Social network Reddit recently began blocking visitors to its mobile site, encouraging them to download the official Reddit app. It’s fair to say that the move hasn’t been met with enthusiasm by users. If you visit reddit.com from your iPhone today, you may see a new pop-up that can’t be dismissed, asking you to “download the app to continue using Reddit.”
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A Reddit spokesperson told Ars Technica that this is “a test for a small subset of frequent mobile users who are not logged in, prompting them to download the app after visiting the website.” He continued: “These users are already familiar with Reddit, and we’ve found that the experience is much better for them in the app.”
The app offers a more personalized experience and users can more easily find communities that match their interests.” Users have already turned to sub-forums like r/bugs and r/help to express their displeasure at being blocked from the mobile site.
“Are my days of anonymous browsing over?” one user asked. Victor Tangermann of Futurism wrote about the dynamic advertising last week, arguing that the change was the latest sign of the platform’s “decomposition” — a neologism coined by author Cory Doctorow, who describes tech companies that intentionally degrade their services to maximize profit.
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Despite continued user growth and 121 million daily active users, Reddit has struggled to find a path to monetization since it went public two years ago. The site's main revenue stream is advertising, which explains the push to keep users logged into its mobile app, where it can constantly monitor their activity.
In 2024, the company also signed a controversial contract with OpenAI that allowed the ChatGPT creator to train its artificial intelligence models on user-submitted posts.
More than half of the U.S. population visits Reddit every week, according to the Financial Times, but most of that discovery comes from Google searches, suggesting that the so-called “front page of the internet” walks a tightrope between commoditizing interactions and stifling the growth of participation.
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This isn't the first time Reddit has alienated some of its users. In 2023, it stopped allowing users to opt out of ad personalization. Then, that same year, before going public, the company began charging developers for access to its API, which led to the shutdown of several popular Reddit clients, including Apollo.
