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".
Good.
The more of this they do, the more people move to federated sites.
But will there be enough to counterract the people who just use the app? That’s the real question. No one doubts a move like this increases fediverse people. So did the API scurfuffle, yet people still regularly complain about the fediverse being unpopulated.
I’ve been on fedi since 2015—over a decade. I know it’s gotten bigger. Yet, every year, for 10 years straight, are people who complain about how small the userbase is. I don’t see this at all changing that.