I actually really dislike this.

I find that I often have half second hangups due to not remembering if in select mode or not.

Much prefer the "Hold shift/ctrl" model used often in file managers.

Parent is talking about mobile. And on Android it's working rather well I'd say. The only downside I see is that selecting longer spans (shift click) is not possible.

There are Android apps where you can select two items in a list and then there's a button that selects all of the items between them, which is equivalent to a shift-click.

In the context of the parents comment I thought they were comparing that model to others where multi selct exists.

I don't think there is a much better model on mobile, except possibly adding a button to each item to select a longer span.

Browser requires very fine degree of dexterity, and has 0 discoverability.

Mobile ones often have a "start multi-select" button in the UI.

Neither is an amazing experience, but IMHO the mobile one is somewhat better.