I’m on the website via a browser on PC. If the only way to make things disappear is upvote/downvote then that is another example of bad UX. I may not care about the post and now I have to proactively vote it up or down. On the flip side, if I was actually interested in a post and wanted to come back to that discussion later, you are saying it will now be gone from my feed. That stifles discussion.

Yup, on desktop, the comment area takes up a 1/3rd of the screen and there is a lot of empty space on either side. Your reply is also too…tall? There is so much space around each action button and there are buttons at the top next to your name (permalink, collapse) and also at the bottom (up vote, down vote, reply) instead of having them all in one line. Also the vote count and post time are weirdly centered in the comment rather than on an edge to create clean borders. It makes no sense!

Not a huge fan of the UI (so much wasted space!) but it works for now. I’m subscribed to a few communities but the content is pretty stale. I’ve seen the same posts at the top for a few days now. The “Active” selection keeps the same things over. I tried a few of the other selections (Hot, Top Day, etc) but there is this weird thing where it randomly refreshes the feed and adds one or two new posts at the top and then pushes everything down. Again, UI/UX issues.

The difference is evident: Everyone in your example is used to using a different app. In the USA, iMessage can handle texting as well so it remains the default. It allows you to converse with other iMessage users and with Android users. The default “just works” and since iPhones are very popular here, it is more common to be messaging with other iMessage users than with Android phones. So much so that messaging on iMessage and texting on iMessage are considered one and the same by iPhone users so they don’t differentiate capabilities and just blame Android users for “breaking” their messaging features.

And my mom

The hard part is getting others to join. If all of your fam has iPhones and you are the one Android person, getting them all to join Signal just for you is a tall order.