Honest question: why push people to use the app specifically? What is the advantage to reddit if everyone just magically dropped the browser and switched to the app?
Also, last time I tried it, you couldn't use the app without being logged in, so they get more data on you than if you were able to browse anonymously.
Its always worth to look at the amount of Data used between the official app and third party. Before unsinstalling i realised that sync for reddit had about 2 thirds the amount of tzraffic that the offical app uses...
For that sweet sweet ad revenue from my understanding
Since... It's significantly more difficult to avoid ads/data harvesting from an in-house-designed app than, say, a 3rd party browser with adblockers, or 3rd party apps that don't run ads at all