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Reddit’s disrespectful design

• j56no 5y ago
  I was expecting something about user accessibility, eg like how impossible it is to tap the Upvote button in HN on smartphone and tablet. If UI is indicative of culture HN hates people not using a mouse.
• chovybizzass 5y ago
  Checkout upvotocracy.com -- its open source and built with svelte and node.js
• dempsey 5y ago
  Not sure I agree with the Marketplace angle. Ads are fine but forcing everyone into the app is odd. Will ios14 change any of that?
  • rognjen 5y ago
    Why must every app monetize through ads? Why can't they provide features worth paying for?
    • nowherebeen 5y ago
      I think you kind of answer your own question. Social media is just a gossip page on steroids. None of their features are worth paying for; at least, not enough people are willing to pay for it. They realized given showing ads and charging customers, showing ads probably generates 10x revenue for them. Plus, what's to stop another person to offer a free reddit clone?
      • rognjen 5y ago
        They've never tried generating revenue from other meaningful features. A marketplace would have a very real value for users. And it would create a much better moat.
        • adolph 5y ago
          Ring, ring. Revenue team, call for you from Cambridge Analytica on line one!
      • gonzo41 5y ago
        People pay for junk food all the time. Maybe internet companies are being too greedy and they are pricing themselves incorrectly. Would you pay $2 USD for all of reddit for a year? How many users does reddit have? It'd probably be a lot of money, but not super profitable. Hence they use adds because they won't shift on price.
    • huseyinkeles 5y ago
      Because no one pays?
      • rognjen 5y ago
        Users pay for marketplace features for anything from handmade bird houses to used underwear.
    • joegahona 5y ago
      Because coming up with features worth paying for is very, very hard. Which ad-free apps do you currently pay for?
      • rognjen 5y ago
        I pay for several things that make me money. If Reddit added features that let their users make money they'd be able to charge for them.
    • PhoenixReborn 5y ago
      The alternative monetization model is usually subscriptions / freemium features. These don't usually work out for social media sites as people are not willing to pay for user generated content, and the main draw is the content itself so freemium features are usually not high-value enough. Thus, the only remaining viable model is ads.
      • rognjen 5y ago
        That's one of the things I suggest. Copy Patreon. They've shown that users are willing to pay for "user generated content"
        • marcinzm 5y ago
          Isn't that basically Medium?
          • rognjen 5y ago
            And Substack. And Reddit has 10x their traffic.
            • marcinzm 5y ago
              Reddit has 10x the traffic because it's free.
          • rognjen 5y ago
            (Can't reply to the other comment) > Reddit has 10x the traffic because it's free. Reddit acquired more traffic because it's free, true. But now, they aren't looking to acquire more traffic. They're looking for more revenue. One way to get that revenue is to allow already existing content creators to charge for a part of the content. I think that would not only encourage better content but would bring in other users and generate good revenue.
            • marcinzm 5y ago
              Reddit's model is based on unpaid moderators managing most of the site. There's already controversy around a few moderators controlling all the large communities, karma farming and behind the scenes deals. Introducing money into the mix will just result in even more abuse as moderators try to take their own cut. It's a very messy eco-system that money will just make even messier.
  • IgorPartola 5y ago
    I really hate that Reddit insists on you using an app. I tried to share a Reddit post with some friends recently who aren’t on that platform. To my dismay they reported that they couldn’t see the post at all because of the GET THE REDDIT APP in your face bull feathers they were presented with. Reddit, you are a website. I want to use my normal browser tabs to use you, not your app. Please make it web-first.
  • marcinzm 5y ago
    Reddit has pathetic ad revenue per user versus every other social media platform. Part of this is likely due to anonymous users that they lack data on for proper targeting. This is their attempt to "fix" that.
    • gruez 5y ago
      What advantages does a user account have over anonymous session ids? User accounts survive users clearing cookies, but I doubt users clear their cookies often enough for that to be a problem.
      • marcinzm 5y ago
        Mobile browsers wipe cookies, users switch devices, multiple computers, etc. Facebook has over a decade of data on its users, no session id will match that. edit: Also knowing users emails will allows advertisers to match the reddit accounts to their own data stores on users.
    • baylor121 5y ago
      It makes sense - there will be greater revenue for a few years maybe, in which time the team/product VP responsible would have been promoted. By the time the site culture/userbase dies (maybe in 5 years) these people would be long gone. Maybe even the higher management don't care about a timeline longer than 5 years tbh.
      • marcinzm 5y ago
        The true management (ie: stock holders) wants to exist at some point. There's talk of an IPO this year in which case they just want to pump up the numbers and hold things stable for another year before they can sell their stock.
    • alfiedotwtf 5y ago
      Anyone feel like this is their Digg pivot?
    • l72 5y ago
• lalaland1125 5y ago
  Reddit has taken the approach of making their website worse instead of trying to make their app better.
  • PenguinCoder 5y ago
    And the official app still sucks.
    • lalaland1125 5y ago
      Yeah, their app is incredibly buggy and doesn't support useful features like comment hyperlinks.
    • raydev 5y ago
      Works great for reading and commenting, what else do you want it to do?
• randallsquared 5y ago
  The most disrespectful pattern I encounter regularly on reddit is that it forgets that I want the nicer, more compact interface. There will come a day when they remove it entirely, clearly, and that will be the end of my reddit usage, more or less.
  • SkyMarshal 5y ago
    How does it keep forgetting? I just change that in settings and it’s never forgotten or reverted for me.
    • jostmey 5y ago
      It always forgets for me even when I’m logged in
      • bogwog 5y ago
        By 'compact', do you mean i.reddit.com, or old.reddit.com? I've found that the former does sometimes redirect me to the garbage mobile version when I click on a thread (even while logged in), but the latter persists as long as the setting is enabled in my account.
    • ishiz 5y ago
      It keeps forgetting for me too. That is to say, in my mobile browser and desktop browser I opt out of the redesign in favor of the old.reddit.com design, but about once per month it'll just revert back to the redesign. I don't think my cookies are being cleared because I'll stay logged in and I've never found any other setting that flips in the same way, it is only the Redesign opt-out that does this. I don't know how to explain why many people say "this never happens to me" and other people say "this happens frequently." While I'm on the subject, another grey pattern the article missed is the button to opt out of the redesign on mobile. When clicking the hamburger menu there used to be a button at the bottom called (iirc) "Opt out of Redesign." The same option exists today except they've moved it into a Settings submenu and renamed it "Request desktop site" which implies it's a temporary change. Lastly, if you search you'll find threads where people say the web pages are sometimes rendered without any opt out button. I just opened an incognito window to test this and I simply cannot find a button to revert to the old design, even when using my mobile browser's Desktop Mode. So unless a visitor knows about old.reddit.com they are forced to use the new design.
• tored 5y ago
  Hostile design either makes the user login (a user reddit can monetize) or makes the user to close the site (a user reddit can't monetize, thus no need to waste resources), both scenarios is a win for reddit.
  • rognjen 5y ago
    That's a very good characterization.
  • tux3 5y ago
    Third scenario: People keep using it in anger until something better shows up, and by that time there will be enough unhappy people to spark a growing community in the New Place.
    • ArkanExplorer 5y ago
      Big Tech has Reddit's back: they just ban new platforms for being insufficiently censorious (or at least, not censoring non-Leftists).
    • bogwog 5y ago
      If that were true, it would've happened long ago. Say what you will about reddit's questionably/shitty policies, but they do a pretty decent job of keeping the extremists/racists/crazies/etc contained. Nearly every attempt at a reddit alternative over the years has been flooded by those types of people. Even if you ignore the fact that advertisers will avoid that community like a plague, the average person will want to avoid it too.
      • raverbashing 5y ago
        > Nearly every attempt at a reddit alternative over the years has been flooded by those types of people Yes, most of the time because they have advertised themselves as a "free-speech place". Of course the people these places attract are the "5G is a Jewish conspiracy to vaccinate everybody" kinda people
• hprotagonist 5y ago
  Over time my reddit usage has switched to entirely on my phone, and apollo is a fine interface. I don’t know about 2/3 of these patterns!
  • shash7 5y ago
    Apollo is the best.
• krm01 5y ago
  I still revert back to the old UI when using Reddit. It’s an option you can find in the top right dropdown menu.
  • rognjen 5y ago
    I used to do that as well, but I really don't want to use them at all.
• petepete 5y ago
  The only way I can stomach using Reddit is via Reddit Sync. I firmly believe that soon Reddit will prevent third party clients from using their API. Perhaps there'll be a subscription service where paid accounts can still use it with their client of choice, or maybe they'll just kill the ecosystem in an attempt to get people on the official app. Either way, that's me done with it. The hostility makes it somewhere I'm just unenthusiastic about visiting. It's a Facebook-style manouvre.
  • rognjen 5y ago
    Honestly, paying for API might be a better monetization strategy then just actively shitting on their users.
    • dageshi 5y ago
      The percentage of people who would pay for it, probably wouldn't make up for the dev time to implement it. Once upon a time the HN userbase and the reddit user base weren't a million miles apart, those days are long gone, reddit is mainstream and mainstream consumers don't care that much about ads, the new UI or everything else this thread is up in arms about, it's still the defacto internet forum and nothing I've seen looks likely to replace it.
      • rognjen 5y ago
        App developers would pay for API not users.
  • 542458 5y ago
    Edit: apparently I’m misreading the traffic page and third party apps are not included. So disregard this paragraph. I really doubt they’ll kill API access. From the stats on my (medium sized) sub a full third of uniques (desktop and mobile combined) are from unofficial clients. And that’s not to mention the number of near-essential bots used by many subs for community management. Now, what they are doing is not putting new non-core features into the API, like chat and RPAN. But while that’s still irritating, it is a bit different than killing API access.
• jonplackett 5y ago
  Surely the most annoying thing is the endless requests to download the app. So irritating! I refuse to download it just because they insist so hard. Reddit is the most basic site ever, there is absolutely no need for me to have an app.
  • wongarsu 5y ago
    old.reddit.com is not mobile optimized at all, but still infinitely better than reddit.com. Alternatively, get one of the non-official apps (on Android I use rif).
    • smnrchrds 5y ago
      If you are just a lurker, try http://teddit.net http://teddit.net It works well on mobile and desktop.
      • afterburner 5y ago
        Unfortunately, I really rely on my particular subreddit subscriptions to deliver the frontpage experience I want.
        • smnrchrds 5y ago
          Teddit supports multisub URLs. I am not sure if the effect is the exact same as the front page, but it looks similar enough. Just create a multisub and save it in your bookmarks. Like this: https://teddit.net/r/programming+python+haskell/ https://teddit.net/r/programming+python+haskell/
    • BoorishBears 5y ago
      Is reddit.com mobile optimized? There's a bug where opening a post from a subreddit's main page always results in a weird border, like it's opening the post as a floating dialog. (Just to confirm tried it logged and out, same result: https://imgur.com/a/6yK9D8V https://imgur.com/a/6yK9D8V) That results in comments being squished down to a few characters wide and many many lines long I used to think it was a "me" bug, but it's followed me across 4 iPhones over the years! How can they have such an experience breaking bug on one of the most homogeneous major platforms out there? iOS only has one browser engine!
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• darthrupert 5y ago
  Teddit.net or Apollo are the only ways to use Reddit without goong crazy.
• jcfrei 5y ago
  Here's how reddit's business model probably works: you have power users which create or submit the content and write the witty comments and then you have the lurkers which just browse. what reddit is trying to monetize is the interaction with the latter user group: comments provide little space to promote ads, so most of them are hidden by default. instead they promote lots of posts with images interspersed with ads. the power users on the other hand use dedicated apps and have a custom interface anyway. they are (so far) not really bothered by the changes and continue to create and submit content.
  • rognjen 5y ago
    Exactly. The lurkers are where their growth is because they likely outnumber posters 10:1.
    • bluefirebrand 5y ago
      Lurkers will always outnumber posters on any forum I think, but I have to believe Reddit has a worse ratio than most because the echo chambers are so strong and anything outside of them is downvoted to oblivion. And it's easy to feel engaged by just reading threads mindlessly upvoting or downvoting endlessly.
  • Firebrand 5y ago
    Reddit bought Dubsmash last year, too. I imagine the app will eventually operate almost similar to TikTok: funny picture, advertisement, cat video, person live-streaming. Whether or not they can attract more of these power users to use the official app to upload short videos and livestream remains to be seen. I don’t think they’re able to on third-party apps. I’m not able to on Apollo, at least.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  • newsclues 5y ago
    They sell ads and DATA, and probably pull in major dollars from a tiny group of whales that spend on digital stickers.
• raspyberr 5y ago
  I don't have a reddit account but some small subreddits are quite good. I use https://teddit.net/ https://teddit.net/ on the desktop and RedReader from F-Droid. Teddit doesn't have infinte scroll and RedReader can be limited to how many are loaded each time and you have to press to load more. This way it's much easier to not doomscroll, there are far fewer dark patterns, it's lighter, less tracking. You can bookmark subreddits on a browser and pin them in RedReader. Subreddits also have RSS feeds although I wouldn't advise it for popular ones because of the amount of hits you'll get.
  • rognjen 5y ago
    > small subreddits are quite good Sure, there is lots of decent content on it.
  • spinax 5y ago
    RedReader is a fantastic reddit mobile client for Android - they are rolling out a new version right now with a ton of community contributions (both bugfixes and new features). https://old.reddit.com/r/RedReader/comments/o7oxdu/version_117_released/ https://old.reddit.com/r/RedReader/comments/o7oxdu/version_1...
    • e3bc54b2 5y ago
      There is also Slide for Reddit: https://github.com/ccrama/Slide https://github.com/ccrama/Slide Available under GPLv3 ever since I remember, and always had fantastic UX (assuming RedReader has reached parity with latest update)
      • SSLy 5y ago
        Android and iOS have a lot of fantastic reddit clients – those mentioned above, but also Apollo, Boost, Sync…
  • mhasbini 5y ago
    I forked old reddit redirect plugin to redirect to teddit.net: https://github.com/0xbsec/teddit-redirect https://github.com/0xbsec/teddit-redirect
• shawnz 5y ago
  Some may claim that laypeople like the new UI better, but anecdotally, among my social circle of non-techy people, that's not the case. In fact it is becoming something of a meme that Reddit is now impractical to use on mobile if you're not registered.
  • rognjen 5y ago
    So non-techy non-privacy conscious people do which is what they're looking to accomplish. That's it'd be interesting in looking at their data.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
• jccalhoun 5y ago
  I mostly read reddit on a desktop. Lots of people complain about the new UI, but I don't mind it. What I don't understand is how after all this time basic functionality of the site still doesn't work. Like, at least once a week you get logged out and can't log in or you click on a subreddit or a post and it won't load the content. I just don't understand how this is still going on and they are putting resources into avatar microtransactions and the live streaming. Does anyone use the live streaming stuff on reddit?
• habibur 5y ago
  > you set your status to “Hiding”. An obvious attempt to effectively shame people into using it. Or maybe it's just a humorous take. Remember "Anonymous Coward" from Slashdot? Not against the main take of the article though. But that has more to do with economy. On economic down turn years free sites like this start to crumble. And they take pro-monetizing user hostile steps like this.
• alfiedotwtf 5y ago
  Reddit is free to squeeze every last dark pattern in order to monetize, just like we are free to stop browsing Reddit. The past few weeks have been frustrating, enough that I've almost stopped Reddit altogether. Funny though... I feel like I haven't lost anything. As a startup community, we often talk about services being painkiller vs vitamin, or on a scale between 0 and 10 how sad would we feel if we no longer had access to a service. I've been thinking this the past few weeks, and losing Reddit has made me feel kind of meh.
• sunstone 5y ago
  Following in the footsteps of Digg and Slashdot.
• tbrake 5y ago
  I've long thought about making a thread like this so I'm happy to see it. Fed up with this actively user-hostile web experience to try and drive people to the app. My main gripe is definitely expanding comments - > First of all, only the top comment will be shown. Then you can tap view more which will load another two. But you cannot open all the comments. Because the "create an account to continue" toast pictured is unclosable on my phone. Meaning not only can I not expand any more comments, but I can't even go back see other un-expanded comments. I need to refresh. Just an absolute rancid experience all around.
  • yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
    It's atrocious that their main interface is like this, but have you tried i.reddit.com?
    • alex_c 5y ago
      Not grandparent commenter, but I don’t. I switched to the logged out, default experience recently. It’s so user hostile it’s been pretty effective at curbing my Reddit addiction and making me waste less time on that site.
      • jeltz 5y ago
        Haha, I did the same on my phone to reduve my Reddot useage.
    • PenguinCoder 5y ago
      old.reddit.com is usable too. But for some reason it keeps logging me out, recently.
      • dvtrn 5y ago
        you’re not alone and it’s a common complaint. along with the complaint that toggling “opt out of redesign” is constantly coming untoggled randomly and without warning. This doesn’t even happen between browser sessions where one would think a cookie got dropped, it can happen simply between pages. one moment you’re using old reddit, click a comment link, boom..you’re back on the redesign and having to change the setting again.
• ObsolescentMonk 5y ago
  I find myself using `old.reddit.com` more than is needed. Reddit sometimes requires Javascript to read a post properly, and I hate that.
• blntechie 5y ago
  Nail on the head about marketplace feature. Reddit doesn’t want to build hard products, they want to build easy dark features which aims for more profiling and resultant ad dollars.
• ajharrison 5y ago
  I love how much we’ve come to expect from services we’re not willing to pay a dime for.
• BusTrainBus 5y ago
  Reddit is an absolutely grotesque website, both for these UI issues and the toxic hate it engenders on all the subreddits. It’s magnitudes worse than any other social network. I have a genuine question: do people openly say they work for this company or is it workplace where people have to hide that they are part of it?
  • TulliusCicero 5y ago
    > the toxic hate it engenders on all the subreddits. I always see people saying this and I have to wonder what subreddits they're subscribed to. My experience is basically fine, sure there's some shitty discussions or a few hostile idiots lurking about, but it's no worse than message boards generally, and most conversations seem rather good. Part of me wonders whether some posters are just extraordinarily sensitive, and intentionally dive into the most downvoted top level comments so they can get their daily dose of outrage at the things trollS say.
    • meowster 5y ago
      > I have to wonder what subreddits they're subscribed to. Just look at r/all
    • iratewizard 5y ago
      I sometimes wonder if reddit was designed to spread groupthink, or if it was just a happy accident.
    • tralarpa 5y ago
      I guess the specialized subreddits are okayish, but I am always shocked when looking at the frontpage. The amount of hate and misery that appears in the most liked posts (posts and comments) is disconcerting. Just checked: Cringetopia, IdiotsInCars, MurderedByWords, JusticeServed, facepalm, PublicFreakout, iamverysmart, ChoosingBeggars... I know that most reddit visitors are teenagers or young adults and that controversal topics get more clicks etc. etc. That's what people want to see? It's so...how should I say it?...sad.
      • 5y ago
• WORMS_EAT_WORMS 5y ago
  There was a time when Google search would punish sites like this… enable competition… reward smaller sites… I really wish Google would start de-ranking behavior like this.
  • ahtihn 5y ago
    Does anyone end up on reddit through google searches?
    • detaro 5y ago
      yes. especially on various technical topics.
    • system16 5y ago
      Absolutely. Aside from programming problems, “product/service reddit” is probably my most commonly used Google search query. Whenever I’m looking for information about a product, service, restaurant, etc. one of the first things I look for is a discussion on Reddit. As much as I hate what Reddit has become, it still is the best place I’ve found for discussion from locals or enthusiasts that provide a much more accurate description of a product/restaurant/etc. than user reviews or ad filled blogs. I use Google for this since Reddit’s search is garbage.
      • ahtihn 5y ago
        If you're adding "reddit" to the search query that's a bit different, in that case you're explicitly looking for results on reddit. Penalizing reddit in the rankings shouldn't change this use case. I was more thinking about generic search queries that have reddit in the results. In my experience that doesn't happen very often. I just don't think reddit gets a significant amount of traffic from search results so penalizing it in the rankings won't have a big effect.
    • jlokier 5y ago
      Yes, I only end up on Reddit via Google searches, looking for the answer to a question. Then when looking at the discussion from the search result, I'll sometimes see other topics that look interesting. Unfortunately the web experience is so offputting, and so weirdly discontinuous, that it's hard to stick around and enjoy it. It's high friction and reminds me how much time I'm wasting by it being so clunky. Other interesting places are easier to get into without the same feeling. The way the other topics shown (that aren't the answer to my question) are the most recent ones is offputting as well. It means no context around the time of the discussion I was looking at, no chance of seeing related discussions from the tine, and if I land in the same subreddit from multiple searches, no variety to show me why the subreddit is interesting. So I've never felt interested enough to stick around and create a Reddit account, and my only visits are from Google searches that occasionally land on Reddit.
• marcinzm 5y ago
  Facebook makes $32 per user per year. That is across all billion+ users worldwide. They make around $170 per user in the US And Canada. No non-advertising monetization strategy will come close to that number. Assuming 10% of users pay (which is a very generous assumption) you'd need to have each user in the US pay $1700 per year!!!!
  • realce 5y ago
    If I don't have to spend money on advertising engineers, PR to keep my company nice for advertisers, ect, then I don't really need 1700 per user. Facebook is a database and a UI with ten billion dollars worth of ad exec salaries glued on.
• throwaway284534 5y ago
  Does anyone else want to rant about Reddit’s AMP pages that show up on Google? Oh I could go on about it… The managers at Reddit, in their infinite wisdom, decided that the preferred experience of a Google user searching for content on reddit should redirected to their wonky app. And if they don’t have the app, they should be punished with modals upon modals. “Reddit looks better in the app!” Oh, you disagree? Well press this tiny button to indicate your unsaved preference and we will allow you to view a preview of the thread you came for. But…if you can find the illusive button which shows the whole thread, we will grant you full access — after asking you to install the app again! It’s enough to make the designers of the Get Smart door scene collapse in embarrassment knowing that their parody has become the reality of every unsuspecting person who just wants to browse Reddit. And while I have you here, please tell me what’s going on with the Reddit’s scroll positioning when navigating out of the site. Just by clicking a external link in a thread, you’ve not only lost your position, navigating back to Reddit will tease you with the last version of the page before everything refreshes back to the top. And God forbid if you keep a tab open up for too long, encountering the most obnoxious error screen imaginable. “Ouch! Something went wrong. Refresh!” Yeah, something did go wrong. You broke your site. You killed the golden goose. You were the Chosen One! It was said that you would destroy Digg, not join them. Bring balance to the force, not leave it in darkness.
  • 00jimbo 5y ago
    speaking of their google results, let's also draw attention to the fact that they lie about post dates in google results to get you to click on a result from this week, only to click through and find that it's a post 7 years old
    • lazyweb 5y ago
      Yes! I've noticed that as well lately. So incredibly dishonest.
  • ishiz 5y ago
    There is also a bug with the AMP pages such that the submission dates for the threads are often wrong. For example you're searching for threads that have been posted in the last month, some of the results will say something like "7 days ago" until you click and see it is actually 5 years old.
• raverbashing 5y ago
  Really, I wouldn't be using it without RIF and the old style The new layout reminds me of a mix of 9Gag and Facebook (this is not a compliment) At the same time the non-mainstream subreddits are insightful and informative (and of course there's a bit of dopamine rush as well).
• lamontcg 5y ago
  We need a delete reddit meme just like delete facebook.
• golemotron 5y ago
  I have to laugh at the use of the word "disrespectful." As if one could expect a corporate entity in a market economy to respect you, personally.
• n4bz0r 5y ago
  Not a power Reddit user here. I only stumble upon random posts that search engines throw my way when I'm looking things up so I might very well be missing something. The main questions: Considering all the bad practices, why people keep using Reddit and what makes it so great? Why people make custom clients instead of looking for a full-fledged alternative? The questions are genuine, not a sarcasm. The following is just a rant and emotions, feel free to ignore. My questions mostly come from these thoughts: - As far as I'm concerned, it's people that bring value to online forums, not the other way around. Established communities must have no issues moving wherever. - Creating a huge online forum (even from scratch) has it's challenges, but ultimately isn't the most complex engineering task. As we live we learn to accept the fact that everything we love eventually dies. Not being an active user I might see it differently, but to me it looks like the forum (the technical part of it!) that people knew and loved is dead. Why workarounds? Isn't it the time to move on to creating/finding something new instead of feeding the corpse-milkers and digesting whatever they spit back? It's a glorified database client, not a secret non-replicable alien technology. Edit: reading the other comments I came to realization that Reddit must mostly serve community leaders (who most likely use alternative clients) as a discovery mechanism. And content-consumers would do whatever it takes to consume however inconvenient. I can see how that keeps people there, but don't clearly see why there is no popular alternatives. I guess it's really hard to gain the critical mass in the online-forum market.
  • rognjen 5y ago
    > Considering all the bad practices, why people keep using Reddit and what makes it so great? I think it's the sheer amount of content they have and the fact that the average user is much less tech and privacy savvy so they just register.
    • PhillyG 5y ago
      I'd assume that savvy people determined to set up a user account, and not aware they can avoid providing an email address, would just set up a throwaway email account on some free service
  • GordonS 5y ago
• codingclaws 5y ago
  One thing I've found is that when I bookmark an old.reddit.com page on my phone it somehow bookmarks www.reddit.com - super annoying. Anyway, try my Reddit clone (no pop-ups, no smartphone app, no JavaScript, no AMP, no up or down voting, no content algorithm, no images or videos, open source): https://www.peachesnstink.com https://www.peachesnstink.com
• YottaBun 5y ago
  This post is saying exactly what I think every time I try to use reddit through a browser on my phone. Horrible!
• hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
  Meh, I don't disagree, but I also don't experience these problems on old.reddit.com. Now, when they take that away...
• bluescrn 5y ago
  Their app nags are the worst. Phones have very capable web browsers these days. Please let us use them! Has anybody written an app-nag-blocker yet?…
  • rognjen 5y ago
    I forgot about the app nags because I've entirely stopped browsing it on my phone.
  • SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
    I’m confused how many people don’t seem to realize this has nothing to do with experiencing the site. The App gets a ton of personal data they can’t get on a website. That’s all this is. Data collection. They need you to install the App so they can access your advertising ID, better link your IP and location to your account, get you to click permission allowance, etc. Shooting their own experience in the foot is an acceptable sacrifice.
    • thih9 5y ago
      I wonder how to look at Apple's decision to tighten privacy rules in this light. I guess companies will be less motivated to force their users to use an iOS app. So, a potential loss for Apple; then again, a potential win for Apple users... so overall a win for Apple?
      • SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
        As an Apple user, I can zero percent complain about their actions even if they’re 1/2 real and 1/2 marketing. At least Apple is saying the right things and even that is a win right now.
• orangegreen 5y ago
  You can get around all of this by using old.reddit.com
• tfsh 5y ago
  It constantly amazes me how bad Reddit's interface is, videos either don't play or randomly start playing despite them not being in the viewport. They run random A|B experiments which add unnecessary components such as avatars next to peoples comments. Random acts of monetization are shoved down my throat at every turn. I honestly think the Reddit team are on a purpose built mission to design the most user hostile forum. I've tried browsing Reddit in incognito on my phone before and it wouldn't let me without installing their app, thankfully old.reddit.com exists. From clicking on a search result to viewing an image post took ~8 clicks. The flow was analogous to: -> Click on search result -> ending on an AMP page and clicking the bottom sheet exit button to view the post in the browser rather than the app -> clicking on the title to view the actual post in the non AMP format -> ending up on the actual post and being told I need to view it in the app (which completely removes the point of using incognito) -> changing the URL to old.reddit.com which is tedious with a phone keyboard -> finally load the page and click on the image
  • MaxBarraclough 5y ago
    Seconded. The old.reddit.com UI is still pretty bad on mobile, but it's the only remotely usable one. The default mobile site goes out of its way to make it difficult to read the thread, while also confusingly merging other threads into the page.
    • afterburner 5y ago
      Try i.reddit.com
      • thanatos519 5y ago
        i.reddit.com FTW! I would give you gold for this comment if this was reddit.
      • ehsankia 5y ago
        on mobile just use a custom app, all the web interfaces are utter shit, and the google links take you to AMP all the time. I just use rif, has worked flawlessly for a decade and has all the features, even mod stuff.
• wdr1 5y ago
  The closing off subreddits is particularly annoying. The Reddit mobile has a longstanding bug in how handle it handles GIFs. I have a bot (u/CalvinBot) that posts the official Calvin & Hobbes strip to /r/calvinandhobbes each day. GoComics, the copyright holder, only publishes it as a GIF, so that's how it's submitted to Reddit. However, because of the bug in the app, people can view the GIF properly. The advice used to be just switch to your browser, but because of Reddit now breaking that, even that workaround doesn't work now.
  • wdr1 5y ago
    > However, because of the bug in the app, people can view the GIF properly *can't
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• GordonS 5y ago
  Fully agree with everything in TFA. I'm an occasional Reddit user, and almost exclusively a lurker. But over the past few years they have been making it more and more intolerable to use, especially on mobile. The most recent things have been blocking you completely from subreddits, and blocking you completely from threads below the second level (you hit "read more", and get a popup). And beside the many dark patterns, there are also "stupid patterns" - for example, in a thread of only 20 comments or so, it only load about 4 by default. And if you want to load more from below a thread, it does a full page reload, now showing you only that subthread! It really is an absolutely maddening experience, that must surely serve to drive users away and make them hate it?! For one of the biggest sites in the world, I just can't fathom how unbelievably bad the whole design is - every part of it! And as only an occasional user, I don't want to install their shitty app (which requires a Reddit account). Years back I used to actually like Reddit - now, I fucking hate it :-/
  • techrat 5y ago
    change the url from www to old.reddit.com and you can bypass most of the bullshit. Question is how long it'll last.
    • GordonS 5y ago
      Thanks, this does seem to work! It's a PITA to change the URL every time I click a Google search result that hits Reddit, but it's better than dealing with all the bullshit Reddit throws at me.
      • sjagoe 5y ago
        I use a firefox extension called Redirector to regex-rewrite some URLs like this.
  • trainsplanes 5y ago
    It truly is incredible how a site that was perfectly usable over a decade ago has been massively updated to become unusable and with zero desirable features. I guess now there’s video embedding, but it’s the worst embedded video I’ve come across on a major site by far.
• phren0logy 5y ago
  For iOS, Apollo is worlds better than either the web or iOS app: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/apollo-for-reddit/id979274575 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/apollo-for-reddit/id979274575
• anotherhue 5y ago
  Old Reddit Redirect Extension: 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?hl=en-US https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/old-reddit-redirec...
• dgellow 5y ago
  I almost exclusively use teddit.net, and only switch to reddit.com to write comments. I highly recommend, that fixes all the UI issues!
• cloudking 5y ago
  I run into a problem on Reddit all the time with Chrome on Android: the videos won't load and just stay frozen or black. The only fix seems to be restarting Chrome. Do any hackers here know a permanent solution? Please don't say use another browser, I like Chrome :)
  • uchiga 5y ago
    buy new phone
• RosanaAnaDana 5y ago
  Reddit has completely jumped the shark in its UI design, the 'direction' its taken, and its basically complete capitulation to censorship at a corporate level. Its interesting to that they haven't IPO'd yet, because in my view, its a zombie carcass waiting for its replacement to find its way onto the net. There has always been a place, a need, and a demand for anonymous, free form discussions on the internet. Craigslist community posts (those are still a thing too), Fark, SomethingAwful, Digg, Reddit, and yes, Hackernews. I get that there are difficulties in managing an anonymous community, especially in a world where things can go so toxic. But reddit is a walking corpse waiting to be taken over by a better product. Everything about the site, the community, the company is hot garbage, but there is no better alternative, so it walks on.
  • ergot_vacation 5y ago
    A lot has been written about the social and legal difficulties of running such a site (how much do you enjoy looking at child porn all day so you can ban the people posting it? How many mass-shooters would you like to have post their manifesto on your site?) But I think the real issue is just money. Even if you keep things pretty stripped down, as 4chan or the original reddit did, hosting still costs money. And if you ever catch on, it's going to cost a LOT of money. Where is that money going to come from? Your users? You don't have a commercial product people are willing to pay for. Advertisers? Not in a post ad-pocalypse era; they don't want to be anywhere near a free, anonymous platform. And keep in mind that eventually you'll have to pay for ddoss protection, a security and moderation team, and probably legal as well. So unless you're wealthy enough to just pay for the site out of pocket indefinitely, any reddit or image board clone is doomed to failure from the beginning. It has a ticking death clock that will expire when the owners finally realize they can no longer afford it.
    • mustacheemperor 5y ago
      There was in fact a time where Reddit’s front page included a progress bar showing how much Gold needed to be bought/gifted that day to pay off that day’s server time, and shortly after it was introduced the bar was overfilled every single day and eventually set to a more arbitrary goal than actual server bills. I’m assuming that didn’t include salaries and other overhead, but it does indicate the userbase could basically sponsor the hosting fees. That was also before Reddit directly hosted images and videos, so those bills have presumably gone up quite a bit.
• surround 5y ago
  Try https://libredd.it/ https://libredd.it/ Or https://teddit.net/ https://teddit.net/
• diydsp 5y ago
  They keep burying the link to old.reddit.com deeper. I don't understand why they submarine their ads. Just put them out front like everyone else. It's reasonable. Sometimes they're even worth it.
• markus_zhang 5y ago
  Now on desktop the oldreddit option is hidden in another UI element.
• tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
  While not disclosing that e-mail is optional is a dark pattern, it's still better than what almost every other site does, which is making it a hard requirement. Another dark pattern on Reddit is that the web version only allows you to open content in their app. If you already have a compatible third party reddit app installed, "open in app" just sends you to the Play store. (Normal behavior is that if you have an app that can open those links, that app opens). I think Reddit has realized that they have more savvy users who would flee if forced the official app, risking the same fate as Digg, but they're trying to push every other user into their ad-infested app. Ironically, the harder a company tries to push their app, the more obvious it is to me that I cannot under any circumstance allow it to be installed on my phone. They're clearly trying to do something (almost certainly against my interest) that they can't do without the app.
  • PossiblyKyle 5y ago
    From what I know, reddit is not entirely to blame on its own on this. Apple's policy only lets the first party app open certain domains, like YouTube (please correct me if I'm mistaken) and Twitter. Overall, a decent workaround is an app called Opener (link to follow) which lets you switch to specific apps from the share sheet. Apollo also has this feature for reddit links specifically. However, I do agree that reddit's behavior beyond that is obnoxious. Opener link: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/opener-open-links-in-apps/id989565871 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/opener-open-links-in-apps/id98...
    • soneil 5y ago
      That's a tough cookie to solve. So here's the hypothetical. I create a trashware game app. Typical low-hanging fruit. I set it as a handler for amazon.com links. Then in my app I handle these links in a convincing web container. And obvious, mangle the links with my referrer URL in the process. I call this a hypothetical, but the only reason it is, is that apple wouldn't allow me to register as a handler for amazon.com.
      • the_lucifer 5y ago
• batiste 5y ago
  I still use the old design to this day...
• arcturus17 5y ago
  Yea, fuck all this noise. I've been meaning to quit any and all digital activity that's a bottomless well (ie, you can get more content ad infinitum). This includes social networks, Youtube, Netflix, etc. Of these, Reddit was probably my worst vice, as I could just pop up my phone and endlessly read mind-numbing crap, no matter the place and time. My monkey brain has been completely addicted to this motion for well over a decade now, and I always made excuses for myself because I thought it actually had some intellectual value (when I was really mostly browsing r/games and r/soccer, not r/programming or other communities from which to derive some enlightenment). Now I can't do that even if I wanted to, b/c their new site is a UX abomination. They're very close to hiding everything behind login, and they place all kinds of crap to herd you to the mobile app (no thanks!) So a big thank you to Reddit management, I guess? To anyone who may have even a mild digital addiction or bad habit, call it what you will, which you're suspecting is making you unhappy or limiting your potential: JUST QUIT. You won't miss it and you'll observe amazing results. In my case, I've seen the following in the last weeks (and other times I've done this in the past): a. Increased focus b. Longer, deeper sleep c. Better relationships d. Increased productivity at work and hobbies e. Improved mood f. Greatly increased control over my time g. Much more time spent reading This was at virtually zero cost, since I wasn't getting any value from about 98% of my browsing - maybe an enlightening Reddit post or Youtube vid here and there, but I think I can easily make it up with reading. Your results may vary of course, but there are good chances you will experience some or all of the above. I know full well it's not as easy as it sounds but give it a shot - you won't regret it.
  • ethbr0 5y ago
    In all seriousness, this is what made me finally quit Facebook a decade ago. They made it annoying enough to use the product I wanted that the barrier to quiting was drastically decreased.
  • Terretta 5y ago
    > not r/programming or other communities from which to derive some enlightenment Some obscure subreddits remain a source of emerging thinking on esoteric areas of focus. The trick is an app that lets you exclude everything else, fully under your editorial control, with no dark patterns. On iOS, I use Apollo (RIP Alien Blue). > quit any and all digital activity that's a bottomless well I’d add “short form ‘content’” to that. At least once a quarter try to not pick up or browse any short form content until you’ve read 1 - 5 books, however many it takes to get past any agitation pulling you out of the reading flow, till you can again read for hours at a go. It may be easier to start with one or two fiction, then switch to two or three non-fiction. Something like: - airport novel - philosophical fiction / literature - pop non-fiction - topical non-fiction - textbook or research book You can pick back up short form once your brain is willing to absorb an entire research book.
• prestigious 5y ago
  Twitter is like this also. I want to reduce my Twitter usage so I delete the app and sometimes I just want to see what Elon or somebody like that has been up to. Can I go use their website without logging in? Hell no I can’t. Just sucks
  • PhillyG 5y ago
    Imho twitter is a far bigger problem for hiding things. A) tweets often get embedded in news articles - meaning sometimes context is left out of an article and you can't even tell if it's click bait or maybe the article is being harsh /vicious B) reddit is supposedly about community discussion so it would actually make sense if individual subs had the power to only show content to logged in permitted accounts only - that way banned accounts can't snoop on users?
• egypturnash 5y ago
  Why aren’t they pivoting into a marketplace instead? I'm just gonna guess this is because "supporting and policing a marketplace" is its own special kind of hell; supporting and policing a discussion forum is bad enough without adding on all the way monetary transactions can go awry.
  • throwaway64643 5y ago
    Honestly, all suggestions from the original post is the epitome of "If everyone is stupid, then why aren’t you rich". The moment he suggested OnlyFans model on Reddit, all of his suggestions lost value. Do you know that OnlyFans even doesn't want to be OnlyFans anymore?
    • Seattle3503 5y ago
      What do they want to be?
    • egypturnash 5y ago
      Sales site appears. Porn uses site. Site gets big off porn money; kicks off porn. It’s the eternal cycle.
• thinkingemote 5y ago
  I once encountered an online streaming employee who was told by their manager to post organic submissions to a movie related subreddit. They were open to their activity when challenged. I think Reddit knows that it's basically a huge marketing platform . To them they are the real users, even if these users are not paying them. The stealth marketing is good enough that other users don't mind or actually like them, creating the content for paid advertisements. Indeed when challenged about this activity with clear proof, most users still see nothing wrong. Way back in the 1990s i worked in a company that did the same thing in the early web so it's clear the industry is bigger than ever.
• seaorg 5y ago
  It baffles me that nobody eats Reddit’s lunch. Their user experience is abysmal.
• meisel 5y ago
  On top of these design issues, I'm surprised by how buggy the core experience can be. The home page repeatedly failing to load on many different occasions. The site suddenly acting like you're logged out and needing a refresh. It's very surprising.
• ajdude 5y ago
  I found myself several times this morning to reach a search result on Reddit (from ddg, mind you), only to immediately change the address to reddit.net after being unable to view nested comments at best (get the app or log in to view!) or be unable to browse the page outright at worst (“please browse anonymously with the app to view this page!)
• dmix 5y ago
  Their UX is as incompetent as their modding censorship policies which makes me think this rot goes to the top. It’s not just a bad marketing division, it’s the whole company. I remember Reddit being a whimsical fun place, now I see it as a corporation run by a robot lawyer without a sense of humour where raw mobile user impression numbers as the only valuable metric.
  • rognjen 5y ago
    > UX is as incompetent I don't agree with you there. Their UX is very competent it's just not pursuing the "correct" X.
• ergot_vacation 5y ago
  Reddit is the perfect case example of what happened to the 07-08 web as time went on. Initially, the Internet was a big exciting place and people just built stuff to see if they could, and maybe they could sell it later (a lot of communities never even considered huge commercial success, it was just about mucking around in a space that was cheap and exciting.) As time went on, everything rotted. The chill sites struggled to keep the lights on, and many eventually shuttered. The "we'll sell it off some day" ones sold it off, and the buyers ALWAYS ran the site into the ground. So now we get an Internet that resembles a b-movie graveyard. There are a lot of corpses, and a lot of shambling zombies. The few souls still alive are holed up somewhere with a shotgun, awaiting the end.
• streamofdigits 5y ago
  the reddit experience is unbelievably crappy. yet its huge popularity seems to suggest that it has gotten something right. the other social media and privacy sinkholes (facebook, twitter, linkedin etc) and in particular their uncontrollable "timeline" concept seem to have some design (as opposed to execution) issue. btw there is an open source fediverse version called lemmy. Build the future you want to live in and all that... [0] https://join-lemmy.org/ https://join-lemmy.org/ [1] https://github.com/LemmyNet https://github.com/LemmyNet
• Havoc 5y ago
  Disrespectful is putting it mildly. Worse than the bad UI is how obviously calculated it is. It's not like they just built something bad, no they're actively worsening it to force the app on the user. Each month or three they cripple the web interface a bit more. Says a lot about the company culture when the entire UI design process is a giant dark pattern
• thomashabets2 5y ago
  Hey, I just tweeted today about how reddit hates it's users: https://twitter.com/thomashabets/status/1408454355380998145 https://twitter.com/thomashabets/status/1408454355380998145 tl;dc: they try every dark pattern trick to make you switch to their shitty new UI.
• Finbarr 5y ago
  All of these things used to annoy me as well. Then I downloaded the app and subscribed monthly to get rid of the ads. Now my reddit experience is awesome. Reddit isn't a public service. It's a private company trying to increase their profits. The native app experience is way better than the website. Undoubtedly they see higher engagement from folks using the app, so want as many people as possible to use it. Ads looking like posts? Sounds like they are trying to monetize their traffic. If you don't want to see the ads, pay for the service.
• jopsen 5y ago
  I never really got started with reddit when it was hot.. And every time I've tried to use the site, it just feels like a hot mess...
• omega3 5y ago
  They make it very difficult to be a contributor as well, a lot of subreddits focus on showcasing/bragging rather than discussions now. I've had a DIY question I've posted to the three biggest home improvement/diy subreddits and it was deleted from one, downvoted to oblivion in another one without replies and downvoted to 0 in the last one with the only comment proposing a solution so overkill grotesque that I didn't bother to reply.
  • cunthorpe 5y ago
    Downvotes would be fine if I ever managed to post anything. Most subs have automated post removal when the post doesn’t follow whatever requirement they have but you only know this requirement after you’re done making your post. Thanks a lot for letting me talk to a wall, Reddit.
  • Seattle3503 5y ago
    Reddit wants pictures to make a bottomless well of content. Your question is a speed bump causes people to stop scrolling.
• fastball 5y ago
  Everything about Reddit's (visible) engineering is terrible these days. The new React app UI is probably one of the least performant React apps I've ever seen / experienced. Turn on the re-render track in React DevTools and watch as simply upvoting a single post on your page causes every component to re-render. However they're delivering video/images to clients is the worst I've seen in a long time. Videos constantly buffer in ridiculous ways, you can barely scrobble, and images load in more slowly than anywhere else on the web. Honestly browsing Reddit in 2021 makes me feel like I'm back on dial-up. Sorry anyone here that's a Reddit engineer but something is going terribly wrong over there.
  • ryandrake 5y ago
    > Sorry anyone here that's a Reddit engineer but something is going terribly wrong over there. You shouldn't need to apologize to the Reddit engineers. They are the ones building it this way! I wish a Reddit engineer would respond here to help people understand why on earth the site's quality is so poor, but we know they can't/won't due to confidentiality. Whenever I browse the non-old Reddit, I can't help but think it's impossible to have such bad quality accidentally. They must be deliberately making it this bad. It would be fascinating to get a glimpse at their bug tracker, to see what tickets they prioritize and which ones they ignore.
• yewenjie 5y ago
  There is https://libredd.it/ https://libredd.it/ which is a privacy friendly frontend to reddit written in Rust. Source - https://github.com/spikecodes/libreddit https://github.com/spikecodes/libreddit
• cphoover 5y ago
  I'm so glad someone wrote this article... It summarizes my frustrations with the website over the last few years.
• troydavis 5y ago
  Imagine you’re Steve Huffman, Reddit’s CEO and co-founder (https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3cxedn/i_am_steve_huffman_the_new_ceo_of_reddit_ama/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3cxedn/i_am_steve_huf...). What strategy would you propose to your board? For the sake of argument, assume that: - You would prefer not to make your creation frustrating to use. (Of course, the team may think that their changes are better, but let’s assume that’s not the case) - The board cares about ARPU and ARPU growth - You’re stuck in the middle, and believe that you’re implementing it less terribly than your replacement would. So far, your biggest win here has been preserving old.reddit.com and API access, which consumed most of your political capital. So, if you were Steve, what strategy would you propose and why?
  • lowkey 5y ago
    As a product manager, here is what I would do if I was in Steve’s shoes. Instead of employing dark patterns that take advantage of casual user’s trust, I would actually listen to users and evolve the site in the direction users are asking for. Reddit just killed their Santa Program, this year will be it’s last. The Secret Santa program was amazingly popular but perhaps complicated to manage so instead of improving it, they killed it - favoring dark patters to drive mobile adoption, lol. Why not double down on the things the community has already indicated it wants. My analysis says they should evolve into a marketplace to drive more peer-to-peer activity between users while enabling monetization that could scale significantly. Reddit seems to be mentally stuck in the Advertising model and lacks vision. Encourage more peer-to-peer interaction, make it a marketplace, drive real economic activity between users, adopt cryptocurrencies as well as conventional payment mechanisms to enable commerce between users. Think different.
    • rblatz 5y ago
      What? More peer to peer activity and make it a marketplace? Then you add in crypto for good measure… They added chat, and everyone hated it. People aren’t on there to build up yet another social network. What would this marketplace even sell? Is it like a less localized Craigslist?
• johnnysinns 5y ago
  Nothing more disrespectful than complaint about things you’re not willing to pay for.
  • rognjen 5y ago
    Well, I mean I get what you're saying but that's my whole point. Reddit isn't (yet) providing a service worth paying for and I suggest things that I might pay for. Secondly, there's plenty of free (as in money) things we complain about.
• BeFlatXIII 5y ago
  Old Reddit and RES were the only things that kept Reddit tolerable. Even then, I still got bored of the community in the subreddits I was subscribed to and left. Perhaps I ought to spend the rest of my Gold credits I bought in 2014 before actually deleting my account.
• wting 5y ago
  I was the EM for Reddit's Growth team around this time. I am responsible for / contributed to a few features like the current signup flow, AMP pages, push notifications, email digests, app download interstitials, etc. There was a new product lead who joined with many good ideas, but some of them were dark patterns that I heavily protested. After a few months of this, it was obvious that I was going to be reigned in or let go[0]; I immediately transferred to a different org. Now let me explain the other side of the story. 4 years later, Reddit's DAU, MAU, and revenue have all grown at ridiculous rates[1]. Yes, power users complain—and still continue using the site—but the casual user does not. These dark patterns have been normalized on other websites. These practices are done because it works. _____ 0: They changed it so I would report to the product lead, which is odd for an EM to report into a product chain and the only instance within the company ever. 1: Many friends are startup founders and I've been at a few startups myself—a byproduct of being in the Bay Area—and Reddit's growth numbers are impressive. As a former employee, I am quite happy about my equity growth.
  • Dreako 5y ago
    makes sense. Also if anyone doesnt like the new mobile redesign they should probably try using "i.reddit.com" (which is a light mobile client)
    • donmcronald 5y ago
      I simply quit using it on my phone. No big loss IMO.
  • zozbot234 5y ago
    > These practices are done because it works. Which practices, though? A number of the practices you note (e.g. streamlined signup flow) are not user hostile at all, and others are a mixed bag. (E.g. one could argue that AMP + a properly featured mobile site and 'official' app were necessary steps with a subpar implementation). But when looking specifically at the dark patterns that power users are most likely to complain about, it's unclear that they would help DAU/MAU much, if at all. Casual users might not complain overtly all that much, but they're almost certainly discouraged by many such practices.
• aero-glide2 5y ago
  I simply use Slide For Reddit. Its open source, and available both on Play Store and Fdroid.
  • fastball 5y ago
    For anyone that wants a good iOS client, Apollo is the one to beat (and the spiritual successor to Alien Blue, the OG best Reddit app which was acquired by Reddit). That being said, I stopped using Reddit consistently (go on a few times a week now, used to browse daily / on my phone / etc) a few years ago, and I feel that decision has been a major contributing factor in improving my mental health. So if you're finding the Reddit experience garbage, maybe just... stop using Reddit. No amount of UX fixes provided by a 3rd party app can compensate for how toxic interactions on Reddit trend.
• NaturalPhallacy 5y ago
  Friendly reminder that the entire site is a bait & switch scam: >We want to democratize the traditional model by giving editorial control to the people who use the site, not those who run it. >— Reddit FAQ 2005 >We've always benefited from a policy of not censoring content >— u/kn0thing 2008 >A bastion of free speech on the World Wide Web? I bet they would like it," he replies. [reddit]'s the digital form of political pamplets. >— u/kn0thing 2012 >We will tirelessly defend the right to freely share information on reddit in any way we can, even if it is offensive or discusses something that may be illegal. >— u/reddit 2012 >We stand for free speech. This means we are not going to ban distasteful subreddits. We will not ban legal content even if we find it odious or if we personally condemn it. Not because that's the law in the United States - because as many people have pointed out, privately-owned forums are under no obligation to uphold it - but because we believe in that ideal independently, and that's what we want to promote on our platform. We are clarifying that now because in the past it wasn't clear, and (to be honest) in the past we were not completely independent and there were other pressures acting on reddit. Now it's just reddit, and we serve the community, we serve the ideals of free speech, and we hope to ultimately be a universal platform for human discourse (cat pictures are a form of discourse). >— u/yishan 2012 >Neither Alexis [u/kn0thing] nor I created Reddit to be a bastion of free speech >— u/spez 2015 And I currently have this gem of a notification sitting in my inbox: >Important notification about your account >Your account has been suspended from Reddit for breaking the rules. The suspension will last 3 day(s). >You recently upvoted a post or comment that was determined to be against our policies. Abusive content is not acceptable on reddit, nor is engaging with it. Please be thoughtful about the content you interact with. >This is an automated message; responses will not be received by Reddit admins. Note that they don't tell you what the content was. They clearly want you to become fearful about expressing yourself, or even using the site, and engage in self censorship. They're one of the most dishonest and awful companies in America. Who the fuck knows what the content even was. Probably some edgy meme from PoliticalCompassMemes, which thankfully has a backup here: https://ruqqus.com/+PoliticalCompassMemes https://ruqqus.com/+PoliticalCompassMemes
• ricardobayes 5y ago
  This whole rant post is about reddit requiring users to register to use their (free) service. I don't find it a problem at all. If you wish to use it, register. If you don't, don't.
  • rognjen 5y ago
    > This whole rant post is about reddit requiring users to register to use their (free) service. Yes, in part, but your comment disregards two things. 1. The dishonest things they're doing to require that. 2. The fact that they're requiring registering to consume content others have created. > If you wish to use it, register. If you don't, don't. I don't so I didn't. And I wrote why and what I would have liked to be done differently.
• kgarten 5y ago
  Any recommendations for alternatives? I mostly shifted to discord matrix and irc …
  • rognjen 5y ago
    Individual content creators through RSS.
• JimmaDaRustla 5y ago
  some things are just glaringly bad, like the chat box...it has no close button...you have to click the chat icon in the top nav bar to close it
• sreeramb93 5y ago
  I deleted my reddit app and switched to old design recently. Reddit was becoming very addictive in the morning.
• alkonaut 5y ago
  There is just zero chance I’ll use the current web version of Reddit in its current form. I use Apollo on mobile (And Tweetbot for Twitter) and I’m happy.
• lukewrites 5y ago
  I only use Reddit via third party apps because the website is so awful. First it was Narwhal now it’s Apollo, both for iOS. Apollo is fantastic and has a desktop client in the works…well worth the money.
• rm445 5y ago
  I can't be alone in just pretending Reddit doesn't exist on mobile. It's weird, I like Reddit a lot, on desktop I post and comment, but on mobile it is so shabby that I just ignore it instead of seeing if it can be made bearable by being logged in to an app.
  • archon810 5y ago
    Why do all this complaining and ignoring instead of just downloading an app like "rif is fun", logging in once, and then having great reddit experience on mobile? Everyone here is aware of the dark patterns on reddit. We know they're not going anywhere. We continue to read reddit posts every day, so why not make it easy on yourself instead of endless misery and complaining about things that you know won't change?
    • rm445 5y ago
      That's a fair comment. I don't think my comment reflects a fully rational decision and I could just use an app and log in. I don't need to have Reddit on my phone, it's entertainment I could take or leave. However I do have sympathy for people who don't have any interest in becoming engaged users, and just want to see a useful comment thread for some particular info without all the hassle. The web is full of gates, walls and popups, and we don't all want to download the app and create an account for every site.
• dehrmann 5y ago
  > Why aren’t they pivoting into a marketplace instead? I laughed a bit at this because they had previously bet hard on Reddit Gifts. No idea what happened, and the timing just might not have been right.
  • rognjen 5y ago
    Gifts and currently rewards are just much easier and much much shittier versions of a marketplace and Patreon.
• cunthorpe 5y ago
  Yep, Reddit is basically a junk site at the moment and it gets worse by the day. Just this month they started restricting “potentially NSFW” posts from being opened unless you login. This is their direction now, soon enough we’ll have popunders like TripAdvisor, other successful junk site.
• twirlock 5y ago
  Reddit deserves to die. It's like their entire goal was to consolidate forum culture and then astroturf it to shit. Every single powermod glows like the sun. The political content is a joke, just a full on non-stop campaign to indoctrinate kids into the worldview of the neoliberal intelligentsia. Reddit is spooks dancing on the grave of the pre 10's internet. They deserve to fail.
• optimalsolver 5y ago
  To paraphrase Bjarne Stroustrup, there are two kinds of social network platforms, the ones people complain about and the ones no one uses. I bet you can go back 10 years and find Redditors bitching about the state of the site back then.
  • sedatk 5y ago
    That's a false dichotomy though. There are popular platforms that no one bitches about the UX such as Twitter. Yes, I'm sure there are people complaining about some of the stuff (like having no edit feature etc) but I'm sure it's not remotely close to Reddit-level.
• cecilpl2 5y ago
  My solution for good reddit browsing: * Use the Reddit Enhancement Suite browser extension, and customize to your liking. * Set it to permanent old.reddit.com mode, so all reddit links immediately go there. * Only browse reddit on mobile using one of several third-party apps, like Relay (my preference), Boost, or Apollo. * Extensively tailor your subreddit selection to weed out the garbage. Most if not all of the default subreddits are terrible, but anything devoted to a niche interest is likely to be a welcoming and respectful community. I don't have avatars, autoplay videos, or inline "promoted" threads. I see 10 levels of nested comments with 1000 comments loaded by default. Additional levels of nesting are tap to open. I have keyboard navigation on desktop and swipe navigation (from link to comments back to home page) on mobile. Pretty much all of the complaints that folks have in here are solved problems.
  • throwaway64643 5y ago
    I think this is the way Reddit supposes their power users to have the old reddit experience. If they didn't care about power users, they'd completely decimate old.reddit.com months after deployment of the new design, just shove it all 'em mouth. They always leave ways for power users to have the most authentic reddit experience. Recently, Reddit has changed their algorithm to filter out contents of pornographic subreddits from the front page r/all. They didn't touch the communities. But they made it much harder for average users and new users to accidentally discover porn contents on Reddit. They didn't want to do another 'tumblr'. But this, consequently, has impact on promotion and expansion of those subreddits. This is a smart move (that other platforms have the same trouble should learn). Change hurts, but it is barely felt.
  • ozcanberkciftci 5y ago
    redreader is awesome as an android reddit client
    • ehsankia 5y ago
      rif and baconreader too.
  • pixelpoet 5y ago
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• Causality1 5y ago
  Don't forget about open hostility toward mobile browser users. If you don't want to use their app they treat you like the scum of the earth. That goes for Reddit-originating sites like Imgur as well.
• 23B1 5y ago
  reddit is the most dangerous bubble-building tool on the web, next to twitter.
• sebow 5y ago
  Reddit is bad (not to say completely garbage after the "new UI") since about 2015.It become even more prevalent when Tencent(known destroyer of online communities, especially in gaming) throwed some money into it about 2 years ago. Everything from usability, moderation, non-transparency in decision-making continues to make it a bubble that completely defies the what it used to be when it first took off. It's not worth even going into details, and sadly alternatives like mastodon or something are not yet there (for again, a multitude of reasons).
• dredmorbius 5y ago
  Tildes.net (https://tildes.net https://tildes.net) has been a refreshingly sane, well-designed, and well-administered alternative. I all but completely gave up on Reddit for my own posting a couple of years ago, following an early set of "features" that I'd categorise more as "contemptuous" than "disprespectful". More deeply, Reddit simply isn't very good at fostering conversations. It does have depth, and there are communities which I'll still visit, very occasionally. That said, it's been a slow death for most of the past decade, no matter what the KPI stats are claiming.
  • tygrak 5y ago
    Yes, Tildes is great, it is also a non-profit. The creator of Tildes, Deimos, also used to work at reddit and modded some of the better subreddits. As an aside, the site is currently down for some updates for the first time in at least two years. Virtually 100% uptime, incredible.
    • evilnight 5y ago
      He wrote Automoderator, SubredditSimulator, and worked on Gold too.
• jerrygoyal 5y ago
  Reddit app is not that good either. Only good thing left from old era of reddit is access to reddit api so that third party devs can build a better frontend on top of it. I don't think new reddit management is in favour of that decision anymore. An anecdote is Reddit chat (which came much later) is not part of the 3rd party api access so that users would stick to the official Reddit app. I wouldn't be too surprised if reddit decide one day to kill the api switch.
• jsilence 5y ago
  I'm simply not using reddit at all. Never had a problem with their dark design pattern.
• sedatk 5y ago
  There's a decentralized alternative called Aether. Try it here: https://aether.app https://aether.app
• blocked_again 5y ago
  Reddit should just launch a coin, buy back the shares from investors and stop doing these shady things. 90% of the coins on the 100 marketcap are shitcoins and are still worth billions. Reddit with its massive userbase can easily make it to the top 100.
• makecheck 5y ago
  What’s interesting to me is that “old.reddit.com” continues to work on mobile in these cases. They must have found that users really don’t know about the original site, or that not enough care. Still, if “old.reddit.com” ever goes away I will be 100% cured of Reddit. It is literally unusable in any other way and it would not be worth the frustration.
• grouphugs 5y ago
  reddit zuxxx
• KrishnaShripad 5y ago
  I just stay away from Reddit links as much as possible. The user experience is atrocious and I agree with everything the article says. There is another point that the article missed (or perhaps never encountered because the author primarily focuses on the mobile experience). In desktop Reddit posts are actually modal dialogs (don't believe me? Open a Reddit post in your desktop browser). I have this bad habit of clicking my mouse on the whitespace of any web page I visit (I guess I am the only one). The Reddit devs, for whatever reason best known to them, have added a click listener on the backdrop of the Reddit post (like I said, the post is a modal dialog). The moment you click it, the post closes to reveal the subreddit homepage that you were on. This has tripped me so many times I have rewired my brain to use my mouse carefully while navigating Reddit. This sort of design anti-pattern is also visible in USA Today. I don't know who first came up with this pattern but it sucks. Use modal dialogs for what they have to be used for. Don't try to fool the user into thinking it is a page when it is actually a modal dialog.
  • sickmartian 5y ago
    > I have this bad habit of clicking my mouse on the whitespace of any web page I visit (I guess I am the only one). That makes two of us. I agree but don't stay away, I use old.reddit w/reddit enhancement suite, doesn't fix incognito for me as I don't let addons run there, but using containers on firefox instead helps.
    • j56no 5y ago
      Three. I’ve stumbled on that too, Internet has become so unfriendly.
  • rognjen 5y ago
    > In desktop Reddit posts are actually modal dialogs... This is just shitty UX but not dishonest though. But I hate it too since I click as well. Plus, you often lose the scroll position. :\
• swiftcoder 5y ago
  > Reddit has lots of competent people. So, surely they have the data to back up their decisions. And the data must be saying that these changes are working. Sadly this is not as much of a truism as one might expect. Even competent people tend to design experiments that are biased towards the desired results, and even competent people tend to interpret their experimental results in a favourable light. And even competent people get in a feedback loop where their metrics are chasing a local minima, and they don't have the political capital within the organisation to convince management to take a short-term hit to the metrics for a prospective global improvement in the future... The ads team at Amazon who thinks the #1 performing ad strategy is to show you ads for the blender you just purchased - they have data too, after all.
• raydev 5y ago
  I feel like one of the few people on HN who prefers apps over websites. Websites always flicker/drop frames, too easy to accidentally mistap links on phone, etc. This is certainly disrespectful design, but I experience none of it.
• woah 5y ago
  It works fine when you're logged in on the app.
• code_duck 5y ago
  If I couldn’t use the old reddit interface I would have stopped using reddit entirely a year or two ago. Not only because the new interface is even worse than the old one, but also using the old one allows you to dodge most of the issues listed in the article. I could list another 1/2 a dozen annoying changes or limitations, including massive functionality downgrades on mobile web. Once old reddit isn’t usable, I suppose I’ll be entirely done with the site which is a shame after 13 years. Reddit went from being simple, bare-bones and friendly to overwrought, baffling and user hostile.
• styfle 5y ago
  A somewhat counterpoint to the first example in the article: I created a Reddit account (11 years ago) without an email address and forgot the password. Now there is no way to reset the password and recover the account. I never bothered to create a new account so I just stopped using Reddit in most cases.
  • rognjen 5y ago
    It's not requiring an email that's bad. It's making it look like it's required but not saying that it's not.
• fileoffset 5y ago
  Anyone on Android, check out Slide and bypass all the crap
• literallyaduck 5y ago
  Whenever someone builds a reddit competitor it is instantly filled with FBI trolls who post hate speech, spam, and malware to poison the well. Competition is bad for intelligence agencies which already have pipes from the major social media providers.
• mmacvicarprett 5y ago
  "An obvious attempt to effectively shame people into using it." "I would assume that they’re actively alienating their users." I hope you are being ironic.
• wetpaws 5y ago
  I loath Reddit design, but fortunately redditisfun is a thing. No add views from me to Reddit, f them.
• CornCobs 5y ago
  For me even the desktop experience is pretty buggy. Has anyone else noticed that sometimes reddit divs jitter up and down like crazy? Seems to be an issue caused by scrolling
• ostenning 5y ago
  Never use the official reddit webpage. Use www.teddit.net
• oliv__ 5y ago
  I clicked the link expecting to agree with the author but to be honest, I don't think those are dark patterns. Pushy? Yes. Annoying? Sure. But still not what I would call dark patterns. Try booking a cheap airline ticket on RyanAir or something, there you'll find some real dark patterns
• rhaksw 5y ago
  Reddit's biggest dark pattern is showing your removed comments as if they are not removed when you are logged in. You can try and see it for yourself here [0]. I built a site primarily with this issue in mind [1]. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/CantSayAnything/about/sticky https://www.reddit.com/r/CantSayAnything/about/sticky [1] https://www.reveddit.com https://www.reveddit.com
• aiisjustanif 5y ago
  TL;DR: Condé Nast will take every nice thing they acquire or own and try to covertly (at first) focus on short term gains with dark patterns. And I mean dark patterns even outside of websites.
• birthday 5y ago
  These new changes are annoying as f**!
• raindropm 5y ago
  There is that barebone, weird and non-pretentious, especially the feeling that "I don't do this for money and growth!!" of old internet that modern corporate-y site cannot replicate (hell, and I'm just 35) Also, all those too much flairs and awards and stuffs somehow push me out of Reddit instead of bring me in. Maybe it's fun for younger generation though... I knew Reddit just about 5 years ago, and it feels more fun back then...