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While it’s seldom been known for making popular decisions that enhance the user experience, Reddit’s latest blunder just might take the cake.
Despite having a perfectly functional mobile website, the self-professed “front page of the internet” has now chosen to lock users out of it completely, while pushing them toward its app.
Yes, seriously: a newly-implemented pop-up — which, unlike previous iterations, can no longer be closed — begs users to “get the app to keep using Reddit,” while blocking them from clicking any links or using the site in anyway. On your phone, it basically just turns the entirety of reddit.com into a huge ad for the company’s app.
To many frustrated users, it’s the latest sign that the platform is suffering from acute “enshittification,” a neologism coined by author Cory Doctorow that describes tech companies deliberately degrading their services to maximize profit.
“Thanks, Reddit,” one disgruntled user complained, on the r/enshittification subreddit. “Now it’ll be easier for me to quit you!”
“Are my days of anonymously browsing over?” another puzzled user wrote. “Is this a new rule of Reddit?”
The desperate measure highlights the precarious financial position Reddit finds itself in. Since going public on the New York Stock Exchange in March 2024, the company’s shares have gone on a rollercoaster ride as leadership tries to find a reliable method of monetization.
It’s also struggled to walk a tightrope, on one hand being tempted with major contracts to allow AI companies to use all of its user-generated data to train large language models — while on the other, trying to keep from further alienating its already-frustrated users.
In 2024, the company signed a contract with OpenAI, a contentious deal that allowed the ChatGPT maker to train its AI models on user-submitted posts.
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