Reddit plagued with 1-star App Store reviews over API debacle as users search for 0-star button

https://midwest.social/post/883364

Reddit plagued with 1-star App Store reviews over API debacle as users search for 0-star button - midwest.social

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.

Thank you for reminding me to review the app on Android, which seems to have a rating of 3.6.
Weird, it shows as 4.4 in my store.
Apparently the ratings are location specific
As I've seen in other posts of this nature, I believe it's based on locale and possibly platform.
Maybe, it sucks because this is a very high rate for such a shitty app.
Its 3.6 stars for me on android in the US.
3.4 on the Canadian play store.
It doesn't let me review or rate it.... Fucking bullshit
Might need to install it first.
If you have it installed and still can't find the place to rate it, (took me a couple minutes myself) search it on the play store and then tap on the logo or the words to the left of where it says "open" and you should find a spot to rate it on the new page.
Iron Sheik - Fucking Bullshit!

YouTube
I killed my Reddit app and account. Not looking back.
No wonder, Reddit sucks and the app is terrible.
The rating will go down a lot more on July 1.
Seems unlikely. Currently it’s sitting at 4.8 stars in the Apple Store with millions of 5 star ratings. Makes you wonder if they’re cooking the books, as if Apple or someone on the Store team has VC money riding on this.

as if Apple or someone on the Store team has VC money riding on this.

They don't have VC money riding on this. VCs aren't offering the kind of money that Apple cares about, especially when the trade-off is getting caught 'fixing' the marketplace somehow.

But there doesn't need to be dirty money in play - Apple has long been inclined to manipulate ratings in the App Store, and almost universally in ways that trend more positive. Even as a completely free app that generates no revenue for Apple, having it on the store and having it highly rated on the store makes the App Store look good. Apple wants there to be a positive impression of using their walled-garden app environment and highly-rated free apps for popular sites and services supports that. They can even argue that the ratings on their store prove that theirs is the better environment, because Reddit for iOs is rated better than Reddit for Android, and "they're the same app!" so therefore it's the platform that gets credit for the gap consumer perception.

More, Reddit needs to generate revenue, and lots of users are reaching the site from mobile. It makes sense to find ways of monetizing the app, especially if they can corner the market on it - and Apple gets a cut of all purchases made through their platform.

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.

@shep

As a heads up, apparently the people who manage revanced (the app you can use to repackage YouTube to bypass ads) have added a repack for reddit sync, letting you use your own API key in place of the devs. I'm still waiting on my dev key but that's something that might interest people.
While I appreciate people putting effort to make it work, fuck the leadership and fuck the platform. They don’t deserve our business, full stop.

Fully agreed.

Also, while using one's own dev key is a nice workaround, it's disappointing to hear that jerome is having to 'wait' for their dev key. I've used other apps (eg, GitHub) where I can create an API key within moments.

That's because Reddit is crap and can't do anything properly
Awesome, I did my part before seeing this news article. Fuck that app up!
Genshin Impact Anniversary 1-star wave incoming 🤣

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.
I didn't have the shitapp installed but I have in the past and I must of given it 4 stars accidentally while trying to get rid of the pop up to rate the app. Edit to 1 star. It's a little thing but if enough people do it.
Like I said in another thread, apple is removing poor reviews for them.
Reddit on the Google Play Store still has 4.5 stars. We gotta fix that.
3.6 stars now...
3.0 in europe. I did my part a week ago. Glad to see it working.
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)
Did my part, it's at 3.4 now
I did my part! 3.6 as of now.

I've done my duty on the Play Store. Currently a 3.6 average.

I did just install it for a quick try and holy hell it's a piece of shit. Begone.

Thank you for your service.
Gonna miss the platform, but not the devs.
The platform is nothing without it's users, and those will migrate elsewhere
Did my bit but still 3.6 in UK Play Store 🤨
Thanks for the reminder, not going to rate the app on the store since I value my time more than revisiting it. Protest them at the app store is not going to work, those business men wouldn’t listen a word from their users as depicted in the recent events. As long as they could answer the call from the shareholder, we as the users will always be the second citizen among the ranks.
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.
Left my own 1 star review. I didn’t even had to make up stuff, the app is garbage.