Social network Reddit recently began blocking mobile visitors to its website while pushing them to download the official Reddit app, and it's fair to say that the move is not going down well with users. If you visit reddit.com on your iPhone today, you may see a new popup that can't be dismissed, asking you to "get the app to keep using Reddit".
Their app being so bad is the only reason third party apps were even a thing. The official reddit was just unusable on mobile.
It is the only social media that had a significant user base using third party apps.
The same is true for the search. You had to use their party (google) search engines to search for something on reddit.
Not even the desktop website is good. I don’t even remember the name of the extension, but that one extension that every power user had brought many simple features that reddit didn’t add after years of existing.
Their multiple redesigns were universally hated. The reason they haven’t shut down old reddit is because a non-insignificant amount of traffic uses that frontend, even though it is 2-3 redesigns old.
Basically anything that reddit did was shit. It only was popular because the core features worked and were free with very little ads. And it had a massive (and active) user base that posted content, so basically every google search contained a reddit link with a decent answer.