8 ms·

I don't understand how a popular product like Reddit has so atrociously bad UI. The site itself is just garbage and the difference between the redesign and old.

by lawn 3y ago

I don't understand how a popular product like Reddit has so atrociously bad UI. The site itself is just garbage and the difference between the redesign and old.reddit is just so jarring, and the Android client is also garbage. Are there people who even thinks these designs are good? How do you even end up with something like this? Is it just garbage requirements thrown out by clueless managers? There must be some force here, because Twitter's UI is also garbage. Some part of me hope that Reddit will kill all third-party apps and remove old.reddit, so I'll stop using the site.

fabian_shipamax 3y ago
[flagged]
- stavros 3y ago
  I think it's not, calm down.
- standing_user 3y ago
  It depends on the definition of fine tho
stavros 3y ago
I agree, whenever I hit the new site I just close the tab. I never figured out how to get more than 2-3 comments on it, so I don't even bother these days.
jerpint 3y ago
If you go to the front page without logging in, you’ll quickly notice the target demographic is teens/young adults. The redesign makes a lot more sense with that context
- lawn 3y ago
  Do you imply that teens/young adults don't care about usability? Or that they don't have the attention span to read comments and just want to endlessly scroll through crap?
  - exitb 3y ago
    Yes, it enables endless scrolling, serving an ad once in a while.
    - candiodari 3y ago
      It enables making ads indistinguishable from real content, to get more clicks through deception. That's another interpretation. You'd think ad buyers would have a problem with this, but I guess not. I've begun dragging a small "ultraportable" laptop with me, because it makes a lot of things bearable again: youtube, reddit, stackoverflow ... I'm not sure why people treat mobile users so horribly bad, but here we are.
      - 1over137 3y ago
        >You'd think ad buyers would have a problem with this... Alas, no, I wouldn't think that. :(
      - still_grokking 3y ago
        > I'm not sure why people treat mobile users so horribly bad, but here we are. Maybe because those people "don't care" about usability, or better said, never got to know what this even means. The young generation was socialized on mobile. They just don't know better so you can treat them like that without consequences.
      - whamlastxmas 3y ago
        If you’re on android you can use Firefox with ublock. It’s my biggest loss switching to iPhone, to the point that HN comments are literally the only web page I will visit on my phone. Anything else I wait for laptop access. Supposedly supposed to get side loading later this year which hope to god means Firefox with extensions on iOS
      - whamlastxmas 3y ago
        Also ad buyers don’t mind, and often prefer, deceptive or discrete advertising. Product placement and “native advertising” has been around for decades or maybe even a century.
- coev 3y ago
  Reddit's target demo has been that range for over a decade, it's just that the users from last decade got older.
frozenlettuce 3y ago
It's on purpose. The new UI places each post inside a "card". The intent is having you scroll past cards. This makes even text-only posts be similar to image ads posts, and while you scroll you are not aware if the next card is an ad or not. Layouts with heavy information density (as old.reddit.com) are more user friendly, as you they allow you to just scan the list and be done with it. But are bad for ads.
- wodenokoto 3y ago
  The problem isn’t really the cards. It’s the implementation. If you just reshape shape old.Reddit.com it wouldn’t be a horrible UI/UX. Maybe not great either. Back button is effectively broken with constant reload of front page. 2 links you wanna read? You need to click around carefully especially on mobile if you don’t want the page to reload and show you a different set of stuff.
  - ykonstant 3y ago
    If you are looking for a threaded forum where posts contain dense information with code segments, quotes and decorated text, the cards are definitely a core problem. The implementation is very bad, too.
  - ljm 3y ago
    On mobile you can hardly even scroll down a thread without the page crashing and dumping you right back at the top. 75% of the time it’ll be an error page and you have to refresh again to get past it. I can’t imagine people will tolerate this when they’re forced to use this UI and not their favourite app.
    - rthomas6 3y ago
      There is a mobile-only client called troddit.com that is really good. It shows what could have been possible with pure browser client on mobile. Not only is it waaaaaay faster, the UI is better too.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
taytus 3y ago
"I don't understand how a popular product like Reddit has so atrociously bad UI" Do you mean like... HN?
- lawn 3y ago
  Despite it's flaws, HN has a far superior user experience compared to Reddit. It's not even comparable.
  - taytus 3y ago
    So? I wan't comparing HN with Reddit. I meant that HN is very popular without having an amazing user experience, specially on mobile.
    - kevviiinn 3y ago
      For me HN is nearly unusable on mobile without a client
    - atyppo 3y ago
      HN is popular within certain demographics and tends to have somewhat circular discussions as a result. As someone who works in finance in NYC, I know nobody else who reads it. I imagine if I worked in tech in Redwood City, I might think differently.
    - bee_rider 3y ago
      HN is fine on mobile. It’s just text anyway. It is easy to reflow text.
    - dghlsakjg 3y ago
      I’m using it on mobile right now, works great. Has all of the same features as desktop. What is your complaint about mobile?
- zulban 3y ago
  HN is missing lots of features. That's not UI. The HN UI is pretty good.
retube 3y ago
They recently killed the .compact view on mobile. The default is unreadable, i don't spend much time on the site anymore.
- jorams 3y ago
  I found out recently (not sure where) you can still append ".i" instead of ".compact", and it works. Annoyingly all links then go to ".compact", so you need some browser magic to actually make it usable.
- fumar 3y ago
  What is an alternative?
  - chapium 3y ago
    old. Is fine. You do need to zoom in a bit and then its not noticeable.
api 3y ago
If they remove old.reddit I'm done. The new design is awful for actually reading anything. If I want my brain sucked out with a dental vacuum I'll use TikTok.
jollofricepeas 3y ago
1. Reddit isn’t a non-profit. I’m not sure why it’s user base doesn’t seem to understand this. They have to make UI changes to make money. It’s either that or everyone pays for subscriptions. 2. The AI threat is real. It’s not even remotely fair that the large tech players of the world get to train their models on others content for cheap. It’s sad what’s happening to Apollo but they need to beef with Microsoft and Google. Reddit does not owe that guy a cheap pipe. It’s no different from any other situation where market conditions shift and impact existing models. Yes, it sucks but welcome to capitalism.
- Capricorn2481 3y ago
  This has nothing to do with AI. Making your site less usable isn't going to make you more profitable in the long run.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
    I think Musk has shown that this is not accurate. Established players will play and smaller fish will die off as intended further consolidated a given field. For the record, I am not happy about it, but I disagree with your assertion that LLM is not part of the consideration here.
  - dageshi 3y ago
    Nah, it has a lot to do with AI. Give it another 12 months when the rest of the web has been gunked up with AI written crap and reddit will be one of the few reliable sources of useful opinion out there. Hell, it is right now given how frequently I and others append "reddit" to our google queries.
    - MSFT_Edging 3y ago
      What you're describing is in a really rough spot already. You need to append "reddit" to get any useful result, but unless you're on desktop, the mobile site is essentially broken if you're looking for answers. The app nag is omnipresent and the comment section is always broken after 2 or 3 comments with a "show more" button and lists of other posts. If information is hard to glean from reddit, and the rest of the internet is AI blogspam, what is to be done?
selcuka 3y ago
It's the enshittification [1] process. There is no going back. [1] https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/ https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/
- xdavidliu 3y ago
  ahem, the original link is here: https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys
  - doublerabbit 3y ago
    Could you apply this to Discord currently? As in they are in the beginning phase of the enshittifcation metamorphism? With the new soundboards, change of usernames and the likes, it's feels like it's starting the cycle.
    - Macha 3y ago
      Yes. The first warning shot for me was when they pushed stages really invasively in the UI to compete with clubhouse. I'd thought the high rate of nitro subscribership might have stalled it longer, but no.
    - wkat4242 3y ago
      Go for something really open and free like Matrix. That's the only way to protect against eventual enshittification.
    - bee_rider 3y ago
      Maybe I’m just old, but I don’t know what the inevitable pre-enshittified competition to Discord is. Do they exist yet? Discord is still at the beginning of the endhittification path so I guess it is not a super pressing issue.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
pacifika 3y ago
How do you use the site roughly? Maybe it’s optimised for another workflow that’s more mainstream?
- lawn 3y ago
  I follow subreddits related to topics I'm interested in and I scroll through posts looking for interesting things. I then read the post/click the link and read comments and maybe make a comment once in a while. I'd imagine that's quite mainstream, no? (Of course I use old.reddit or a third-party client.)
  - shigawire 3y ago
    I think they want you to use it like people use Instagram. Endless scrolling, endless engagement
    - Arkhaine_kupo 3y ago
      That used to be the case, but they heavily slowed down the site (back in the day the front page was different every hour, it now changes like once a day or so) What they want is lots of comments and little to no nfsw. Aka the metrics that are easy to sell to advertisers and to IPO with. You can see every action taken through the lense of "does it affect IPO price" and understand almost all their choices. And because it is so transparent, its almost offensive when you consider their entire moderation happens with free workforce. All the mods see 0 benefit from the increased traffic, increase polarization and stalled content refresh that the website pushes, they get more work, less tools and more abuse but the IPO price is gonna make the owners rich
- dr-detroit 3y ago
  [dead]
Xenoamorphous 3y ago
It's because it's not optimised for users, it's for ads.
p3rls 3y ago
What apps do you think do UI well that you would hold up as a counterpoint here? Just curious
- skizm 3y ago
  The old “I.Reddit.com” (which was just completely turned off) was very good IMO. Just titles and up/downvote buttons basically. Gear icon to expand for more options per post. My only real gripe was infinite scrolling. I don’t like it in general, but in this case there was also an issue with either the implementation or mobile safari where clicking a link and going back completely borked progress.
- jarfil 3y ago
  "Relay for reddit" offers a good experience: removes header and footer on scrolling, shows a list of post titles with previews, hides all actions behind a finger flick, with less used ones in expandable menus.
bitcharmer 3y ago
> Are there people who even thinks these designs are good? Yes, the greedy idiot MBA's whose idea this was.
zeroego 3y ago
I know the person who was in charge of the redesign. This may sound unbelievable, but she was not a reddit user prior to working at reddit or being put in charge of the redesign. Really nice person, but they did a terrible job.
- lawn 3y ago
  Unfortunately it's not that unbelievable... At work a newly hired (and newly graduated) developer got the responsibility to completely redesign some core functionality in our application. Of course he had no experience with the system or how it was being used, but he was still rewriting it and designing future use-cases. This was also done with as far as I can tell no code reviews, tests or supervision, only vague directions of "this sounds good, do it!". It's been years since he left for greener pastures, and we're still reeling from the consequences.
  - zeroego 3y ago
    Oof, my condolences. As someone who was a junior somewhat recently I narrowly avoided a couple of projects like that. The desire to push off important work to cheap labor blows my mind.
    - michaelrpeskin 3y ago
      Ha! I’m a staff engineer now, but many many years ago when I was a junior I got the same type of project. It was the CTOs pet project to reimagine the core processing framework. I still feel bad for the folks maintaining it now. I was an expert in the kind of thing that the CTO wanted so it was a good project for me, but I should have had a senior to guide the process and tests and things like that.
  - whamlastxmas 3y ago
    I briefly worked at a web dev shop that was stuck building a project that a mid level PHP developer started in 2014 using a framework he built himself. I thank god often I wasn’t the one tasked with learning this spaghetti framework with no documentation
TheHypnotist 3y ago
Apollo's UI on iPhone is arguably worse than the Reddit apps (which I have no real complaint with other than the annoying video bar being too close to the bottom). The webpage is in fact abysmal unless you use old.
laci37 3y ago
IMO old reddit it atrociously bad for self posts and images as well. I would not have used it without Reddit Enhancement Suite.
azangru 3y ago
> There must be some force here, because Twitter's UI is also garbage. It's called modern frontend, I'm afraid :-) By the way the next iteration of Reddit web UI, which this time is based on web components with Lit rather than on React, is less garbage — at least in terms of raw performance. Design-wise it may still be horrible; but at least technologically, it feels like a definite improvement. You can check it out if you browse Reddit without logging in.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  Raw performance is generally one of the least important things in a website, at least for me.
  - azangru 3y ago
    I thought so too; but then I discovered that I was seeing seconds-long interaction delay on my old laptop after scrolling down the feed a bit. The performance profile I recorded in dev tools then looked like this: https://i.imgur.com/OSfzPDa.png https://i.imgur.com/OSfzPDa.png That was when I fully appreciated both that raw performance is important for me, and how truly horrible it was on the Reddit site.
35997279 3y ago
I suspect that the people who “matter” (frequent, registered, trackable users) are using third party apps or scripts over the service itself, so there hasn’t been a reason to invest in the interface. It feels like Reddit is in the same place Twitter was pre-Musk. Kind of lost in terms of purpose/trajectory for monetization. Or maybe it’s the other way around: it’s where Twitter will be in a few years, stagnated because it was bought to be part of a larger portfolio, a bauble that sits on the shelf and doesn’t really have anything innovative going for it. To me there isn’t anything interesting about Reddit anymore. I only use it to hear from people who claim to live in a place I’m living or visiting, or to get very specific troubleshooting advice, where I find a specific post using an external search engine. Mostly I think the culture of the site itself is annoying. Any time I stray outside of regional or technical subreddits it feels like I’ve accidentally landed in a middle school cafeteria.
MagicMoonlight 3y ago
Products like reddit are complete. They do everything they need to do and there’s very little you can really add. That’s a big problem when you have thousands of employees. It’s like youtube or google. What can you really do with all these people? A rational person would say fire them. But firing people feels wrong because growth is good and big is good. So the only solution is to make a project for them to work on. The natural project for them is a UI change because it won’t break the product and it caters for their lack of ability. So that’s why finished products like reddit and youtube have a new worse UI every year for seemingly no reason.
jamil7 3y ago
> I don't understand how a popular product like Reddit has so atrociously bad UI. One of the third-party apps effected is Apollo, which is the vision of a single, talented iOS developer/designer who isn't beholden to investors and the whims of every other team and committee within a large org.

by lawn 3y ago

fabian_shipamax 3y ago

[flagged]

stavros 3y ago
I think it's not, calm down.
standing_user 3y ago
It depends on the definition of fine tho

stavros 3y ago

I agree, whenever I hit the new site I just close the tab. I never figured out how to get more than 2-3 comments on it, so I don't even bother these days.

jerpint 3y ago

If you go to the front page without logging in, you’ll quickly notice the target demographic is teens/young adults. The redesign makes a lot more sense with that context

lawn 3y ago
Do you imply that teens/young adults don't care about usability? Or that they don't have the attention span to read comments and just want to endlessly scroll through crap?
- exitb 3y ago
  Yes, it enables endless scrolling, serving an ad once in a while.
  - candiodari 3y ago
    It enables making ads indistinguishable from real content, to get more clicks through deception. That's another interpretation. You'd think ad buyers would have a problem with this, but I guess not. I've begun dragging a small "ultraportable" laptop with me, because it makes a lot of things bearable again: youtube, reddit, stackoverflow ... I'm not sure why people treat mobile users so horribly bad, but here we are.
    - 1over137 3y ago
      >You'd think ad buyers would have a problem with this... Alas, no, I wouldn't think that. :(
    - still_grokking 3y ago
      > I'm not sure why people treat mobile users so horribly bad, but here we are. Maybe because those people "don't care" about usability, or better said, never got to know what this even means. The young generation was socialized on mobile. They just don't know better so you can treat them like that without consequences.
    - whamlastxmas 3y ago
      If you’re on android you can use Firefox with ublock. It’s my biggest loss switching to iPhone, to the point that HN comments are literally the only web page I will visit on my phone. Anything else I wait for laptop access. Supposedly supposed to get side loading later this year which hope to god means Firefox with extensions on iOS
    - whamlastxmas 3y ago
      Also ad buyers don’t mind, and often prefer, deceptive or discrete advertising. Product placement and “native advertising” has been around for decades or maybe even a century.
coev 3y ago
Reddit's target demo has been that range for over a decade, it's just that the users from last decade got older.

frozenlettuce 3y ago

It's on purpose. The new UI places each post inside a "card". The intent is having you scroll past cards. This makes even text-only posts be similar to image ads posts, and while you scroll you are not aware if the next card is an ad or not. Layouts with heavy information density (as old.reddit.com) are more user friendly, as you they allow you to just scan the list and be done with it. But are bad for ads.

wodenokoto 3y ago
The problem isn’t really the cards. It’s the implementation. If you just reshape shape old.Reddit.com it wouldn’t be a horrible UI/UX. Maybe not great either. Back button is effectively broken with constant reload of front page. 2 links you wanna read? You need to click around carefully especially on mobile if you don’t want the page to reload and show you a different set of stuff.
- ykonstant 3y ago
  If you are looking for a threaded forum where posts contain dense information with code segments, quotes and decorated text, the cards are definitely a core problem. The implementation is very bad, too.
- ljm 3y ago
  On mobile you can hardly even scroll down a thread without the page crashing and dumping you right back at the top. 75% of the time it’ll be an error page and you have to refresh again to get past it. I can’t imagine people will tolerate this when they’re forced to use this UI and not their favourite app.
  - rthomas6 3y ago
    There is a mobile-only client called troddit.com that is really good. It shows what could have been possible with pure browser client on mobile. Not only is it waaaaaay faster, the UI is better too.
- JohnFen 3y ago

taytus 3y ago

"I don't understand how a popular product like Reddit has so atrociously bad UI" Do you mean like... HN?

lawn 3y ago
Despite it's flaws, HN has a far superior user experience compared to Reddit. It's not even comparable.
- taytus 3y ago
  So? I wan't comparing HN with Reddit. I meant that HN is very popular without having an amazing user experience, specially on mobile.
  - kevviiinn 3y ago
    For me HN is nearly unusable on mobile without a client
  - atyppo 3y ago
    HN is popular within certain demographics and tends to have somewhat circular discussions as a result. As someone who works in finance in NYC, I know nobody else who reads it. I imagine if I worked in tech in Redwood City, I might think differently.
  - bee_rider 3y ago
    HN is fine on mobile. It’s just text anyway. It is easy to reflow text.
  - dghlsakjg 3y ago
    I’m using it on mobile right now, works great. Has all of the same features as desktop. What is your complaint about mobile?
zulban 3y ago
HN is missing lots of features. That's not UI. The HN UI is pretty good.

retube 3y ago

They recently killed the .compact view on mobile. The default is unreadable, i don't spend much time on the site anymore.

jorams 3y ago
I found out recently (not sure where) you can still append ".i" instead of ".compact", and it works. Annoyingly all links then go to ".compact", so you need some browser magic to actually make it usable.
fumar 3y ago
What is an alternative?
- chapium 3y ago
  old. Is fine. You do need to zoom in a bit and then its not noticeable.

api 3y ago

If they remove old.reddit I'm done. The new design is awful for actually reading anything. If I want my brain sucked out with a dental vacuum I'll use TikTok.

jollofricepeas 3y ago

1. Reddit isn’t a non-profit. I’m not sure why it’s user base doesn’t seem to understand this. They have to make UI changes to make money. It’s either that or everyone pays for subscriptions. 2. The AI threat is real. It’s not even remotely fair that the large tech players of the world get to train their models on others content for cheap. It’s sad what’s happening to Apollo but they need to beef with Microsoft and Google. Reddit does not owe that guy a cheap pipe. It’s no different from any other situation where market conditions shift and impact existing models. Yes, it sucks but welcome to capitalism.

Capricorn2481 3y ago
This has nothing to do with AI. Making your site less usable isn't going to make you more profitable in the long run.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
  I think Musk has shown that this is not accurate. Established players will play and smaller fish will die off as intended further consolidated a given field. For the record, I am not happy about it, but I disagree with your assertion that LLM is not part of the consideration here.
- dageshi 3y ago
  Nah, it has a lot to do with AI. Give it another 12 months when the rest of the web has been gunked up with AI written crap and reddit will be one of the few reliable sources of useful opinion out there. Hell, it is right now given how frequently I and others append "reddit" to our google queries.
  - MSFT_Edging 3y ago
    What you're describing is in a really rough spot already. You need to append "reddit" to get any useful result, but unless you're on desktop, the mobile site is essentially broken if you're looking for answers. The app nag is omnipresent and the comment section is always broken after 2 or 3 comments with a "show more" button and lists of other posts. If information is hard to glean from reddit, and the rest of the internet is AI blogspam, what is to be done?

selcuka 3y ago

It's the enshittification [1] process. There is no going back. [1] https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/ https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/

xdavidliu 3y ago
ahem, the original link is here: https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys
- doublerabbit 3y ago
  Could you apply this to Discord currently? As in they are in the beginning phase of the enshittifcation metamorphism? With the new soundboards, change of usernames and the likes, it's feels like it's starting the cycle.
  - Macha 3y ago
    Yes. The first warning shot for me was when they pushed stages really invasively in the UI to compete with clubhouse. I'd thought the high rate of nitro subscribership might have stalled it longer, but no.
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    Go for something really open and free like Matrix. That's the only way to protect against eventual enshittification.
  - bee_rider 3y ago
    Maybe I’m just old, but I don’t know what the inevitable pre-enshittified competition to Discord is. Do they exist yet? Discord is still at the beginning of the endhittification path so I guess it is not a super pressing issue.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]

pacifika 3y ago

How do you use the site roughly? Maybe it’s optimised for another workflow that’s more mainstream?

lawn 3y ago
I follow subreddits related to topics I'm interested in and I scroll through posts looking for interesting things. I then read the post/click the link and read comments and maybe make a comment once in a while. I'd imagine that's quite mainstream, no? (Of course I use old.reddit or a third-party client.)
- shigawire 3y ago
  I think they want you to use it like people use Instagram. Endless scrolling, endless engagement
  - Arkhaine_kupo 3y ago
    That used to be the case, but they heavily slowed down the site (back in the day the front page was different every hour, it now changes like once a day or so) What they want is lots of comments and little to no nfsw. Aka the metrics that are easy to sell to advertisers and to IPO with. You can see every action taken through the lense of "does it affect IPO price" and understand almost all their choices. And because it is so transparent, its almost offensive when you consider their entire moderation happens with free workforce. All the mods see 0 benefit from the increased traffic, increase polarization and stalled content refresh that the website pushes, they get more work, less tools and more abuse but the IPO price is gonna make the owners rich
dr-detroit 3y ago
[dead]

Xenoamorphous 3y ago

It's because it's not optimised for users, it's for ads.

p3rls 3y ago

What apps do you think do UI well that you would hold up as a counterpoint here? Just curious

skizm 3y ago
The old “I.Reddit.com” (which was just completely turned off) was very good IMO. Just titles and up/downvote buttons basically. Gear icon to expand for more options per post. My only real gripe was infinite scrolling. I don’t like it in general, but in this case there was also an issue with either the implementation or mobile safari where clicking a link and going back completely borked progress.
jarfil 3y ago
"Relay for reddit" offers a good experience: removes header and footer on scrolling, shows a list of post titles with previews, hides all actions behind a finger flick, with less used ones in expandable menus.

bitcharmer 3y ago

> Are there people who even thinks these designs are good? Yes, the greedy idiot MBA's whose idea this was.

zeroego 3y ago

I know the person who was in charge of the redesign. This may sound unbelievable, but she was not a reddit user prior to working at reddit or being put in charge of the redesign. Really nice person, but they did a terrible job.

lawn 3y ago
Unfortunately it's not that unbelievable... At work a newly hired (and newly graduated) developer got the responsibility to completely redesign some core functionality in our application. Of course he had no experience with the system or how it was being used, but he was still rewriting it and designing future use-cases. This was also done with as far as I can tell no code reviews, tests or supervision, only vague directions of "this sounds good, do it!". It's been years since he left for greener pastures, and we're still reeling from the consequences.
- zeroego 3y ago
  Oof, my condolences. As someone who was a junior somewhat recently I narrowly avoided a couple of projects like that. The desire to push off important work to cheap labor blows my mind.
  - michaelrpeskin 3y ago
    Ha! I’m a staff engineer now, but many many years ago when I was a junior I got the same type of project. It was the CTOs pet project to reimagine the core processing framework. I still feel bad for the folks maintaining it now. I was an expert in the kind of thing that the CTO wanted so it was a good project for me, but I should have had a senior to guide the process and tests and things like that.
- whamlastxmas 3y ago
  I briefly worked at a web dev shop that was stuck building a project that a mid level PHP developer started in 2014 using a framework he built himself. I thank god often I wasn’t the one tasked with learning this spaghetti framework with no documentation

TheHypnotist 3y ago

Apollo's UI on iPhone is arguably worse than the Reddit apps (which I have no real complaint with other than the annoying video bar being too close to the bottom). The webpage is in fact abysmal unless you use old.

laci37 3y ago

IMO old reddit it atrociously bad for self posts and images as well. I would not have used it without Reddit Enhancement Suite.

azangru 3y ago

> There must be some force here, because Twitter's UI is also garbage. It's called modern frontend, I'm afraid :-) By the way the next iteration of Reddit web UI, which this time is based on web components with Lit rather than on React, is less garbage — at least in terms of raw performance. Design-wise it may still be horrible; but at least technologically, it feels like a definite improvement. You can check it out if you browse Reddit without logging in.

JohnFen 3y ago
Raw performance is generally one of the least important things in a website, at least for me.
- azangru 3y ago
  I thought so too; but then I discovered that I was seeing seconds-long interaction delay on my old laptop after scrolling down the feed a bit. The performance profile I recorded in dev tools then looked like this: https://i.imgur.com/OSfzPDa.png https://i.imgur.com/OSfzPDa.png That was when I fully appreciated both that raw performance is important for me, and how truly horrible it was on the Reddit site.

35997279 3y ago

I suspect that the people who “matter” (frequent, registered, trackable users) are using third party apps or scripts over the service itself, so there hasn’t been a reason to invest in the interface. It feels like Reddit is in the same place Twitter was pre-Musk. Kind of lost in terms of purpose/trajectory for monetization. Or maybe it’s the other way around: it’s where Twitter will be in a few years, stagnated because it was bought to be part of a larger portfolio, a bauble that sits on the shelf and doesn’t really have anything innovative going for it. To me there isn’t anything interesting about Reddit anymore. I only use it to hear from people who claim to live in a place I’m living or visiting, or to get very specific troubleshooting advice, where I find a specific post using an external search engine. Mostly I think the culture of the site itself is annoying. Any time I stray outside of regional or technical subreddits it feels like I’ve accidentally landed in a middle school cafeteria.

MagicMoonlight 3y ago

Products like reddit are complete. They do everything they need to do and there’s very little you can really add. That’s a big problem when you have thousands of employees. It’s like youtube or google. What can you really do with all these people? A rational person would say fire them. But firing people feels wrong because growth is good and big is good. So the only solution is to make a project for them to work on. The natural project for them is a UI change because it won’t break the product and it caters for their lack of ability. So that’s why finished products like reddit and youtube have a new worse UI every year for seemingly no reason.

jamil7 3y ago

> I don't understand how a popular product like Reddit has so atrociously bad UI. One of the third-party apps effected is Apollo, which is the vision of a single, talented iOS developer/designer who isn't beholden to investors and the whims of every other team and committee within a large org.