As a moderator of a small subreddit, when I checked roughly 75% of our traffic was from mobile. It doesn’t distinguish beyond that but the mobile browser experience is so shockingly bad I think it’s safe to say that is almost entirely app usage. Since there is only official app & Apollo on iOS, that means it’s one of those two… but the way Huffman tells it, Apollo has less than 5% of the install base of the official app on iOS. If that’s the case I don’t really understand his argument that they’re bleeding Reddit dry. But that’s a separate issue.

But, based on the responses we had before the blackout and the responses we got in the last few days “after” in the discussions around opening back up, I can say he appears to be right. Most people just want to use the main app, don’t want to learn anything about third party apps, don’t care why they exist, just want everyone to shut up and move on.

I did find the total 180 very odd. Vote was overwhelmingly in favor of the protest beforehand. Overwhelmingly in favor of going back to normal after. But it was different people. And it wasn’t just random one-week-old accounts that had never posted on the sub before, it was regulars, old accounts, or both, both times.

I’m proud of the properly big subs for continuing their protests. Our community was not strong enough.