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I can’t help but think this is the end for that site. It started off with a very old school minimalist designed forum vibe and has been devolving into dark patt

I can’t help but think this is the end for that site. It started off with a very old school minimalist designed forum vibe and has been devolving into dark patterns and advertisements as of late. I guess good things can’t stay free forever and the bills need to be paid somehow. Wish they went to a donation model like Wikipedia instead.

cyberge99 5y ago
I found reddit from the great digg.com exodus. They didn’t learn.
- agiacalone 5y ago
  Slashdot did the same thing even before digg. I miss those days sometimes.
- donio 5y ago
  The fact that old.reddit.com continues to be available suggests that they did.
  - metamet 5y ago
    To this point, I would probably stop using the desktop version of the site if they nixed old.reddit.com.
    - ramphastidae 5y ago
      I’m a fan of teddit.net
    - geuis 5y ago
      Same. I only use old mode for both mobile and desktop. It’s super annoying that about once a week they drop me back into their utterly awful mobile web experience. Then have to go back to settings and choose request desktop site yet again. Most recently they’ve switched image galleries to using their new desktop design, so simply trying to view images often pops up this new and totally incompatible experience. Earlier today the left/right nav icons stopped working so I just gave up on trying to view those images.
      - NotPractical 5y ago
        https://github.com/tom-james-watson/old-reddit-redirect https://github.com/tom-james-watson/old-reddit-redirect
        patrickk 5y ago
        Alternatively as a User script: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/40897-old-reddit-please https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/40897-old-reddit-please
        geuis 5y ago
        Unfortunately this extension is basically useless. If I’m on a real desktop, I don’t need to visit old.reddit.com. I have that set in the user preferences. (Currently using Chrome on desktop.) I use mobile safari on mobile, which this extension doesn’t work for.
      - kzrdude 5y ago
        i.reddit.com works pretty well for phone browsers, quite minimalist and mostly not broken.
- Shared404 5y ago
  Which raises the question. Where will people head from the reddit exodus?
  - raydev 5y ago
    Nowhere. People comparing it to Digg more than a decade later are wildly out of touch with the current state of the internet.
  - Gareth321 5y ago
    There are lots of interesting potential new homes popping up, including SaidIt.net, Tildes.net, Gab.com, even Parler.com and/or whatever Donal Trump has announced. Problem for all of them is their lack of critical mass. Reddit is slowly squeezing users and communities out to appeal to advertisers, but they haven't had their Digg moment yet. That would be something like killing old.reddit.com. Such a catalyst would cause a huge portion of their userbase to leave. So far, they've been too smart to do that, but I can foresee a bunch of new management entering the business after IPO and making those "tough" changes. I'm also seeing various communities simply making their own websites. rdrama.net, for example, is surprisingly successful. kotakuinaction2.win is also doing quite well. I'm sure there are other, even better examples. At first I was resistant of this fragmentation, but I quickly came to embrace this reversion to the internet of yore. It wasn't so long ago that we would go to individual sites to discuss certain things. It's a relatively recent phenomenon that we've embraced monolithic communities for all of our media and social consumption. I don't think it's healthy, and perhaps this fragmentation is exactly what the internet needs right now. Less algorithm-generated outrage in the dystopian "news feed," and more user-driven experiences based on choosing which sites to visit. A crazy concept for many today.
    - fknorangesite 5y ago
      The problem with the sites you've listed isn't "lack of critical mass" it's that they're infested with neo-nazis. Big yikes from me, dawg.
      - Shared404 5y ago
int0x2e 5y ago
Well, they tried. For a very long time they asked people to donate. They even tried to gamify it with reddit gold and the like. I suspect it just didn't work.
GhettoComputers 5y ago
There is, Reddit gold. Not that I’d give them any money for the decisions they made, I don’t reward bad behavior and I paid with my data.
- PhoenixReborn 5y ago
  Disclaimer: I worked at Reddit prior to when ads were a major revenue source and left in 2018 Prior to ads and the current dark patterns you see on the site, Reddit primarily tried to monetize through Reddit Gold. It didn't work, and users never purchased it in any meaningful volume to keep the site afloat. So while you wouldn't give them money for the decisions they've made recently, they weren't making enough money when they were (ostensibly) making better decisions. How would you go about solving this problem? It's a genuine question without snark - if social media companies are unable to stay sustainable through direct user funding, then they're going to look to ads or other sources eventually.
  - eljimmy 5y ago
    Interesting - I never knew that was the purpose of Reddit gold. I feel like a donation drive with direct acknowledgement that it would keep the site private and free of external financial interests would have provoked me to donate. I thought Reddit gold was just some meaningless emoji thing.
    - PhoenixReborn 5y ago
      The meaningless emoji stuff was added later to boost sales (think of it similar to skins in video games). You used to not get any of that, and the clear thing you did get was no ads (IIRC, this is still the case and if you have Reddit gold you get no ads on the site).
    - GhettoComputers 5y ago
      Really? It was pretty obvious, my guilded comments and gold stats even says that donation paid for an amount of server time.
  - 5y ago
ankit219 5y ago
They have been touting MAUs and DAUs a lot over the last one year. Turns out their numbers are very very public. Whenever a new user creates an account, she automatically gets added to r/announcements. It's not a choice, they dont even show it as an option. The current subs of r/announcements is 127M. It was 124M at the start of this month. Just shows that reddit - with newer design or not - has not found much acceptance in the upcoming generations. They tend to visit the site, yet are hesitant to create an account. For reference, their MAUs for month of Dec 19 alone were 430M. They got a lot of help from SEO for everyone of their threads being indexed, and hence the high traffic, but regular users and personalized ads isnt there. Likely low ARPU. Edit: This is probably the reason for those dark patterns too. If I can see that low conversion rate, so can people inside, and they would try and improve that via different UX patterns. Because it seems like a low hanging fruit when it is not really one.
- TameAntelope 5y ago
  Yeah, “Reddit is going down because they only converted three million new users in the last month.” Is probably not the argument that will convince anyone who’s ever built a b2c of your point.
  - ankit219 5y ago
    That is not my argument. A standalone number of 3M is good, especially when 3M new users combined with 100M existing ones demonstrate huge stickiness. What I am trying to say is that, reddit is attracting a lot of new users through SEO, yet they have not been able to convert them like at all. The existing userbase is sticking and has been very active, but the site is not as appealing to new users who are just finding out about reddit.
garbagetime 5y ago
I don't use Wikipedia any more, they wouldn't leave me alone with their constant begging. I could just set up a block for the things, but I'd rather just be edgy and never use the site again. The content has been going downhill for years anyway. A lot more fun to find specific resources on cooler websites.
- eljimmy 5y ago
  The repeated asking for donations is a bit much, I agree. I do still donate to Wikipedia though as I find it is an amazing resource to have available.

cyberge99 5y ago

I found reddit from the great digg.com exodus. They didn’t learn.

agiacalone 5y ago
Slashdot did the same thing even before digg. I miss those days sometimes.
donio 5y ago
The fact that old.reddit.com continues to be available suggests that they did.
- metamet 5y ago
  To this point, I would probably stop using the desktop version of the site if they nixed old.reddit.com.
  - ramphastidae 5y ago
    I’m a fan of teddit.net
  - geuis 5y ago
    Same. I only use old mode for both mobile and desktop. It’s super annoying that about once a week they drop me back into their utterly awful mobile web experience. Then have to go back to settings and choose request desktop site yet again. Most recently they’ve switched image galleries to using their new desktop design, so simply trying to view images often pops up this new and totally incompatible experience. Earlier today the left/right nav icons stopped working so I just gave up on trying to view those images.
    - NotPractical 5y ago
      https://github.com/tom-james-watson/old-reddit-redirect https://github.com/tom-james-watson/old-reddit-redirect
      - patrickk 5y ago
        Alternatively as a User script: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/40897-old-reddit-please https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/40897-old-reddit-please
      - geuis 5y ago
        Unfortunately this extension is basically useless. If I’m on a real desktop, I don’t need to visit old.reddit.com. I have that set in the user preferences. (Currently using Chrome on desktop.) I use mobile safari on mobile, which this extension doesn’t work for.
    - kzrdude 5y ago
      i.reddit.com works pretty well for phone browsers, quite minimalist and mostly not broken.
Shared404 5y ago
Which raises the question. Where will people head from the reddit exodus?
- raydev 5y ago
  Nowhere. People comparing it to Digg more than a decade later are wildly out of touch with the current state of the internet.
- Gareth321 5y ago
  There are lots of interesting potential new homes popping up, including SaidIt.net, Tildes.net, Gab.com, even Parler.com and/or whatever Donal Trump has announced. Problem for all of them is their lack of critical mass. Reddit is slowly squeezing users and communities out to appeal to advertisers, but they haven't had their Digg moment yet. That would be something like killing old.reddit.com. Such a catalyst would cause a huge portion of their userbase to leave. So far, they've been too smart to do that, but I can foresee a bunch of new management entering the business after IPO and making those "tough" changes. I'm also seeing various communities simply making their own websites. rdrama.net, for example, is surprisingly successful. kotakuinaction2.win is also doing quite well. I'm sure there are other, even better examples. At first I was resistant of this fragmentation, but I quickly came to embrace this reversion to the internet of yore. It wasn't so long ago that we would go to individual sites to discuss certain things. It's a relatively recent phenomenon that we've embraced monolithic communities for all of our media and social consumption. I don't think it's healthy, and perhaps this fragmentation is exactly what the internet needs right now. Less algorithm-generated outrage in the dystopian "news feed," and more user-driven experiences based on choosing which sites to visit. A crazy concept for many today.
  - fknorangesite 5y ago
    The problem with the sites you've listed isn't "lack of critical mass" it's that they're infested with neo-nazis. Big yikes from me, dawg.
    - Shared404 5y ago

int0x2e 5y ago

Well, they tried. For a very long time they asked people to donate. They even tried to gamify it with reddit gold and the like. I suspect it just didn't work.

GhettoComputers 5y ago

There is, Reddit gold. Not that I’d give them any money for the decisions they made, I don’t reward bad behavior and I paid with my data.

PhoenixReborn 5y ago
Disclaimer: I worked at Reddit prior to when ads were a major revenue source and left in 2018 Prior to ads and the current dark patterns you see on the site, Reddit primarily tried to monetize through Reddit Gold. It didn't work, and users never purchased it in any meaningful volume to keep the site afloat. So while you wouldn't give them money for the decisions they've made recently, they weren't making enough money when they were (ostensibly) making better decisions. How would you go about solving this problem? It's a genuine question without snark - if social media companies are unable to stay sustainable through direct user funding, then they're going to look to ads or other sources eventually.
- eljimmy 5y ago
  Interesting - I never knew that was the purpose of Reddit gold. I feel like a donation drive with direct acknowledgement that it would keep the site private and free of external financial interests would have provoked me to donate. I thought Reddit gold was just some meaningless emoji thing.
  - PhoenixReborn 5y ago
    The meaningless emoji stuff was added later to boost sales (think of it similar to skins in video games). You used to not get any of that, and the clear thing you did get was no ads (IIRC, this is still the case and if you have Reddit gold you get no ads on the site).
  - GhettoComputers 5y ago
    Really? It was pretty obvious, my guilded comments and gold stats even says that donation paid for an amount of server time.
- 5y ago

ankit219 5y ago

They have been touting MAUs and DAUs a lot over the last one year. Turns out their numbers are very very public. Whenever a new user creates an account, she automatically gets added to r/announcements. It's not a choice, they dont even show it as an option. The current subs of r/announcements is 127M. It was 124M at the start of this month. Just shows that reddit - with newer design or not - has not found much acceptance in the upcoming generations. They tend to visit the site, yet are hesitant to create an account. For reference, their MAUs for month of Dec 19 alone were 430M. They got a lot of help from SEO for everyone of their threads being indexed, and hence the high traffic, but regular users and personalized ads isnt there. Likely low ARPU. Edit: This is probably the reason for those dark patterns too. If I can see that low conversion rate, so can people inside, and they would try and improve that via different UX patterns. Because it seems like a low hanging fruit when it is not really one.

TameAntelope 5y ago
Yeah, “Reddit is going down because they only converted three million new users in the last month.” Is probably not the argument that will convince anyone who’s ever built a b2c of your point.
- ankit219 5y ago
  That is not my argument. A standalone number of 3M is good, especially when 3M new users combined with 100M existing ones demonstrate huge stickiness. What I am trying to say is that, reddit is attracting a lot of new users through SEO, yet they have not been able to convert them like at all. The existing userbase is sticking and has been very active, but the site is not as appealing to new users who are just finding out about reddit.

garbagetime 5y ago

I don't use Wikipedia any more, they wouldn't leave me alone with their constant begging. I could just set up a block for the things, but I'd rather just be edgy and never use the site again. The content has been going downhill for years anyway. A lot more fun to find specific resources on cooler websites.

eljimmy 5y ago
The repeated asking for donations is a bit much, I agree. I do still donate to Wikipedia though as I find it is an amazing resource to have available.