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@jrm4 @noxypaws @obsolescentsapien @drazraeltod @pluralistic there's no actual studies on this so all either of us can offer is our own personal experiences and knowledge of the technologies and the various technological limitations and factors, so it's very strange to me that you're expecting me to provide empirical proof or something when you're not — and can't — provide that either. You're just saying subjective things too, and at least I'm providing an argument based on my knowledge of the limitations and pros and cons of web technology versus native applications.

Also, web applications are absolutely gathering just as much if not more data about you and sending it home then native applications. Especially since web applications typically have Google analytics and advertisements all over them whereas most native applications don't have Google analytics and a lot of them don't have generalized ad platforms injected into them but have specific in application advertisement display views and stuff that don't leak as much information. Not to mention the fact that you get far stronger and more granular permissions with a native app then a web application since a native application runs in the strong and battle tested sandbox of whichever mobile operating system you're using with dozens of discrete permissions for various things including network access(!!) Whereas web applications run in a browser that has a much less battle tested and complex and nuanced permissions model built into it and because it has to do so many things will tend to be a much larger attack surface and much more buggy — think of all the browser security vulnerabilities you see versus the number of security vulnerabilities in an operating system sandbox — and you can't use the operating system sandbox to properly limit the browser because the browser will need to have the combination of all of the permissions you need to run all of the web apps that you run in it and you can't change what permissions the browser has depending on what page it opens or anything whereas for native applications you can assign sandbox permissions to each app individually.

In the end I don't see much point in continuing this conversation since ultimately all that's happening here is that I'm offering my knowledge of the technical limitations and issues with the web technology stack and you are saying in turn that none of that really matters to you as much as saving some storage and that's something that I can't tell you you're wrong about cuz everyone has different priorities and as far as our experiences with web apps versus native apps it's all going to be subjective anyway outside of what's likely implied on average by the difference in the technology underpinning them.