This is a perfect example of a HN reader being out of touch with what the vast majority of users actually want. There are plenty of reasons people want a native twitter app: state restoration, integration with system services, push notifications, better user experience, better accessibility, fewer ways to track the user, better permission model, ...
You think native apps have fewer ways to track the user? Then why does every social site push users to their native app? Just so they can get less info? Seems unlikely to me.
What is state restoration? All I want is to go back to where I was, a normal website does that ( e.g. HN). Integration with what? I literally just wanna browse twitter, like, retweet, and occasionally compose one. Push notifications, they work on every system except iOS. Better UX is using URLs that I can open and share. Better accessibility is HTML that blind users can use. Native apps track you much, much more than websites and can't be uBlocked. Permission model is as good as native, if not better because users blindly give native apps all permissions (see Instagram).
You haven't made a single point, on the contrary, web wins on ALL of them.
The one single point you can make but you didn't, is that native apps often (but not always) feel smoother or more responsive. Which shouldn't be an issue on browsing static content.
"Out of touch" is an unfair characterization. Not everyone wants what you think they want.
I specifically do not want push notifications from Twitter or almost any other app aside from calendars and alarms. Having Twitter notify me about every stupid online interaction was causing my life to be buried in constant distraction. Without a doubt, my life is better without it, and I don't think that's an unusual perspective.
Also, I would be curious about your reasoning that running an app gives fewer ways to track the user. I would tend to believe the opposite.
Vast majority of users go back home and browse on their laptops because a big screen is better than a credit card
Vast majority of users will use whatever you throw at them, especially if they're friction free (no account needed, no credit card, no updates, no space occupied, immediately available, even on slow networks, etc. etc.)
> Vast majority of users go back home and browse on their laptops because a big screen is better than a credit card
I used to think this, because I am like this, but living with my wife made me realize that for a lot of people, the phone is the primary internet device. Probably one factor is that she is a nurse, so she works on her feet. Also, she generally does not have a deep relationship with her machines, computers to her are strictly tools, so laptop is basically for word processing and storing photos when the phone gets full.
Another way to look at it is that it's not that browsing the internet is better for her on the phone, it's that sitting down with a laptop is a disruption in her routine that needs to be justified.
