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When Reddit started doing this it effectively broke my redditing habit. I know these things are annoying but for anyone who is trying to use social media less..
by Taylor_OD 5y ago
When Reddit started doing this it effectively broke my redditing habit. I know these things are annoying but for anyone who is trying to use social media less... Twitter, Reddit, and Instagram are almost unusable without their apps. They are basically useless if you dont sign in on the browser on your phone. It's great if you want to get off them.
- Theizestooke 5y agoI'm using old.reddit.com, and it's ok. Shame if they would turn that off though.
- est31 5y agoThere is also i.reddit.com, which is more mobile friendly than old.reddit.com.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ChicagoBoy11 5y agoWhat I've noticed is a few of the newer things breaking on it (unsurprisingly). I think over time it'll get to a point where there's enough of these new things where they'll just pull the plug, which is really too bad. Also love it much more than the "new" experience.
- system2 5y agoThe day they turn off old.reddit.com reddit is dead to me. I've been on reddit 10 years and it was hard to understand why they chose this new disastrous design.
- xdfgh1112 5y agoThat's their objective, to get rid of users who they can't monetize. Including veteran users with ad blockers who refuse to use the new site or any of its features.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- SketchySeaBeast 5y agoIt's not just the design, it's the fact that it's buggy and frequently unresponsive. If it was well done I might be able to forgive them, but my phone tells me I have messages I can't see on the desktop even after I refresh the page.
- LudwigNagasena 5y agoIt’s more buggy, less responsive, has less features and consumes more resources. Literally its only pro is that it looks pretty.
- dkdbejwi383 5y agoIt looks "pretty" in the crappy modern way though where there's loads of whitespace and everything is hidden in a menu or tab somewhere. Give me "ugly" plain-ish text that is information dense.
- Semaphor 5y agoThe post-view in compact mode is actually denser than before (thought it has some ugly spacing issues at the top). It’s amazing. Sadly, there seems to be no compact mode for comments, so those look horrible. And well, considering how slow it is to use, I wouldn’t even use new Reddit then. New Reddit is really only for people who have a high tolerance to slow sites.
- danielmg 5y agofewer features
- LudwigNagasena 5y agoI thought it is one of these “don’t end sentences with prepositions” weird rules no one really follows.
- iainmerrick 5y ago
- fighterpilot 5y agoWhat is it with modern UI and the tendency to be slow, to have a ridiculous amount of whitespace, and to have a copious number of round button-icons that are not intuitive? It's fucking insulting.
- ugjka 5y agoIt is slow because very few people can write effective and fast React code. And then they use WebGL to do fancy overlay animations
- Fabricio20 5y agoIt seems that, at least in reddit's case, the issue is preloading a lot of stuff that on the old website wasn't preloaded. Like videos. Ben Awad[0] made a quick technical comparison between the two websites and this was his conclusion. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jkSiIBDDZ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jkSiIBDDZ8
- pantalaimon 5y agoThat's also what makes it pretty much unusable when you are on a slow mobile connection
- asciimov 5y agoIt's that companies let the designers design without any constraint on usability. Typically these designers are just fashionistas following the trendy crowd.
- MiddleEndian 5y agoSeveral years ago, I went to a tech roundtable hosted by a well-known company, and this topic came up. Half the devs in the discussion sincerely didn't believe the new sluggish UI trend found on various social media and news sites was slow at all, because their metrics (presumably which measure some sort of server compute time) said they were not slower. It's some sort of religious fervor. "Who are you going to believe? Me(trics) or your own lying eyes!?"
- donio 5y agoI think Reddit knows it too, that's why old is still around. The Digg fiasco was a long time ago but must be still in their corporate subconscious.
- crummybowley 5y agoThey wanted to give Digg some company.
- meowtimemania 5y agoI may be alone, but I prefer the new design. On the old reddit I didn't like how I had to click into a post to view its contents. On the new design most of the post contents are right there on the list page.
- colinmhayes 5y agoGet RES
- system2 5y agoYou use RES for that. It shows everything and plays every video.
- pier25 5y agoSame. old.reddit.com + RES is still the best Reddit.
- system2 5y agoRES is godsent.
- 0xdeadb00f 5y agoIt isn't hard for me to understand their reasoning at all; 1. Appeals more to the mainstream, and to new users who are used to Facebook-style feeds. 2. Easier for them to disguise ads in user's feeds.
- rootsudo 5y agoThey are killing the feed, I don't know for you, but for me it has seemed static.
- trypietry 5y agoGive teddit.net a look. Nitter.net for Twitter. I don’t know how long these sites will last with the demand there is for avenues that don’t prompt login.
- valvar 5y agoThere are a lot of mirrors, too, as anyone can host an instance, so if those don't work you can always try others.
- mortenjorck 5y agoI exclusively use new Reddit. The increased friction around every single interaction is great for limiting the amount of time I spend there: it raises the bar for deciding to actually view a discussion, and the incomprehensible nesting-collapse algorithm keeps me from going down rabbit holes in threads unless it's something that genuinely interests me. It's similar to my YouTube usage. All the pre-roll ads ensure I only start videos I'm reasonably sure I'll want to watch, and mid-rolls are a perfect reminder to bail if I'm not fully invested in what I'm watching.
- genericone 5y agoSounds like how I like my afternoon coffee, bitter without any additives. It reminds me I need to leave work if I've finished the important stuff for the day. A much needed kick in the guts that makes you purse your lips as you drink it down that puts the rest of the day in perspective.
- tifadg1 5y agoActually that's a great idea - actively feeling pain every time you interact - whats more effective limiting consumption than that.
- SynasterBeiter 5y agoIf you click the button to get rid of the cookie prompt on the bottom of the site while on old.reddit.com, it redirects you to new.reddit.com. Amazing.
- ink 5y agoWow... I forgot how much better reddit on desktop used to be.
- lambdaba 5y agoThere's a Chrome extension for redirecting to old.reddit.com: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/old-reddit-redirect/dneaehbmnbhcippjikoajpoabadpodje https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/old-reddit-redirec...
- donatj 5y agoYou can just uncheck "Use new Reddit as my default experience" in settings and get the old experience without an extension, if you have an account anyway.
- animanoir 5y agoExactly. This is good since this corporations are basically killing themselves since people, slowly but steady, are realizing they can get info elsewhere on the internet (and people start sharing outside them). So yeah, they are basically forcing users to migrate to more open services.
- enumjorge 5y agoEh maybe. The problem is that IMO there aren’t any obvious alternatives to Reddit. I remember when Digg committed suicide with a pretty bad redesign and most disgruntled users moved to Reddit. I’ve been pretty annoyed with the changes Reddit has implemented in the past couple of years, but I haven’t found another place to go (that’s not necessarily a bad thing). HN is the closest alternative but the scope of topics we discuss is limited. That’s probably part of HN’s success but then where do you go for other topics?
- StevePerkins 5y agoMy Reddit habit has been all but replaced with private Slacks and Discords these days. Either hobby / interest groups, or an "alumni Slack" full of old work friends from a company I worked at a long time. I think that's the future, for geeks and nerds anyway. Small private forums, where you can actually have real discussions without getting drowned in memes and downvotes. For the masses, I think the cement is pretty much dry at this point. You might see a TikTok replace an Instagram once per decade, or something like that. But whatever people migrate to will probably be extremely similar to the thing they migrated from. It's just what the casual masses want.
- queuebert 5y agoOk, shows over. Everyone back to IRC.
- selfhoster11 5y agoI rather like my reaction GIFs and discussion threads. What I want to see is a modern IRC with these features, and an optional per-channel/per-server message persistence to deal with not knowing what happened while you were away, or while the mobile IRC app of your choice was killed by the Google/Apple background task manager that only allows you to dodge it with proprietary push support.
- stackbutterflow 5y agoI agree but unfortunately their mobile website got better (when logged in) and now works really well on my phone.
- delusional 5y agoThe flipside is that anyone now signing in now are going to have harder time getting off later.
- useful 5y agoI don't know my facebook password or save it on any of my devices save for the home pc for this reason.
- f0e4c2f7 5y agoI almost hesitate to share these because I too found that Reddit's dark patterns were a large part of what helped me break that habit. I recently discovered teddit.net which is a frontend for reddit with all dark patterns removed. There is also an alternative front end for twitter called nitter.net that you can use the same way to avoid the app / login.
- __vim__ 5y agoIs there no similar frontend for facebook? It seems like its impossible to view facebook posts and timelines without an account.
- nemosaltat 5y ago+1 for teddit.net, I discovered it because it’s a default Insight Browser extension, as is old.reddit.net.
- swiley 5y agoThis is the same reason I don’t tell people how I get around HN’s “noprocrast.”
- Igelau 5y agoMy trick for getting around noprocrast is being too dumb to set it up correctly.
- selfhoster11 5y agoJust log out, I guess? I don't comment very frequently, the links are what keeps me coming back.
- Sohcahtoa82 5y agoFor reddit, IMO the simplest things you can do to improve the experience is to force the old reddit design (old.reddit.com) when on desktop, and use any app except the official app when on mobile.
- 5y ago
- hughrr 5y agoYes this. Life is getting progressively better now Twitter, Reddit and Apple pissed me off. I’ve got more time, money and a healthier outlook on life. Now if only I could shake HN.
- zamadatix 5y agoThe noprocrast option in the user settings can help. You can set minaway to a much longer time to avoid checking in constantly.
- selfhoster11 5y agoI tried it, but it didn't make it any easier. I just shifted devices and back on the front page. If that works for you, then that's cool!
- m_myers 5y agoI did that once, 10 years ago or so. My reddit account is coincidentally 10 years old now. Beware of unintended consequences.
- CodeGlitch 5y agoI use RSS to stay updated on news. Complete control over what I receive.
- elliekelly 5y agoI don’t have Chrome installed on any of my devices but I’ve noticed when I’m on reddit.com on my iPhone it prompts me to either use the Reddit app or “continue browsing” using the Chrome app. Does Google pay for this as some sort of an advertisement? Or is Reddit incentivized in some way to plug Chrome over Safari or DDG “browser”? When I click “continue” it lets me just keep using my current browser but I always wonder if it would open in Chrome if the app were available on my device.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Kye 5y agoI get a button for Safari on my iPhone and iPad.
- drdeca 5y agoI’m on ios using firefox (though I think I’ve heard that under the hood it is using Safari’s renderer or something like that because of application store requirements? Not sure.), and it shows the chrome logo for me, uh, when I click a link that goes to new reddit, or something. Or, I guess when viewing through the browser window that twitter embeds? Just now I tried viewing new.reddit in safari and it told me my browser was old (though perhaps this is because I’ve refrained from updating ios)
- fencepost 5y agoProbably just classifies webkit based browsers as Chrome.
- dlvktrsh 5y agopretty sure that's reddits doing
- oplav 5y agoI think the Instagram experience is better on mobile web than it is on the app with regards to consuming less. The "timeline" on mobile web is only people I follow with no inserted ads. Same with stories, there are no ads. The best thing is that the "Explore" tab is just a bit too slow in terms of responsiveness on mobile web. I spend a less time on there because it's not as pleasant to use as the app.
- silicon2401 5y agoReddit is unusable without which app, the official one? Because I've been on reddit for a decade and never once used their app. It's either reddit is fun on android or the browser. Never had a problem. Even if you don't have an account, old.reddit.com and i.reddit.com (for mobile) bypass all the atrocious new UI changes
- treesknees 5y agoProbably referring to the regular reddit mobile website. It constantly bombards you with requests to open the app, you can't open anything from NSFW subs. It's pretty unusable. At least Twitter and Instagram I can use in the browser without 3rd party sites or apps.
- yosame 5y agoIt's also started blocking subs that aren't on r/popular, so it's become even more unusable.
- kaladin-jasnah 5y agoSlide is also a pretty good FOSS(?) Reddit client for Android. I don't use it anymore since I'm trying to get myself to use Reddit less and less but Slide was a pretty good experience for me.
- shadowgovt 5y agoIt's going to be tough because of how much of the Internet treats Twitter as a primary source. So this in effect becomes yet another stream behind a pay-wall (in information, not in money) that balkanizes people's view of "what is happening" in the world. The first place I knew about the January 6th riots was from Twitter. I guess I'll learn about subsequent such events from other sources after people on Twitter do.
- dangerface 5y agoI used to love reddit, it was my favourite social media but I can't use it since they redesigned it, they really need to look at hacker news for inspiration.
- tootie 5y agoReddit seems perfectly usable as an unauthenticated user. I know they present a more spammy version to users landing from google, but nothing is blocked behind more than a click or two. I think that's just good business sense because you want to monetize your firehose of less engaged users and coddle the ones that are more engaged and producing content.
- CodesInChaos 5y ago> Reddit seems perfectly usable as an unauthenticated user. On desktop. The main mobile version blocks essential features, like browsing subreddits or viewing all comments on a post. (Alternatives like old.reddit, i.reddit and teddit aren't completely broken but aren't great on mobile either)
- cm2187 5y agoI find that you can get used to a change of habit very quickly. Youtube introduced unblockable commercials for iOS/safari. After 15 years of adblockers and not watching TV, I have developed an intolerance to ads and I just lost the reflex of clicking on any youtube link or going on youtube to find something. Don't really miss it.
- iscrewyou 5y agoThis is what has prevented me from joining tik tok. Now it also requires a login after you view like three videos. I just close the tab afterwards. It works great!
- d883kd8 5y agoRemarkably, Reddit has managed to organize two teams of programmers competing to make a worse experience between their app and website
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- agumonkey 5y agomethink the coming decade will be a few websites, a bit of IRC and a whole lot of non digital things. the information highway of freedom is becoming a parkour competition