of spam and reposts was making it a dumpster fire long before this API fuckery. Long live the Fediverse!
Something I’ve only noticed while migrating over to the Fediverse is how rampant Gifs/short videos à la TikTok and YouTube Shorts had become on Reddit. That was not the kind of content I originally used Reddit for but somehow I kept slogging through this shit on the daily.
Seems unlikely. Currently it’s sitting at 4.8 stars in the Apple Store with millions of 5 star ratings. Makes you wonder if they’re cooking the books, as if Apple or someone on the Store team has VC money riding on this.
as if Apple or someone on the Store team has VC money riding on this.
They don't have VC money riding on this. VCs aren't offering the kind of money that Apple cares about, especially when the trade-off is getting caught 'fixing' the marketplace somehow.
But there doesn't need to be dirty money in play - Apple has long been inclined to manipulate ratings in the App Store, and almost universally in ways that trend more positive. Even as a completely free app that generates no revenue for Apple, having it on the store and having it highly rated on the store makes the App Store look good. Apple wants there to be a positive impression of using their walled-garden app environment and highly-rated free apps for popular sites and services supports that. They can even argue that the ratings on their store prove that theirs is the better environment, because Reddit for iOs is rated better than Reddit for Android, and "they're the same app!" so therefore it's the platform that gets credit for the gap consumer perception.
More, Reddit needs to generate revenue, and lots of users are reaching the site from mobile. It makes sense to find ways of monetizing the app, especially if they can corner the market on it - and Apple gets a cut of all purchases made through their platform.
Me and Reddit are done. The API change specifically did not affect me, but it gave me an excuse to leave such a vindictive and lame community. Cheers to Lemmy and Kbin!
This app is malware. Full of tracking, violates your privacy. Spez nixed 3rd party apps to force you to use this. Why? Why is it so much laggier than Sync for Reddit? Why does it consume so much bandwidth? Why was Spez so adamant about forcing users to this trash fire? Hmmmm... Not a trustworthy app. If it's on your device, your device is bugged. Remember, you are not Reddit's customer. You're the product.
Thanks for the reminder, not going to rate the app on the store since I value my time more than revisiting it. Protest them at the app store is not going to work, those business men wouldn't listen a word from their users as depicted in the recent events. As long as they could answer the call from the shareholder, we as the users will always be the second citizen among the ranks.
I didn't have the shitapp installed but I have in the past and I must of given it 4 stars accidentally while trying to get rid of the pop up to rate the app. Edit to 1 star. It's a little thing but if enough people do it. Australian play store has it at 3.4 star rating.