this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2023
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cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/883364

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.

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[–] TheButtonJustSpins@infosec.pub 67 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Even before the protest, just over half of reviews were 1 star? Jesus.

[–] girlfreddy@lemmy.ca 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Makes you wonder if Wall St pays attention to anything outside of its hallowed halls?

[–] kautau@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Wall st doesn’t give a shit about user feedback. Sadly the Reddit app was the only app generating ad revenue for Reddit, so that’s all they care about, users are an avenue to profit for them, nothing more

[–] Zebov@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Everything makes sense of you follow the money.

[–] Ketchup@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

I’d go a step further and say, they only need to convince the pension investing zombies it’s the next hot offering “once in a life time” “ground floor” growth stock. Wall Street will dump this on retail’s head and buy the bag back out at the bid for Pennie’s before they sail it up the mast again on inflated earnings. Rinse and repeat until the name is utterly broken.

[–] rylin@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

How is that possible when the app has a 4.8 rating?

[–] MothBookkeeper@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It doesn't though? At least on Android, it's 3.6.

[–] youthinkyouknowme@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It says 4.3 on android for me

[–] 666dollarfootlong@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

What? My play store says the reddit app has rating of 3.8

[–] Martineski@lemmy.fmhy.ml 3 points 1 year ago
[–] maiskanzler@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago

I guess it's not a true average. Many sites use weighted averages to influence such ratings and give less weight to bad reviews especially when they are flooding in like right now.

[–] Neuron@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

Reviews in play store are now somewhat based on region and type of device you use so the score will vary between people. For me it's 3.6 as well right now.

[–] hollywoodhoogle@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

I don’t get it. Are they removed?

[–] zosu@vlemmy.net 1 points 1 year ago

they kinda drove ppl to 3rd party apps. i mean, if there was a tiktok app with less needs for permissions or less spyware, ppl would prefer that as well.