6 ms·

> I wonder why sharing of links is so unpopular It’s because the most active parts of Reddit’s user base prefer it this way. Reddit has become about rapid-fir

> I wonder why sharing of links is so unpopular It’s because the most active parts of Reddit’s user base prefer it this way. Reddit has become about rapid-fire content consumption without leaving the site. Following a link and actually reading an article for 5-10 minutes isn’t as exciting as rapidly consuming a few videos, a few screenshots, and a few self posts along with the top comments for the most interesting ones. Even on HN it’s common to read comments where the author obviously hasn’t bothered to read the linked article. Many people are more interested in the social and discussion aspects of these sites than being redirected somewhere to read an article for several minutes straight.

starfallg 5y ago
That's accurate more or less. Reddit has become IRC with retention. The value is in the interaction, not the aggregation, at least not anymore.
ziml77 5y ago
When was it not about that? The content that got the most attention was always things that were easy to consume. Images with a small amount of text slapped on top were dominant when I frequented Reddit 10 years ago. The only way you could escape that was a well moderated subreddit that enforced quality content.
neutronicus 5y ago
Yeah, my wife scrolls /r/all, expands posts (some of them text posts), and closes them, possibly clicking into the comments to discuss. If, at any point, she accidentally follows a link, it really pisses her off It's nice to have videos, images, and short articles in a familiar layout I know I'm much more likely to click a recipe link if it's a self-post, because recipes on non-reddit websites always seem to be gated behind multiple auto playing videos and the author's entire life story
- konschubert 5y ago
  > because recipes on non-reddit websites always seem to be gated behind multiple auto playing videos and the author's entire life story Thank SEO for that.
  - zo1 5y ago
    Thank Google for that.
  - cloverich 5y ago
    I went down that (thought) rabbit hole and it was a bit sad to realize the cat and mouse game at play, where content creators on sites (such as recipe sites) are optimizing for search results, and intentionally burying the searched for content in a way that the search engine has difficulty optimizing for, so promote their own ads (more scroll -> more ads). Then once people begin obtaining the info they want from said sites, it becomes (presumably) even more difficult for a search engine to automatically filter it out -- or even decide if it should. I don't know how to solve the problem at scale, but would love a site that preferentially de-ranks content based on the ads it has. That is, rather than me using an ad blocker, I'd like the search engine to do that for me. That probably exists, but then it also has to be as good as Google which isn't easy. I default to duck duck go, but often (say, 10%) I can't find something I am looking for there, go to Google, and its a top 3 result. Tricky set of problems here but I'm optimistic five years from now I may be happier with my search engine of choice.
    - spc476 5y ago
      I recently came across the search engine Marginalia [1], which ranks web sites based on the ratio of text to HTML tags (more text, better score), with a very heavy penalization for JavaScript. [1] https://search.marginalia.nu/ https://search.marginalia.nu/
  - toomanybeersies 5y ago
    I blame online advertising, and in particular CPM payouts, which incentivise extraneous content to drive up impressions.
- andai 5y ago
  > If, at any point, she accidentally follows a link, it really pisses her off This is equal parts funny and hurting my soul...
- Akronymus 5y ago
  > If, at any point, she accidentally follows a link, it really pisses her off is it partially because new reddit is a SPA that just craps itself when going to a external link and loses where you were?
  - the_gipsy 5y ago
    I have that exact frustration. I now consciously just close reddit.
    - Akronymus 5y ago
      I have deleted my reddit accounts a few months ago. One of the best decisions.
  - neutronicus 5y ago
    Oh, no, she, like me, is a dyed-in-the-wool RES user who uses the old style
  - jkelleyrtp 5y ago
    It’s mind boggling - the primary feature of Reddit being a link aggregator - and clicking on a link breaks everything. Literally, Reddit will say “I’ve broken, please reload me” if you try to “go back” from the link you just clicked on.
  - nemothekid 5y ago
    I still use old reddit and Apollo on mobile. It has to do more with every other platform being hostile to embedded videos, especially on mobile. Nothing plays inline anymore.
- alpaca128 5y ago
  All problems that are instantly solved by opening links(even within the same site) in separate tabs. One of the many reasons I never use Reddit on the phone. Too bad websites are even making this inconsistent and broken, by using cursed webdesign to a degree that the browser can't figure out if an element is interactive before the user clicks on it.
  - neutronicus 5y ago
    I disagree The whole point is having everything a) in the context of the feed b) stripped of extraneous crap Opening links in new tabs accomplishes neither of those things
    - eropple 5y ago
      I've never been able to make myself use Reddit, so maybe this is an obvious point, but that sounds like a fairly apocalyptic "whole point" for the exercise of an attention span. Which, I realize, is the goal, but is probably not great for the people thus enmeshed, no?
      - alpaca128 5y ago
        I doubt it has anything to do with attention span. I have a very short attention span, and the only reason I tend to prefer consistent interfaces is because many websites still don't support dark mode. I'd say the attention span is actually the reason I do not use the reddit redesign, because it just wastes my time at every corner and I hate UIs doing that. If your website doesn't let me consistently middle-click links it's going on my mental blocklist. My guess is that people prefer having everything on one site because it makes the whole UX consistent. If we're being honest apps, websites etc. are wildly different to navigate and use, and when you're used to one site's behaviour and quirks it makes visiting other sites a bit more cumbersome. Especially if you're not using adblockers.
loonster 5y ago
I just hate how it is not consistent with the clicking. (Same problem everywhere). Click a thumbnail of image to expand full size. Click a thumbnail of image ling to go to site. I only wanted to expand the thumbnail and not go to the site. If after I expand the thumbnail and find it interesting, then I will want a link. On HN, if post is not a link, clicking on title brings to comments. If post is a link, clicking on title brings to link. Can't we just have clicking on title brings to comments and a separate icon for going to external website?
- toomanybeersies 5y ago
  > On HN, if post is not a link, clicking on title brings to comments The title is a link in both cases. In the first case, it's a link to a HN discussion. In the second case, it's a link to an external website.
gxs 5y ago
>>>It’s because the most active parts of Reddit’s user base prefer it this way. I would love to see any semblance of evidence that this is true. Reddit shoves a lot of things down your throat and forces users to do things without providing alternatives. It's super aggressive in making you use their app (the mobile site is purposely broken), aggressive about making you create an account, and doesn't allow alternatives for sharing images in some instances. And while we're at it (poor feature, not necessarily a preference), its search is awful. I highly doubt these are things "Reddit's user base prefer." The one saving grace reddit has right now are its niche communities where comments are still thoughtful and the content is still interesting. Reddit does everything it can to get in the way of that.
- Arrath 5y ago
  Reddit search is useless. And let's not even start on their inline video player. It frustrates me that they look to shut down and stop bots and services like this, because their video play is such complete crap.
- vultour 5y ago
  There's another reply to GP that illustrates this. "I prefer first-party content so I can effortlessly scroll"; It's a real shame, people like that turned Reddit into a politically manipulated 9gag where they waste hours scrolling through mind-numbing content. Self-posts? No. Links? No. Just funny images, or videos with obnoxious music stolen from TikTok, with a side of ads please. I dread the moment when they remove old.reddit.com, but I guess it'll finally make me leave because there's absolutely 0 chance I will be using the new interface. Also, this whole SaveVideo issue is laughable, most of the content on Reddit is already stolen from other sources.
rualca 5y ago
> It’s because the most active parts of Reddit’s user base prefer it this way. Do they have a choice or any say at all? Reddit is known as a leading employer of a vast collection of dark patterns to manipulate and pressure and restrict what a user can or cannot do.
phkahler 5y ago
>> It’s because the most active parts of Reddit’s user base prefer it this way. While that may be a common user preference, it's also a strategy at at large companies. Shit, even a small brick and mortar store doesn't want you to leave the store because you may find what you want elsewhere. The web as it started out is the opposite of what any company wants.
Pxtl 5y ago
Imho, part of this is an industry failure to provide an interoperable way to share documents that meets the needs of the modern web - a way to copy documents by-value instead of by-reference that runs in the browser, and can be composed into an existing website. We made sharing images dead simple. You can copy and paste them around. Download them and upload them. You can copy the hyperlink and the target site can either display it by ref or it can copy the content and display it inline. On the modern web the copy/paste works amazing for images. Text is similar - I mean, you can't load a .txt file into most comment boxes, but you can trivially copy and paste text. Rich documents with inline images? Nope. If you copy and paste rich text data or HTML, the images are probably going to go away - Reddit's rich text editor fails on this. Raw markdown or HTML? Getting the images in is tricky, you generally need a parallel way to upload them and need to update all their paths separately. Copying and pasting rich text is always a roll of the dice about what's going to get mangled... for Reddit? It's images that get mangled. That's why dumb screenshots have won. Because documents don't support dumb copy/paste usefully. I can't copy/paste a Tweet but I can screenshot it. edit: This is also why gifs beat video.
- neutronicus 5y ago
  To add to your point: on Mobile, taking a Screenshot is also 1. Really easy 2. Uniform across Apps I've noticed that college students don't really know how to use e-mail anymore, and they will send screenshots of e-mails instead of forwarding them. Kind of makes sense, though, when only some Apps have "forward" and each one has a different way to do it. Why fuck around with that (or copy/paste, which is a nightmare on Mobile) when you can Screenshot.
- causi 5y ago
  Embedding gifs is getting harder as well. I wish I could spit in the cereal of whomever at Google decided videos need to show up in image search. Even when you search for a gif you saw fifteen years ago you have to sort through a dozen webm or gifv or mp4 versions of it before finding one you can actually embed with an [img] tag.
marcosdumay 5y ago
> It’s because the most active parts of Reddit’s user base prefer it this way. Well, that's what happens after you alienate everybody that prefers something else...
superkuh 5y ago
The most active parts of reddit's userbase showed up after facebook became unpopular and after the original reddit userbase was successfully driven off during the monetization period (2012-2015) following accepting large amounts of capital from third party corps. Reddit's use-case now is mostly just a facebook that isn't facebook. This is exemplified by the addition of user profiles and the ability to "post" to your own user profile as well as customized profile avatars. I agree with your description of reddit as it is. But the reason for this is that reddit stopped being reddit almost a decade ago. Sharing links is unpopular because Reddit is now Facebook.
- jmrm 5y ago
  That makes me really sad, not because due to this case specifically, but the web in general. Practically any web nowadays try to be Facebook-like, giving fast to consume content to users, and having an unlimited scroll of pictures and autoplaying videos all over the place. Reddit even copy some shady or dark patterns like forcing you to login in your computer or forcing to install the app in the phone just to see some post somebody sent to you. At least this can be solved just entering "old.reddit.com", but we don't know when this possibility would disappear. I understand their website is theirs, and they rule how the things works there, but that kind or opacity makes me to never use those websites and recommend people to do that.
kevincox 5y ago
Is it not reddit's fault? Some sites such as imgur expand inline much like "native" videos. Is there any reason that twitter posts don't expand in the same way? Is it Reddit's fault, Twitters? I think it is pretty clear that it isn't the user's fault.
Igelau 5y ago
> rapid-fire content consumption without leaving the site Oh! So it's Facebook now?

starfallg 5y ago

That's accurate more or less. Reddit has become IRC with retention. The value is in the interaction, not the aggregation, at least not anymore.

ziml77 5y ago

When was it not about that? The content that got the most attention was always things that were easy to consume. Images with a small amount of text slapped on top were dominant when I frequented Reddit 10 years ago. The only way you could escape that was a well moderated subreddit that enforced quality content.

neutronicus 5y ago

Yeah, my wife scrolls /r/all, expands posts (some of them text posts), and closes them, possibly clicking into the comments to discuss. If, at any point, she accidentally follows a link, it really pisses her off It's nice to have videos, images, and short articles in a familiar layout I know I'm much more likely to click a recipe link if it's a self-post, because recipes on non-reddit websites always seem to be gated behind multiple auto playing videos and the author's entire life story

konschubert 5y ago
> because recipes on non-reddit websites always seem to be gated behind multiple auto playing videos and the author's entire life story Thank SEO for that.
- zo1 5y ago
  Thank Google for that.
- cloverich 5y ago
  I went down that (thought) rabbit hole and it was a bit sad to realize the cat and mouse game at play, where content creators on sites (such as recipe sites) are optimizing for search results, and intentionally burying the searched for content in a way that the search engine has difficulty optimizing for, so promote their own ads (more scroll -> more ads). Then once people begin obtaining the info they want from said sites, it becomes (presumably) even more difficult for a search engine to automatically filter it out -- or even decide if it should. I don't know how to solve the problem at scale, but would love a site that preferentially de-ranks content based on the ads it has. That is, rather than me using an ad blocker, I'd like the search engine to do that for me. That probably exists, but then it also has to be as good as Google which isn't easy. I default to duck duck go, but often (say, 10%) I can't find something I am looking for there, go to Google, and its a top 3 result. Tricky set of problems here but I'm optimistic five years from now I may be happier with my search engine of choice.
  - spc476 5y ago
    I recently came across the search engine Marginalia [1], which ranks web sites based on the ratio of text to HTML tags (more text, better score), with a very heavy penalization for JavaScript. [1] https://search.marginalia.nu/ https://search.marginalia.nu/
- toomanybeersies 5y ago
  I blame online advertising, and in particular CPM payouts, which incentivise extraneous content to drive up impressions.
andai 5y ago
> If, at any point, she accidentally follows a link, it really pisses her off This is equal parts funny and hurting my soul...
Akronymus 5y ago
> If, at any point, she accidentally follows a link, it really pisses her off is it partially because new reddit is a SPA that just craps itself when going to a external link and loses where you were?
- the_gipsy 5y ago
  I have that exact frustration. I now consciously just close reddit.
  - Akronymus 5y ago
    I have deleted my reddit accounts a few months ago. One of the best decisions.
- neutronicus 5y ago
  Oh, no, she, like me, is a dyed-in-the-wool RES user who uses the old style
- jkelleyrtp 5y ago
  It’s mind boggling - the primary feature of Reddit being a link aggregator - and clicking on a link breaks everything. Literally, Reddit will say “I’ve broken, please reload me” if you try to “go back” from the link you just clicked on.
- nemothekid 5y ago
  I still use old reddit and Apollo on mobile. It has to do more with every other platform being hostile to embedded videos, especially on mobile. Nothing plays inline anymore.
alpaca128 5y ago
All problems that are instantly solved by opening links(even within the same site) in separate tabs. One of the many reasons I never use Reddit on the phone. Too bad websites are even making this inconsistent and broken, by using cursed webdesign to a degree that the browser can't figure out if an element is interactive before the user clicks on it.
- neutronicus 5y ago
  I disagree The whole point is having everything a) in the context of the feed b) stripped of extraneous crap Opening links in new tabs accomplishes neither of those things
  - eropple 5y ago
    I've never been able to make myself use Reddit, so maybe this is an obvious point, but that sounds like a fairly apocalyptic "whole point" for the exercise of an attention span. Which, I realize, is the goal, but is probably not great for the people thus enmeshed, no?
    - alpaca128 5y ago
      I doubt it has anything to do with attention span. I have a very short attention span, and the only reason I tend to prefer consistent interfaces is because many websites still don't support dark mode. I'd say the attention span is actually the reason I do not use the reddit redesign, because it just wastes my time at every corner and I hate UIs doing that. If your website doesn't let me consistently middle-click links it's going on my mental blocklist. My guess is that people prefer having everything on one site because it makes the whole UX consistent. If we're being honest apps, websites etc. are wildly different to navigate and use, and when you're used to one site's behaviour and quirks it makes visiting other sites a bit more cumbersome. Especially if you're not using adblockers.

loonster 5y ago

I just hate how it is not consistent with the clicking. (Same problem everywhere). Click a thumbnail of image to expand full size. Click a thumbnail of image ling to go to site. I only wanted to expand the thumbnail and not go to the site. If after I expand the thumbnail and find it interesting, then I will want a link. On HN, if post is not a link, clicking on title brings to comments. If post is a link, clicking on title brings to link. Can't we just have clicking on title brings to comments and a separate icon for going to external website?

toomanybeersies 5y ago
> On HN, if post is not a link, clicking on title brings to comments The title is a link in both cases. In the first case, it's a link to a HN discussion. In the second case, it's a link to an external website.

gxs 5y ago

>>>It’s because the most active parts of Reddit’s user base prefer it this way. I would love to see any semblance of evidence that this is true. Reddit shoves a lot of things down your throat and forces users to do things without providing alternatives. It's super aggressive in making you use their app (the mobile site is purposely broken), aggressive about making you create an account, and doesn't allow alternatives for sharing images in some instances. And while we're at it (poor feature, not necessarily a preference), its search is awful. I highly doubt these are things "Reddit's user base prefer." The one saving grace reddit has right now are its niche communities where comments are still thoughtful and the content is still interesting. Reddit does everything it can to get in the way of that.

Arrath 5y ago
Reddit search is useless. And let's not even start on their inline video player. It frustrates me that they look to shut down and stop bots and services like this, because their video play is such complete crap.
vultour 5y ago
There's another reply to GP that illustrates this. "I prefer first-party content so I can effortlessly scroll"; It's a real shame, people like that turned Reddit into a politically manipulated 9gag where they waste hours scrolling through mind-numbing content. Self-posts? No. Links? No. Just funny images, or videos with obnoxious music stolen from TikTok, with a side of ads please. I dread the moment when they remove old.reddit.com, but I guess it'll finally make me leave because there's absolutely 0 chance I will be using the new interface. Also, this whole SaveVideo issue is laughable, most of the content on Reddit is already stolen from other sources.

rualca 5y ago

> It’s because the most active parts of Reddit’s user base prefer it this way. Do they have a choice or any say at all? Reddit is known as a leading employer of a vast collection of dark patterns to manipulate and pressure and restrict what a user can or cannot do.

phkahler 5y ago

>> It’s because the most active parts of Reddit’s user base prefer it this way. While that may be a common user preference, it's also a strategy at at large companies. Shit, even a small brick and mortar store doesn't want you to leave the store because you may find what you want elsewhere. The web as it started out is the opposite of what any company wants.

Pxtl 5y ago

Imho, part of this is an industry failure to provide an interoperable way to share documents that meets the needs of the modern web - a way to copy documents by-value instead of by-reference that runs in the browser, and can be composed into an existing website. We made sharing images dead simple. You can copy and paste them around. Download them and upload them. You can copy the hyperlink and the target site can either display it by ref or it can copy the content and display it inline. On the modern web the copy/paste works amazing for images. Text is similar - I mean, you can't load a .txt file into most comment boxes, but you can trivially copy and paste text. Rich documents with inline images? Nope. If you copy and paste rich text data or HTML, the images are probably going to go away - Reddit's rich text editor fails on this. Raw markdown or HTML? Getting the images in is tricky, you generally need a parallel way to upload them and need to update all their paths separately. Copying and pasting rich text is always a roll of the dice about what's going to get mangled... for Reddit? It's images that get mangled. That's why dumb screenshots have won. Because documents don't support dumb copy/paste usefully. I can't copy/paste a Tweet but I can screenshot it. edit: This is also why gifs beat video.

neutronicus 5y ago
To add to your point: on Mobile, taking a Screenshot is also 1. Really easy 2. Uniform across Apps I've noticed that college students don't really know how to use e-mail anymore, and they will send screenshots of e-mails instead of forwarding them. Kind of makes sense, though, when only some Apps have "forward" and each one has a different way to do it. Why fuck around with that (or copy/paste, which is a nightmare on Mobile) when you can Screenshot.
causi 5y ago
Embedding gifs is getting harder as well. I wish I could spit in the cereal of whomever at Google decided videos need to show up in image search. Even when you search for a gif you saw fifteen years ago you have to sort through a dozen webm or gifv or mp4 versions of it before finding one you can actually embed with an [img] tag.

marcosdumay 5y ago

> It’s because the most active parts of Reddit’s user base prefer it this way. Well, that's what happens after you alienate everybody that prefers something else...

superkuh 5y ago

The most active parts of reddit's userbase showed up after facebook became unpopular and after the original reddit userbase was successfully driven off during the monetization period (2012-2015) following accepting large amounts of capital from third party corps. Reddit's use-case now is mostly just a facebook that isn't facebook. This is exemplified by the addition of user profiles and the ability to "post" to your own user profile as well as customized profile avatars. I agree with your description of reddit as it is. But the reason for this is that reddit stopped being reddit almost a decade ago. Sharing links is unpopular because Reddit is now Facebook.

jmrm 5y ago
That makes me really sad, not because due to this case specifically, but the web in general. Practically any web nowadays try to be Facebook-like, giving fast to consume content to users, and having an unlimited scroll of pictures and autoplaying videos all over the place. Reddit even copy some shady or dark patterns like forcing you to login in your computer or forcing to install the app in the phone just to see some post somebody sent to you. At least this can be solved just entering "old.reddit.com", but we don't know when this possibility would disappear. I understand their website is theirs, and they rule how the things works there, but that kind or opacity makes me to never use those websites and recommend people to do that.

kevincox 5y ago

Is it not reddit's fault? Some sites such as imgur expand inline much like "native" videos. Is there any reason that twitter posts don't expand in the same way? Is it Reddit's fault, Twitters? I think it is pretty clear that it isn't the user's fault.

Igelau 5y ago

> rapid-fire content consumption without leaving the site Oh! So it's Facebook now?