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On a side note, really hope reddit's engineering team doesn't kill off their 'old.reddit.com' domain though. That's probably the only thing keeping me from dump

On a side note, really hope reddit's engineering team doesn't kill off their 'old.reddit.com' domain though. That's probably the only thing keeping me from dumping reddit altogether (aside from their API-powered custom reddit apps made by indie devs for Android).

GEBBL 6y ago
I use i.Reddit.com, much better
- abhiminator 6y ago
  I agree that it's better than the new mobile web, but its design still feels super clunky and dated. I remember a certain version of mobile web in 2017/2018 that worked GREAT. But then reddit decided to mess it all up by forcing mobile web users to use their (bloated and ad-filled) app and making it hard to access certain communities and read more than 2 layers of child comments. I guess that's what relentless pursuit of advertising money/monetization targets over actually listening to the community (that made the product what it is now in the first place) does to a company.
  - tootie 6y ago
    As someone who has had a luxurious career based on adding full-bleed photography to the websites of companies with more money than sense, all I can say the look of i.reddit.com is just beautifully minimal. UX is about more than intuitive controls, it's about speed and comfort and I can use that site with so quickly and smoothly. The color palette doesn't even register in my head anymore. It's also a somewhat forgotten rule that designing for occasional is very different than for habitual use. Habitual users don't need training wheels, they need shortcuts.
EarthIsHome 6y ago
I use Slide for Reddit [0]. Some things don't work in the app like Reddit videos, but I get around that by opening those links in a separate browser. Other than that, I've enjoyed how I've set it up [1]; it's got the link's domain name displayed before clicking the link, and if you're signed in, you can save and vote on posts with one click. What have you used and enjoyed? [0]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.ccrama.redditslide&hl=en&gl=US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.ccrama.redd... [1]: https://imgur.com/a/9XhE3By https://imgur.com/a/9XhE3By
- samtimalsina 6y ago
  I use BaconReader Premium [0] and it does almost everything I want out of Reddit, including Reddit videos. [0]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.onelouder.baconreader.premium&hl=en_US&gl=US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.onelouder....
Loughla 6y ago
Redditisfun is the only thing that has kept me on there (and I'm still pissed somebody stole my username). I haven't accessed the desktop site in years, because it defaults to the new reddit. It smacks of when /. changed their layout; there was a huge to-do and users lost their mind. I haven't been back there in, what, 9 years? I guess, the moral of this story is, what is the reddit replacement? Because so far I have found nothing that compares.
- Trasmatta 6y ago
  > I haven't accessed the desktop site in years, because it defaults to the new reddit If you're logged in you can set it to always default to the old design. I do that, and disable all custom stylesheets, which is basically a necessity to make the site useable again.
- georgiecasey 6y ago
  I love RIF as well. It's so simple and straightforward but with all the features of the website. It seems be well down the list of Android app in popularity though, I don't know why.
  - officeplant 6y ago
    People like overly fancy modern looking apps. RIF and other open source reddit apps like Diode (available on F-Droid) basically provide the same minimal and working experience old.reddit provides.
- vorpalhex 6y ago
  > what is the reddit replacement? I keep looking and monitoring promising replacements but haven't found one yet. I do think the ultimate way forward is going to be some kind of federated system where each "subreddit" is hosted individually and there are aggregators which glue them together, either as a hosted portal or as individual apps. One of the things that has been killing me is that small interesting subreddits keep getting either killed for not being actively moderated enough or invaded by people who have their own goals. It's very frustrating and it really hurts the longterm knowledge that gets generated in these subreddits. If anyone is working in this space, please drop me a line.
Trasmatta 6y ago
Yeah, the new Reddit design is such a step back in terms of both performance and user experience. It was probably optimized in some way to increase engagement, but it's just really bad. On mobile I use Relay, which is really good.
- obilgic 6y ago
  Probably unpopular opinion on HN: but I really prefer the new design. finally something that doesn't scream "we have a sub-culture" but rather welcomes new users.
  - kmnc 6y ago
    Yeah kill off the only good part of reddit and turn it into a TikTok clone. Of course I have no doubt most reddit leadership has this as goal #1.
  - Trasmatta 6y ago
    What is it about the old design that screams "we have a sub-culture" to you? For me, it's just a clean, simple, fast interface.
    - obilgic 6y ago
      sticking to a very old design, and refusing to update and adapt to current design patterns and styles while everything about technology/devices and how we use them changes daily: feels like a sub-culture
      - Trasmatta 6y ago
        Well they tried to use "current design patterns and styles" for the redesign, and it led to a bloated, slow, bad user experience. That's either an indictment of modern web patterns or just a bad implementation of them. I think it's a bit of both.
        6y ago
THE_PUN_STOPS 6y ago
I've been an everyday compulsive reddit user for 12 years. The day they kill old.reddit.com is the day I stop using reddit forever.
- Trasmatta 6y ago
  Same, and I feel like it's inevitable at some point. Either some day someone will do the math and determine they can get a lot more ad revenue if they force everyone to use the new design, or they'll decide the cost of maintaining two versions of the site's frontend is too high.
  - newsbinator 6y ago
    Is there much to maintain on old.reddit.com? It lacks all the features that make new Reddit annoying and slow, and it doesn't need to gain any new ones. It's basically a graphical version of the core api, which is solid.
    - Trasmatta 6y ago
      The cost is probably relatively low (but not negligible). I could imagine a future though where they decide to make some big breaking changes to the API, and decide it's not worth updating the old site.
- popup21 6y ago
  I highly doubt that.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - Linkd 6y ago
    Exact same thing happened with digg.com
- TheOperator 6y ago
  I started browsing the site on mobile without the extension on the new site because it makes Reddit's attempts to manipulate me more obvious and more annoying.
isatty 6y ago
I know that Reddit admins read HN so please please do not kill off old.reddit.com. The redesign is absolute garbage. Normally I don’t express such strong sentiment on HN but I’ve been a Reddit user for 10 years and I genuinely like the communities, but not enough to suffer through the new website.
- dawnerd 6y ago
  Not even just the redesign. It's the constant forcing you to download the app, the broken amp layout (which is really just being used to trick google into showing them first). The site is just extremely hostile now if you don't use the app or sign in.
  - tmpz22 6y ago
    Yesterday I tried to visit https://reddit.com/r/gaming https://reddit.com/r/gaming and received an infinite loading indicator through multiple refreshes until I gave up. It felt like loadshedding where they were encountering an issue and decided to drop my traffic, which is not a good UX.
  - marrone12 6y ago
    The amp stuff is beyond annoying. I click on "view more comments" from an amp page and it redirects me to a non amp page and then i have to click on view more comments again.
- jedberg 6y ago
  I'm not sure how many of the current admins read HN. I just know some of us old guys hang around here. And FWIW I agree with you. I've been a 15 year reddit user (and employee!) but if old.reddit goes away, I suspect my usage will go way down. The good news is that the current execs know this, because I have told them. But at the end of the day they have to do what's best for the business, and I'm afraid those of us who like the old interface aren't large in number. Edit to add: I don't think they'll kill off the old.reddit interface. I think they'll just stop updating and more and more things won't work there, like i.reddit.com.
forgotmypw17 6y ago
As others have said, it being called old.reddit means it will get killed. And it's already happening, new features either don't work at all or are broken, existing features are rotting apart, it's definitely not a priority. The future is in communities operating their own site and running it the way they want. Politics aside, thedonald.win is a great example. The interface is way better and less buggy, and the community is cohesive. If you look at reddit facebook twitter instagram, their design paradigm is not to facilitate discussion, but to break it apart into a bunch of ad-separated pieces and then stash it away, never to be findable again. Almost like what people say about qwerty layout.
nitrohorse 6y ago
Worth keeping an eye on Teddit development [1] [2], an alternative, open-source/self-hostable/JS-free interface similar to Invidious/YouTube, Bibliogram/Instagram, and Nitter/Twitter. Login functionality isn’t supported yet but apparently on the roadmap. [1] https://codeberg.org/teddit/teddit https://codeberg.org/teddit/teddit [2] https://teddit.net https://teddit.net
- konjin 6y ago
  That is amazing. I've just replaced the bookmarks I had after 15 seconds. The UI is better on mobile than all reddit incarnations.
jbj 6y ago
if they do they probably open up the market to competitors for that subsegment of users
skocznymroczny 6y ago
I've been trying to use the redesign several times, and still haven't figured out how to perform a search in the current subreddit. In old reddit there's just a checkbox for that.
- runaway 6y ago
  It's absurd but you have to first perform a search while in r/yoursubreddit and then on the results page click "Show results from r/yoursubreddit"
- jcims 6y ago
  You run the search, and at the top of the search results there is a link that says 'limit to /r/subreddit'. Great UX xD
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
mkskm 6y ago
Wasn’t a bad redesign how Digg ultimately lost to Reddit?
- Macha 6y ago
  Digg also touched the ranking algorithm and external submission rules at the same time, which ended up prioritising "partner" content over user content. This was much more controversial than the UI aspect of Digg's redesign.
tomcam 6y ago
Absolutely. I greatly enjoy Reddit but am unable to use the new interface.
gaius_baltar 6y ago
I suppose they will slow-boil old.reddit.com until it's dead. Things like gradually adding unwanted changes from the redesign, removing or not supporting features (is there a way to upload images to i.redd.it from it?), or causing random delays or errors. Something like the dark patterns used to force visitors using mobile devices into installing the app. We need a distributed or federated reddit, and give it power. Lemmy ( https://lemmy.ml/ https://lemmy.ml/ ) seems to be going into the right path.
- qqn 6y ago
  I was wondering why no one mentioned this. I've bookmarked it to play with more but it seems to address lots of the issues here, at least at first blush.
Mediterraneo10 6y ago
The problem is that the medium is the message, and while you might be using old.reddit.com, most of the other people posting are using the new site. That has lowered the quality of discourse. I first noticed this when people on hobby reddits started asking FAQs that had already been answered in the sidebar – the new design now hid the sidebar from users. So, subreddits where newbies typically got answers before they had to post basic questions, have devolved into people asking the same basic questions over and over again.
- benhurmarcel 6y ago
  The admins can put messages and links in the new sidebar though.
  - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
    There is no visible sidebar on the modern mobile interface, though.
    - benhurmarcel 6y ago
      Ah yes, not on mobile. Reddit on mobile is only bearable using a third-party app.
- slfnflctd 6y ago
  I've also noticed more threads with a bunch of top level comments saying exactly the same thing-- eventually, it occurred to me that it's because users in the new interface can't easily see all the existing comments or search them to see if what they're about to post is already there. It was a jarring realization.
heavyset_go 6y ago
If old.reddit.com goes, so will I. I've already stopped using Reddit altogether on mobile devices because of being tricked into loading the redesign, and because of the nagging. It's really no skin off my back to stop using a site that's slow and has a bad user experience.
airstrike 6y ago
Agreed. Also just wanted to note I have a smirk on my face every day as I open firefox and go "news.", enter, ctrl+t, "old." enter
SMAAART 6y ago
If they kill old.reddit.com there will be a mass migration to HN. DIGG-->reddit-->HN
- scubadude 6y ago
  Subreddits are the thing though and there's no way the next mass migration is back to a single page.
Springcleaning 6y ago
I even use a browser extension to make sure that 100% of the time old.reddit.com is being shown, even when linked from another site or when I have deleted my cookies.
- foresto 6y ago
  Would that be Old Reddit Redirect? https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-reddit-redirect/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-reddit-re... https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/old-reddit-redirect/dneaehbmnbhcippjikoajpoabadpodje https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/old-reddit-redirec...

GEBBL 6y ago

I use i.Reddit.com, much better

abhiminator 6y ago
I agree that it's better than the new mobile web, but its design still feels super clunky and dated. I remember a certain version of mobile web in 2017/2018 that worked GREAT. But then reddit decided to mess it all up by forcing mobile web users to use their (bloated and ad-filled) app and making it hard to access certain communities and read more than 2 layers of child comments. I guess that's what relentless pursuit of advertising money/monetization targets over actually listening to the community (that made the product what it is now in the first place) does to a company.
- tootie 6y ago
  As someone who has had a luxurious career based on adding full-bleed photography to the websites of companies with more money than sense, all I can say the look of i.reddit.com is just beautifully minimal. UX is about more than intuitive controls, it's about speed and comfort and I can use that site with so quickly and smoothly. The color palette doesn't even register in my head anymore. It's also a somewhat forgotten rule that designing for occasional is very different than for habitual use. Habitual users don't need training wheels, they need shortcuts.

EarthIsHome 6y ago

I use Slide for Reddit [0]. Some things don't work in the app like Reddit videos, but I get around that by opening those links in a separate browser. Other than that, I've enjoyed how I've set it up [1]; it's got the link's domain name displayed before clicking the link, and if you're signed in, you can save and vote on posts with one click. What have you used and enjoyed? [0]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.ccrama.redditslide&hl=en&gl=US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.ccrama.redd... [1]: https://imgur.com/a/9XhE3By https://imgur.com/a/9XhE3By

samtimalsina 6y ago
I use BaconReader Premium [0] and it does almost everything I want out of Reddit, including Reddit videos. [0]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.onelouder.baconreader.premium&hl=en_US&gl=US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.onelouder....

Loughla 6y ago

Redditisfun is the only thing that has kept me on there (and I'm still pissed somebody stole my username). I haven't accessed the desktop site in years, because it defaults to the new reddit. It smacks of when /. changed their layout; there was a huge to-do and users lost their mind. I haven't been back there in, what, 9 years? I guess, the moral of this story is, what is the reddit replacement? Because so far I have found nothing that compares.

Trasmatta 6y ago
> I haven't accessed the desktop site in years, because it defaults to the new reddit If you're logged in you can set it to always default to the old design. I do that, and disable all custom stylesheets, which is basically a necessity to make the site useable again.
georgiecasey 6y ago
I love RIF as well. It's so simple and straightforward but with all the features of the website. It seems be well down the list of Android app in popularity though, I don't know why.
- officeplant 6y ago
  People like overly fancy modern looking apps. RIF and other open source reddit apps like Diode (available on F-Droid) basically provide the same minimal and working experience old.reddit provides.
vorpalhex 6y ago
> what is the reddit replacement? I keep looking and monitoring promising replacements but haven't found one yet. I do think the ultimate way forward is going to be some kind of federated system where each "subreddit" is hosted individually and there are aggregators which glue them together, either as a hosted portal or as individual apps. One of the things that has been killing me is that small interesting subreddits keep getting either killed for not being actively moderated enough or invaded by people who have their own goals. It's very frustrating and it really hurts the longterm knowledge that gets generated in these subreddits. If anyone is working in this space, please drop me a line.

Trasmatta 6y ago

Yeah, the new Reddit design is such a step back in terms of both performance and user experience. It was probably optimized in some way to increase engagement, but it's just really bad. On mobile I use Relay, which is really good.

obilgic 6y ago
Probably unpopular opinion on HN: but I really prefer the new design. finally something that doesn't scream "we have a sub-culture" but rather welcomes new users.
- kmnc 6y ago
  Yeah kill off the only good part of reddit and turn it into a TikTok clone. Of course I have no doubt most reddit leadership has this as goal #1.
- Trasmatta 6y ago
  What is it about the old design that screams "we have a sub-culture" to you? For me, it's just a clean, simple, fast interface.
  - obilgic 6y ago
    sticking to a very old design, and refusing to update and adapt to current design patterns and styles while everything about technology/devices and how we use them changes daily: feels like a sub-culture
    - Trasmatta 6y ago
      Well they tried to use "current design patterns and styles" for the redesign, and it led to a bloated, slow, bad user experience. That's either an indictment of modern web patterns or just a bad implementation of them. I think it's a bit of both.
      - 6y ago

THE_PUN_STOPS 6y ago

I've been an everyday compulsive reddit user for 12 years. The day they kill old.reddit.com is the day I stop using reddit forever.

Trasmatta 6y ago
Same, and I feel like it's inevitable at some point. Either some day someone will do the math and determine they can get a lot more ad revenue if they force everyone to use the new design, or they'll decide the cost of maintaining two versions of the site's frontend is too high.
- newsbinator 6y ago
  Is there much to maintain on old.reddit.com? It lacks all the features that make new Reddit annoying and slow, and it doesn't need to gain any new ones. It's basically a graphical version of the core api, which is solid.
  - Trasmatta 6y ago
    The cost is probably relatively low (but not negligible). I could imagine a future though where they decide to make some big breaking changes to the API, and decide it's not worth updating the old site.
popup21 6y ago
I highly doubt that.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Linkd 6y ago
  Exact same thing happened with digg.com
TheOperator 6y ago
I started browsing the site on mobile without the extension on the new site because it makes Reddit's attempts to manipulate me more obvious and more annoying.

isatty 6y ago

I know that Reddit admins read HN so please please do not kill off old.reddit.com. The redesign is absolute garbage. Normally I don’t express such strong sentiment on HN but I’ve been a Reddit user for 10 years and I genuinely like the communities, but not enough to suffer through the new website.

dawnerd 6y ago
Not even just the redesign. It's the constant forcing you to download the app, the broken amp layout (which is really just being used to trick google into showing them first). The site is just extremely hostile now if you don't use the app or sign in.
- tmpz22 6y ago
  Yesterday I tried to visit https://reddit.com/r/gaming https://reddit.com/r/gaming and received an infinite loading indicator through multiple refreshes until I gave up. It felt like loadshedding where they were encountering an issue and decided to drop my traffic, which is not a good UX.
- marrone12 6y ago
  The amp stuff is beyond annoying. I click on "view more comments" from an amp page and it redirects me to a non amp page and then i have to click on view more comments again.
jedberg 6y ago
I'm not sure how many of the current admins read HN. I just know some of us old guys hang around here. And FWIW I agree with you. I've been a 15 year reddit user (and employee!) but if old.reddit goes away, I suspect my usage will go way down. The good news is that the current execs know this, because I have told them. But at the end of the day they have to do what's best for the business, and I'm afraid those of us who like the old interface aren't large in number. Edit to add: I don't think they'll kill off the old.reddit interface. I think they'll just stop updating and more and more things won't work there, like i.reddit.com.

forgotmypw17 6y ago

As others have said, it being called old.reddit means it will get killed. And it's already happening, new features either don't work at all or are broken, existing features are rotting apart, it's definitely not a priority. The future is in communities operating their own site and running it the way they want. Politics aside, thedonald.win is a great example. The interface is way better and less buggy, and the community is cohesive. If you look at reddit facebook twitter instagram, their design paradigm is not to facilitate discussion, but to break it apart into a bunch of ad-separated pieces and then stash it away, never to be findable again. Almost like what people say about qwerty layout.

nitrohorse 6y ago

Worth keeping an eye on Teddit development [1] [2], an alternative, open-source/self-hostable/JS-free interface similar to Invidious/YouTube, Bibliogram/Instagram, and Nitter/Twitter. Login functionality isn’t supported yet but apparently on the roadmap. [1] https://codeberg.org/teddit/teddit https://codeberg.org/teddit/teddit [2] https://teddit.net https://teddit.net

konjin 6y ago
That is amazing. I've just replaced the bookmarks I had after 15 seconds. The UI is better on mobile than all reddit incarnations.

jbj 6y ago

if they do they probably open up the market to competitors for that subsegment of users

skocznymroczny 6y ago

I've been trying to use the redesign several times, and still haven't figured out how to perform a search in the current subreddit. In old reddit there's just a checkbox for that.

runaway 6y ago
It's absurd but you have to first perform a search while in r/yoursubreddit and then on the results page click "Show results from r/yoursubreddit"
jcims 6y ago
You run the search, and at the top of the search results there is a link that says 'limit to /r/subreddit'. Great UX xD
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

mkskm 6y ago

Wasn’t a bad redesign how Digg ultimately lost to Reddit?

Macha 6y ago
Digg also touched the ranking algorithm and external submission rules at the same time, which ended up prioritising "partner" content over user content. This was much more controversial than the UI aspect of Digg's redesign.

tomcam 6y ago

Absolutely. I greatly enjoy Reddit but am unable to use the new interface.

gaius_baltar 6y ago

I suppose they will slow-boil old.reddit.com until it's dead. Things like gradually adding unwanted changes from the redesign, removing or not supporting features (is there a way to upload images to i.redd.it from it?), or causing random delays or errors. Something like the dark patterns used to force visitors using mobile devices into installing the app. We need a distributed or federated reddit, and give it power. Lemmy ( https://lemmy.ml/ https://lemmy.ml/ ) seems to be going into the right path.

qqn 6y ago
I was wondering why no one mentioned this. I've bookmarked it to play with more but it seems to address lots of the issues here, at least at first blush.

Mediterraneo10 6y ago

The problem is that the medium is the message, and while you might be using old.reddit.com, most of the other people posting are using the new site. That has lowered the quality of discourse. I first noticed this when people on hobby reddits started asking FAQs that had already been answered in the sidebar – the new design now hid the sidebar from users. So, subreddits where newbies typically got answers before they had to post basic questions, have devolved into people asking the same basic questions over and over again.

benhurmarcel 6y ago
The admins can put messages and links in the new sidebar though.
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  There is no visible sidebar on the modern mobile interface, though.
  - benhurmarcel 6y ago
    Ah yes, not on mobile. Reddit on mobile is only bearable using a third-party app.
slfnflctd 6y ago
I've also noticed more threads with a bunch of top level comments saying exactly the same thing-- eventually, it occurred to me that it's because users in the new interface can't easily see all the existing comments or search them to see if what they're about to post is already there. It was a jarring realization.

heavyset_go 6y ago

If old.reddit.com goes, so will I. I've already stopped using Reddit altogether on mobile devices because of being tricked into loading the redesign, and because of the nagging. It's really no skin off my back to stop using a site that's slow and has a bad user experience.

airstrike 6y ago

Agreed. Also just wanted to note I have a smirk on my face every day as I open firefox and go "news.", enter, ctrl+t, "old." enter

SMAAART 6y ago

If they kill old.reddit.com there will be a mass migration to HN. DIGG-->reddit-->HN

scubadude 6y ago
Subreddits are the thing though and there's no way the next mass migration is back to a single page.

Springcleaning 6y ago

I even use a browser extension to make sure that 100% of the time old.reddit.com is being shown, even when linked from another site or when I have deleted my cookies.

foresto 6y ago
Would that be Old Reddit Redirect? https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-reddit-redirect/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-reddit-re... https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/old-reddit-redirect/dneaehbmnbhcippjikoajpoabadpodje https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/old-reddit-redirec...