8 ms·
The site is ~~wrong~~ somewhat correct about how big reddits homepage is. ~~It seems to not run any scripts when testing, so 1.5MB is the basic JS + CSS.~~ In
by sdflhasjd 5y ago
The site is ~~wrong~~ somewhat correct about how big reddits homepage is.
~~It seems to not run any scripts when testing, so 1.5MB is the basic JS + CSS.~~
In reality, it's much, much worse. (On a desktop)
Even with an adblocker, reddit.com downloaded 18MB in the first 10 seconds. That would put that cost at over $1.
I stopped after that because it seemed to be just continuously downloading... something.
I know Reddit is quite media driven these days, but it seems to be unnecessary prefetching a lot
Edit: Looks like I was testing the desktop version,
see jefftk's reply.
However, it doesn't help reddit's case that much. After looking into what it's actually downloading in my "desktop" test, there are lots of huge PNG images (1000x1000 +) that seem to be displayed as tiny thumbnails.
And for an infinitely scrolling page, it prefetches all the images in the feed at full resolution.
If I turn off my adblocker, I get an autoplaying amazon ad (~5MB).
Additionally, it starts auto-playing a livestreams which is just below the fold.
- fhsm 5y agoWow. That's a lot. I'm not sure how to replicate this but I would be curious what old.reddit.com does via an equivalent methodology.
- alpaca128 5y agoFirefox dev tools said ~1.3MB transferred. I think it's the increased number of thumbnails per "page", even though they're smaller. On the other hand it has no autoplaying videos and livestreams.
- jefftk 5y ago> It seems to not run any scripts when testing They source their claim to a WebPageTest run [1], and WPT does run scripts. I can reproduce their results as: 1. Open an incognito window in Chrome 2. Open devtools, and configure it as mobile 3. Navigate to reddit.com 4. See ~1.5MB transferred [1] https://www.webpagetest.org/result/210707_AiDc36_6f01cdff93b8299725303f88e60febbc/1/details/#waterfall_view_step1 https://www.webpagetest.org/result/210707_AiDc36_6f01cdff93b...
- sdflhasjd 5y agoYou're right. Reddit seems to load a different homepage based on useragent. I was using Firefox, but I could get the 1.55MB result by trying that.
- jefftk 5y agoI get 1.22MB in Firefox with a similar approach: 1. New private browsing window 2. Open devtools networking 3. Responsive design mode: Galaxy S9 4. Load reddit.com
- justanotherguy0 5y agoIT'S BETTER ON THE APP >>>DOWNLOAD THE APP<<<
- app4soft 5y ago[ Got it ][0] [0] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.quantumbadger.redreader/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.quantumbadger.redreader/
- vorticalbox 5y agoI just did this in in private tabs and got: firefox: 17.85 / 12.54 MB transferred, brave: 15 MB, vivaldi: 9.6 MB, chromium: 13.1 MB,
- jefftk 5y agoDid you configure it as a mobile browser? Your numbers are about what I get if I configure it as desktop.
- vorticalbox 5y agoI did not I tested as a desktop, using a mobile does drop it down to ~2 MB. I actually think that Reddit is just loading less of the posts due to the small screen.
- matheusmoreira 5y agoWhat about old.reddit.com?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- mattl 5y agoOr https://old.reddit.com/.compact https://old.reddit.com/.compact
- matheusmoreira 5y agoI didn't know about this, thanks!
- lurtbancaster 5y agoI also recommend libreddit - https://github.com/spikecodes/libreddit https://github.com/spikecodes/libreddit Recently on teddit.net, I've been getting an "Unable to connect" via some Tor Exit Nodes. So I'm having to create new circuits until teddit loads.
- giantrobot 5y agohttps://i.reddit.com https://i.reddit.com is a shortcut for that. It's the most usable Reddit interface IMO.
- coldcode 5y agoIt's the only way I will read reddit. It does seem smaller (on Safari Big Sur I get 5.5MB).
- MaxBarraclough 5y agoStill horrendous. Where's that data going?
- techrat 5y agoThe point may be that, by default, Reddit's website is now incredibly heavy for something that was once a lean and nimble site when it comes to media.
- ksec 5y agoI thought an interesting comparison would be Mobile Web Reddit and Reddit App on Data usage.
- arbitrage 5y agoi mean a lot of that is adjustable in settings if you create an account.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago> Even with an adblocker, reddit.com downloaded 18MB in the first 10 seconds. I loaded https://www.reddit.com/ https://www.reddit.com/ in Firefox with an adblocker; the network inspector showed 4.8 MB transferred.
- jefftk 5y ago> it doesn't help reddit's case that much. After looking into what it's actually downloading in my "desktop" test, there are lots of huge PNG images (1000x1000 +) that seem to be displayed as tiny thumbnails. I'm not able to reproduce this either. Here's a desktop WPT run: https://www.webpagetest.org/result/210707_BiDcXB_65148b092660faa76627fdcd6d582122/1/details/ https://www.webpagetest.org/result/210707_BiDcXB_65148b09266... Could you share a screenshot, or a link to one of these oversized PNGs?
- tkadlec 5y agoYou probably already noticed, but you can also access site cost data from the WebPageTest itself. (Note the cost column in the metric summary for your linked test, for example: https://www.webpagetest.org/result/210707_BiDcXB_65148b092660faa76627fdcd6d582122/ https://www.webpagetest.org/result/210707_BiDcXB_65148b09266...)
- iso1631 5y agoHighest roaming fee on a network I've connected to with Vodafone UK (On Air Aerospace) was £7.20 per MB (about $10) That would make it $200+ to load the page including the advert. Highest I've actually paid was in China at £3 per megabyte, and not only did I use normal phone stuff like data and email, because the UK network I was on allowed connections to my company, but the local wifi didn't, when I accidentally connected plugged in my phone without disabling tethering, the laptop started downloading stuff - ran up a $400 bill in about a minute before the flood of text messages I get every 5MB started to arrive (out of order) and I realised what was going on.
- niij 5y agoThose are horrible fees. You can buy local sims for cheap when travelling to avoid those roaming fees.
- rootusrootus 5y agoOr even just get t-mobile if you're based in the US, which has free roaming in many international locations
- reaperducer 5y agoT-Mobile US' international roaming was almost useless when I was in Japan before the pandemic. Coverage was good on SoftBank, but even with five bars, my latest-and-greatest T-Mobile 4GLTE hotspot would only connect as 3G, and the speed was closer to dialup. It seemed more of a marketing gimmick than a useful tool.
- SapporoChris 5y agoI had terrible problems with T-Mobile US international roaming in Japan also. I was able to make calls and recieve calls, however I was not able to use internet. After basic troubleshooting T-Mobile requested that I call their international support on a 2nd phone and they would happily help me fix the problem with the original mobile phone. Of course I didn't have access to a 2nd phone, I was livid. Cancelled the contract with T-Mobile and got local service. Even in cancelling T-Mobile couldn't get it right, they sent me two additional bills for trivial amounts in the months that followed. Each bill under a dollar.
- hanniabu 5y ago> I know Reddit is quite media driven Yet they still have a worse video player than what was available in the early 2000s
- r1ch 5y agoIt depends a lot on which posts are on the frontpage and what rewards they've been given. Those tiny little icons next to each post can be upwards of 1 MB each as they are rendered with ridiculous resolutions sometimes (eg https://www.redditstatic.com/gold/awards/icon/Illuminati_512.png https://www.redditstatic.com/gold/awards/icon/Illuminati_512...)
- notjustanymike 5y agoNot to mention the time one of their scripts got stuck in a loop and caused my 2 Gigabyte plan to explode in 20 minutes.
- tomcam 5y agoHurts just to read this
- notjustanymike 5y ago"Why is my phone so hot? What are all these alerts?"
- jcun4128 5y agoI can't imagine the internet without adblockers... I can't watch mobile YouTube because of that... I know there are options but still. There is some bad stuff out there too I recently came across this reversecaptcha thing wow... that sucks. It prompts you like the location/cam permission allow/block stuff (top left of browser).
- mdoms 5y agoI don't think you're looking at the right thing. When I load reddit.com with no ad blockers I'm seeing 1.2MB transferred over the wire for a total of 18MB of uncompressed resources. Edit - after waiting about a minute it crept up to 5.2MB transferred for somehow the same amount of uncompressed resources.
- pstuart 5y agoThe reddit iphone app is a data/cpu pig.