7 ms·

The 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 ago
That'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 ago
It'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 ago
  It’s more buggy, less responsive, has less features and consumes more resources. Literally its only pro is that it looks pretty.
  - dkdbejwi383 5y ago
    It 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 ago
      The 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 ago
    fewer features
    - LudwigNagasena 5y ago
      I thought it is one of these “don’t end sentences with prepositions” weird rules no one really follows.
      - iainmerrick 5y ago
        The prepositions one was invented after the fact, it has never been a real grammatical rule. “Fewer” versus “less” for countable things is more of an actual rule (but of course that doesn’t mean you’re obliged to follow it).
  - pier25 5y ago
    > Literally its only pro is that it looks pretty. Which is very subjective. New reddit is certainly more modern than old reddit, but I find it kinda ugly.
- JohnWhigham 5y ago
  Reddit has had 5 second page loads for over a decade. Extremely embarrassing of them to be honest. I can understand them not fixing their search because that increases engagement, but you always want your site to be fast. I guess they don't because they know they have no competitors.
  - saltminer 5y ago
    >I guess they don't because they know they have no competitors There are lots of clones, but they typically become havens for the ones who get the boot from reddit (remember the chimpire?), who proceed to drive away the users who don't agree, or they are either trying to lure reddit's current demographic (i.e. not very technical) or are super niche and could easily be served by a traditional forum. The worst part of reddit killing so many forums is that there used to be plenty of places to go to discuss fairly niche interests. Now that they're gone, many communities have no fallback if their userbase is mostly old reddit users aside from trying to migrate, and that will inevitably result in many just leaving the community entirely.
  - blue_rog 5y ago
    > "I can understand them not fixing their search because that increases engagement..." Do you have any citations for this?
fighterpilot 5y ago
What 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 ago
  It 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 ago
  It 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 ago
    That's also what makes it pretty much unusable when you are on a slow mobile connection
- asciimov 5y ago
  It's that companies let the designers design without any constraint on usability. Typically these designers are just fashionistas following the trendy crowd.
- MiddleEndian 5y ago
  Several 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 ago
I 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 ago
They wanted to give Digg some company.
meowtimemania 5y ago
I 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 ago
  Get RES
- system2 5y ago
  You use RES for that. It shows everything and plays every video.
pier25 5y ago
Same. old.reddit.com + RES is still the best Reddit.
- system2 5y ago
  RES is godsent.
0xdeadb00f 5y ago
It 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.

xdfgh1112 5y ago

That'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 ago

It'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 ago
It’s more buggy, less responsive, has less features and consumes more resources. Literally its only pro is that it looks pretty.
- dkdbejwi383 5y ago
  It 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 ago
    The 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 ago
  fewer features
  - LudwigNagasena 5y ago
    I thought it is one of these “don’t end sentences with prepositions” weird rules no one really follows.
    - iainmerrick 5y ago
      The prepositions one was invented after the fact, it has never been a real grammatical rule. “Fewer” versus “less” for countable things is more of an actual rule (but of course that doesn’t mean you’re obliged to follow it).
- pier25 5y ago
  > Literally its only pro is that it looks pretty. Which is very subjective. New reddit is certainly more modern than old reddit, but I find it kinda ugly.
JohnWhigham 5y ago
Reddit has had 5 second page loads for over a decade. Extremely embarrassing of them to be honest. I can understand them not fixing their search because that increases engagement, but you always want your site to be fast. I guess they don't because they know they have no competitors.
- saltminer 5y ago
  >I guess they don't because they know they have no competitors There are lots of clones, but they typically become havens for the ones who get the boot from reddit (remember the chimpire?), who proceed to drive away the users who don't agree, or they are either trying to lure reddit's current demographic (i.e. not very technical) or are super niche and could easily be served by a traditional forum. The worst part of reddit killing so many forums is that there used to be plenty of places to go to discuss fairly niche interests. Now that they're gone, many communities have no fallback if their userbase is mostly old reddit users aside from trying to migrate, and that will inevitably result in many just leaving the community entirely.
- blue_rog 5y ago
  > "I can understand them not fixing their search because that increases engagement..." Do you have any citations for this?

fighterpilot 5y ago

What 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 ago
It 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 ago
It 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 ago
  That's also what makes it pretty much unusable when you are on a slow mobile connection
asciimov 5y ago
It's that companies let the designers design without any constraint on usability. Typically these designers are just fashionistas following the trendy crowd.
MiddleEndian 5y ago
Several 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 ago

I 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 ago

They wanted to give Digg some company.

meowtimemania 5y ago

I 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 ago
Get RES
system2 5y ago
You use RES for that. It shows everything and plays every video.

pier25 5y ago

Same. old.reddit.com + RES is still the best Reddit.

system2 5y ago
RES is godsent.

0xdeadb00f 5y ago

It 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.