[manfredo]

There's a growing class of apps that are clearly intended to be used as image boards, but don't actually advertise themselves as being intended for any specific website. One common pattern are apps that require that the user type in a certain domain in order for them to work. Most *chan browser apps in this way. You manually specify a domain and board code, and only then does the app function.

I can see this type of scheme increasing, as it puts a degree of indirection between the app itself and the objectionable content. There's a stronger element of deniability: the user is the one that's navigating to a separate website that hosts objectionable content. The app itself is "clean" so to speak (even though it's obviously not the case in practice).

[ReptileMan]

Hmm... Isn't this app called web browser? There is not much more than it is needed when it is for consuming content.

[manfredo]

Yeah, it's a web browser in essence. But the UI, scrolling behavior, etc. are all handled by the app rather than the website. The result is often a much cleaner experience, especially compared to the average website's mobile web experience. There's also often extended functionality, like saving entire galleries of images, saving threads, etc.

What I'd imagine Artstation doing is releasing a "generic art showcase app" (or exposing APIs to let 3rd parties do so themselves), where users can manually specify www.artstation.com. The app would provide all the features that the Artstation app did.

[ndnxhs]

4chan works really well on mobile. The only thing an app did for me was presaving content so I could view it offline.

[lozenge]

And how will they include ads? API users can just not display those.

[manfredo]

Maybe when it pulls a gallery of photos from the API, it injects a few ads. Or the ads could be served by the app itself.

[grenoire]

Reminds me more of a Gopher (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_(protocol)) kind of web in this case, given the stricter structuring.