4 ms·

I thought the whole appeal of Reddit was community moderation and escape from algorithms.

stagger87 4y ago
Primarily for ads I would guess.
ptmcc 4y ago
It used to be, but the push for monetization has poisoned that well. I don't know what comes after reddit but I'm keeping my eyes and ears open. Had a reddit recruiter reach out to me recently looking for engineering leadership for their upcoming product road map. What's in: ads, influencers, crypto, NFTs. What's not in: improving the core feature set of reddit like community management, curation, search, or user interface/experience. Hard pass, and a bad sign of what's to come.
- chx 4y ago
  The redesign and the complete stonewalling of it by most of the community is telling.
  - ptmcc 4y ago
    The moment they kill/break old.reddit.com is the moment I quit reddit for good Unless they magically release a not horrible new UI, which I'm not holding my breath for
    - sockaddr 4y ago
      Likewise. It's probably the worst web UI I currently know of. Whatever team designed and implemented it should really feel bad about themselves and their work, it's unnecessarily bad, as if they were trying to make a shitty UI. I will happily stop using reddit if they kill old.reddit.com
      - beezlebroxxxxxx 4y ago
        I agree. If I ever actually meet the designers or team responsible for it I would seriously question their abilities. This includes if I saw it on someone's resume or in their portfolio. Even with the current state of web UI, the new reddit UI is astoundingly bad.
      - alephxyz 4y ago
        It's not just bad it's _unusable_ on any older mobile device. Takes 10 seconds to load a page, greets you with a "Reddit is more fun in the app" popup that takes up half the page, then will display the top 3 comments but if you scroll down it will load a random different post that they think you'll like instead of showing you more comments.
        wilsonnb3 4y ago
        They also straight up won’t let you see certain subreddits on the mobile web page, a message pops up telling you to download the app because the subreddit content is “unreviewed” or “mature”. Not talking about NSFW stuff, either. Just regular subreddits.
    - easrng 4y ago
      They're A/B testing a slightly less bad interface on both mobile and desktop AFAICT, and they also added an algorithmic home page even for people with no account.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - colinmhayes 4y ago
    Do we have any data on percentage of users on old vs. new vs. mobile?
  - ryanwaggoner 4y ago
    ~4% of Redditors use old reddit. As usual, we on HN are incredibly out of touch. Granted, 60% of mod actions are from there, but that makes sense given the lack of feature parity. Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/v3frc1/what_were_working_on_this_year/ https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/v3frc1/what_were_wo...
    - ptmcc 4y ago
      > As usual, we on HN are incredibly out of touch. Yeah, I know that to be true, but those 4% of old reddit users have probably been the longest and most active reddit users from the days when reddit was more like HN. I understand why reddit doesn't care to cater to us and instead chase new user growth (metrics & money), but in doing so they've ignored and pushed away a lot of their oldest and most loyal users. I used to donate to reddit, but I'd never do that today because of what it has become and the path it is on. Maybe they know it and are fine with it. But they are executing terribly on that goal from a technical and usability perspective, and becoming yet another generic social media platform that is worse than the other ones. They're making themselves easier to replace eventually IMO.
    - colinmhayes 4y ago
      the post says 4% of users use old reddit every day. WOuldn't be surprised if they were trying to sneak in an artificially low number.
      - jimmux 4y ago
        I wonder if "redditors as a whole" includes visits from external links. I never go to new reddit deliberately, but often end up there via other sources. I also use third party mobile apps more, so there will be plenty of days when I don't use old _or_ new reddit, meaning I'm not counted in that 4%.
    - suby 4y ago
      I wonder if this includes users who opted out of the redesign through settings. I use reddit.com instead of old.reddit.com, but I am on the old site due to this setting.
TameAntelope 4y ago
The problem is the community moderation is terrible, and the only viable alternative to support Reddit's recent explosive growth is algorithmic.

Primarily for ads I would guess.

It used to be, but the push for monetization has poisoned that well. I don't know what comes after reddit but I'm keeping my eyes and ears open. Had a reddit recruiter reach out to me recently looking for engineering leadership for their upcoming product road map. What's in: ads, influencers, crypto, NFTs. What's not in: improving the core feature set of reddit like community management, curation, search, or user interface/experience. Hard pass, and a bad sign of what's to come.

chx 4y ago
The redesign and the complete stonewalling of it by most of the community is telling.
- ptmcc 4y ago
  The moment they kill/break old.reddit.com is the moment I quit reddit for good Unless they magically release a not horrible new UI, which I'm not holding my breath for
  - sockaddr 4y ago
    Likewise. It's probably the worst web UI I currently know of. Whatever team designed and implemented it should really feel bad about themselves and their work, it's unnecessarily bad, as if they were trying to make a shitty UI. I will happily stop using reddit if they kill old.reddit.com
    - beezlebroxxxxxx 4y ago
      I agree. If I ever actually meet the designers or team responsible for it I would seriously question their abilities. This includes if I saw it on someone's resume or in their portfolio. Even with the current state of web UI, the new reddit UI is astoundingly bad.
    - alephxyz 4y ago
      It's not just bad it's _unusable_ on any older mobile device. Takes 10 seconds to load a page, greets you with a "Reddit is more fun in the app" popup that takes up half the page, then will display the top 3 comments but if you scroll down it will load a random different post that they think you'll like instead of showing you more comments.
      - wilsonnb3 4y ago
        They also straight up won’t let you see certain subreddits on the mobile web page, a message pops up telling you to download the app because the subreddit content is “unreviewed” or “mature”. Not talking about NSFW stuff, either. Just regular subreddits.
  - easrng 4y ago
    They're A/B testing a slightly less bad interface on both mobile and desktop AFAICT, and they also added an algorithmic home page even for people with no account.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  Do we have any data on percentage of users on old vs. new vs. mobile?
- ryanwaggoner 4y ago
  ~4% of Redditors use old reddit. As usual, we on HN are incredibly out of touch. Granted, 60% of mod actions are from there, but that makes sense given the lack of feature parity. Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/v3frc1/what_were_working_on_this_year/ https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/v3frc1/what_were_wo...
  - ptmcc 4y ago
    > As usual, we on HN are incredibly out of touch. Yeah, I know that to be true, but those 4% of old reddit users have probably been the longest and most active reddit users from the days when reddit was more like HN. I understand why reddit doesn't care to cater to us and instead chase new user growth (metrics & money), but in doing so they've ignored and pushed away a lot of their oldest and most loyal users. I used to donate to reddit, but I'd never do that today because of what it has become and the path it is on. Maybe they know it and are fine with it. But they are executing terribly on that goal from a technical and usability perspective, and becoming yet another generic social media platform that is worse than the other ones. They're making themselves easier to replace eventually IMO.
  - colinmhayes 4y ago
    the post says 4% of users use old reddit every day. WOuldn't be surprised if they were trying to sneak in an artificially low number.
    - jimmux 4y ago
      I wonder if "redditors as a whole" includes visits from external links. I never go to new reddit deliberately, but often end up there via other sources. I also use third party mobile apps more, so there will be plenty of days when I don't use old _or_ new reddit, meaning I'm not counted in that 4%.
  - suby 4y ago
    I wonder if this includes users who opted out of the redesign through settings. I use reddit.com instead of old.reddit.com, but I am on the old site due to this setting.

TameAntelope 4y ago

The problem is the community moderation is terrible, and the only viable alternative to support Reddit's recent explosive growth is algorithmic.