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> I still find it fascinating how bad the "new reddit" was and still is. Leading theory is that it's to push their mobile app (which is probably almost as bad)

> I still find it fascinating how bad the "new reddit" was and still is. Leading theory is that it's to push their mobile app (which is probably almost as bad). The prerequisite for this is that they have a large enough userbase with enough of a network effect that relatively few users will move over the website crippling, the ads, or the mobile app (which I think is plausible). Perhaps it's time to build an alternative on top of some federated protocol (not necessarily ActivityPub), then make a "bridge" between the two where you can add commends to a Reddit post on $ALTERNATIVE that compliant hybrid clients can render inline, which would allow you to bootstrap an alternative off of Reddit's existing userbase.

ryandrake 4y ago
It has to be deliberate. I browse old.reddit.com, but old. seems to constantly kick you over to www. against your efforts, so I often get to see the www. trainwreck. Whenever I see www. I can't believe that a competent developer can actually make a site that bad, unless they were doing so deliberately. The latest egregious www. bug is that videos with sound go silent after 2-3 seconds (desktop safari). I don't remember any time in the past when reddit's video player worked 100%, despite video being a solved problem for what, 10 years? So this isn't be a surprise. What's surprising is how bad their developers managed to make the product, and how it gets worse over time rather than better.
- mecha_ghidorah 4y ago
  I have a redirector extension in my browser that changes all requests to www.reddit.com/* to old.reddit.com/star so I literally never see it on my home machine. I am always startled by how awful it is the few times I ever open a reddit link at work
kenhwang 4y ago
New Reddit is for ads. If you turn off adblock and compare old and new, you'll probably notice that there's more prime screen space for "recommended" content with media support. There's still the sidebar carried over from old that can be used for basic media ads and the banner for sponsored posts. In-feed sponsored posts are also a carry over, but the new feed has fully expanded thumbnails instead of mostly text which allows for autoplaying media ads (which is one of the most profitable ad formats). Old in-feed ads are primarily text. New homepage has the trending thumbnails up top which works well with the same ad format as the sidebar. New comments section truncates comments and has more fully expanded thumbnail recommended content below, which is another placement for in-feed ads. Awards are much more prominently displayed everywhere, which is another monetization feature since they can be bought or earned from advertising. The technical currently unrealized benefit with all the constant rerenders is the ability to bypass adblock rules by dynamically changing the underlying layout until the ad renders successfully. Of course the web version being bad to funnel people into first party Reddit apps also helps their advertising angle because you can't easily adblock in app and 3rd party Reddit apps don't render ads.
- tootie 4y ago
  I think there's a clear path to grab ad revenue and not alienate power users. Reddit follows the standard 90/9/1 law that 90% never log in, 9% do, and 1% actually post most of the content. Anyone who stumbles on a reddit page from search or gets sent their from another social gets the ads. Anyone who posts, should get a usable website.

ryandrake 4y ago

It has to be deliberate. I browse old.reddit.com, but old. seems to constantly kick you over to www. against your efforts, so I often get to see the www. trainwreck. Whenever I see www. I can't believe that a competent developer can actually make a site that bad, unless they were doing so deliberately. The latest egregious www. bug is that videos with sound go silent after 2-3 seconds (desktop safari). I don't remember any time in the past when reddit's video player worked 100%, despite video being a solved problem for what, 10 years? So this isn't be a surprise. What's surprising is how bad their developers managed to make the product, and how it gets worse over time rather than better.

mecha_ghidorah 4y ago
I have a redirector extension in my browser that changes all requests to www.reddit.com/* to old.reddit.com/star so I literally never see it on my home machine. I am always startled by how awful it is the few times I ever open a reddit link at work

kenhwang 4y ago

New Reddit is for ads. If you turn off adblock and compare old and new, you'll probably notice that there's more prime screen space for "recommended" content with media support. There's still the sidebar carried over from old that can be used for basic media ads and the banner for sponsored posts. In-feed sponsored posts are also a carry over, but the new feed has fully expanded thumbnails instead of mostly text which allows for autoplaying media ads (which is one of the most profitable ad formats). Old in-feed ads are primarily text. New homepage has the trending thumbnails up top which works well with the same ad format as the sidebar. New comments section truncates comments and has more fully expanded thumbnail recommended content below, which is another placement for in-feed ads. Awards are much more prominently displayed everywhere, which is another monetization feature since they can be bought or earned from advertising. The technical currently unrealized benefit with all the constant rerenders is the ability to bypass adblock rules by dynamically changing the underlying layout until the ad renders successfully. Of course the web version being bad to funnel people into first party Reddit apps also helps their advertising angle because you can't easily adblock in app and 3rd party Reddit apps don't render ads.

tootie 4y ago
I think there's a clear path to grab ad revenue and not alienate power users. Reddit follows the standard 90/9/1 law that 90% never log in, 9% do, and 1% actually post most of the content. Anyone who stumbles on a reddit page from search or gets sent their from another social gets the ads. Anyone who posts, should get a usable website.