Reddit’s mute vs. leave interaction

I came back to Reddit first time in a long time. The first thing I noticed after opening the app was that my feed became unusable because of my following so many random subreddits.

I started cleaning up my feed. First, went to the settings and turned off new subreddit recommendation so I only see the threads i follow and don’t follow more sloppy threads.

Then I started cleaning up feed by leaving or muting subreddits. Then i noticed something weird. Reddit made leaving subreddits easier than muting. When I tap Leave button, I’m instantly unsubscribed from the subreddit. Not even a confirmation toast message (ie. the ones that confirms the fact that the action you initiated has gone through in the system, like You have successfully unsubscribed + Undo button).

Mute button though, once I tap the button, a bottom sheet pops up and asks me “Are you sure you want to mute this subreddit? No / Yes”.

I felt like this is a weird interaction pattern, because leaving the subreddit is a more destructive action that’s hard to reverse. That’s why if you try to delete an app from iPhone, it added friction by popping up two dialogs (Remove “app name”? Tap Yes, then again it asks, Delete “app name”? Come on, what’s the difference between Remove and Delete??). This Apple interaction has its own problem though, it feels like you’re trying to leave a bar and the bouncer’s in front of the door and as you walk around him he blocks your path and asks “Sir, are you sure you’re leaving?”.

Anyways, I think muting should be easier since even though you mute a subreddit, you can find it on the side navigation menu later. Leaving though, that’s it, you can’t find it anywhere unless you remember its name or stumble upon it by chance. A friction (“Are you sure you want to leave?”) and a suggestion of alternative option (“You can mute it instead, it’s better”) could be a better interaction pattern that benefits both users and the business.

As someone working in tech, I also understand there’s a lot more to it than it seems when it comes to design decision. There might be some data or business reason that I’m not aware of that led to this interaction pattern. Maybe it used to have the pattern I argued above as ideal but had issues and switched to the current one, who knows.

If that’s not the case, however, running a test and learning from the data might be worth considering.