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.
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.
Did my part on the Play Store!
How’s this?
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.
Left my own 1 star review. I didn’t even had to make up stuff, the app is garbage.
I no longer post, comment or vote on Reddit. When RiF stops working I will no longer be reading Reddit on my mobile devices.
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!
Oh good reminder
Reduced to 1 star.
Went scrolling reading reviews… 1 and 2 star ratings forever. Still 3.3 rating overall.
It still shows as 4.8 interest Apple IOS store, with a proud “editor’s choice” mark on it.
I did my part and left a 1-star rating and correlating review.
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.
You’re right.
This is yet another reason we need decentralized options. All these giant companies protecting their walled gardens only hurts users.
Thank you for reminding me to review the app on Android, which seems to have a rating of 3.6.
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.
app sucks donkey balls
Received and understood Rocinante. You get those comms checked out when you hit port.
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.
Does it have a way to bypass the API problem that’s about to hit us? I don’t browse or anything anymore, I just show up in places where I’m told people have questions I’d be good at answering.
We will find that out on 1st July I guess.
Unless Reddit management has grown a collective brain then the only apps that are exceptions for are the ones for blind users, because otherwise they’d get sued under the ADA laws.
Although frankly they could get sued anyway, because the existence of a third party solution isn’t really a defense.
I’m curious- what activism groups are you a part of that can’t be moved off of Reddit?
Well the group doesn’t organize through Reddit, but we interact with all the internet sites, because people are on the internet.
I’m an unofficial volunteer for The Center for Election Science and right now their big thing is helping people switch their elections to Approval Voting. So basically I just keep an eye out for conversations and posts where election or representation reform is relevant and join the discussion.
If you wanna win hearts and minds, you gotta show up where the people are.
That being said, I’m on Lemmy because FUCK REDDIT and monetizing social interactions is gross and icky.
Yeah I feel that. I make the same argument for being on Instagram still. When you’re trying to get your voice out, you gotta where it’ll be heard.
This approval voting concept is interesting- seems similar to ranked-choice in terms of getting a quality result, but a different take on how to get there.
Pretty much every alternative voting system gets very similar results in practice. Most of the arguments between voting nerds are about what kind of things are more important. Approval people favor simplicity and scalability, RCV people favor individual voter expression. I could give you all the arguments about why approval is better, but we’re in the middle of a funding drive so I’m kinda burnt out on it.
No worries- thanks for letting me know! I’ll look into it more on my own.
Gonna miss the platform, but not the devs.
The platform is nothing without it’s users, and those will migrate elsewhere
Reddit on the Google Play Store still has 4.5 stars. We gotta fix that.
3.6 stars now…
Seems to have been stable at 3.6 for the past few hours. Have to remember to check back after July 1st to see how bad it gets (hopefully)
Never mind zero stars, the Reddit app (and new Reddit in general) deserves negative stars.
Thankfully there is plenty of innovation in the market for fediverse apps.
@thehatfox I’d love to see a -1 star to signify willful ignorance, deliberate sabotage, complete dumbassery, or all of the above.
