The simple fact is that most people these days use social media (almost) exclusively through apps their phones. Yes, you can install it as a PWA through your browser, but that’s a possibility most non-techy people aren’t even aware of, nor is it really explained anywhere. Not having apps in official app stores is a major hurdle to adoption.

So we are at the stage where people are unable to operate a simple mobile website, and everything has to be turned into its own special app?

I don’t know, for me kbin doesn’t have to get as big as reddit to be a cool place to hang out. Not sure if I’m interested in an influx of people who only post selfies and shitty tiktok videos and don’t bother reading the community rules because they’re on mobile and seeing the sidebar requires tapping on a button but they don’t know how to do that or something. Maybe I’m just bitter from reading all the comments on reddit and seeing how people don’t even bother understanding what happened with the API etc. and just keep screaming “give content now”.