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Is everyone forgetting about the early 2010s when people on imgur would call reddit “that confusing site” because most people weren’t familiar with old.reddit.c

Is everyone forgetting about the early 2010s when people on imgur would call reddit “that confusing site” because most people weren’t familiar with old.reddit.com’s wide and hierarchical structure with different subreddits. Reddit needed to grow as a company with VC funding so they needed to change their target audience to the internet illiterate to keep getting more users and in turn made a UI that all the internet literate people hate but the new users don’t mind. That’s why the information density was severely reduced. You can’t show them too much text or it scares them away.

KerrAvon 3y ago
They could have reduced the info density and still not made it completely unusable, though. The implémention is the problem — it’s a labyrinth of barely functional JavaScript.
breckenedge 3y ago
Interesting. I maintain a forum (~50k visitors/day) and have been quietly, slowly turning up the information density on the site by reducing font size, padding, etc. Most of our users are 30-50 years old. Now they see about 25% more than they did before before on a mobile screen. Hasn't had any impact on traffic, but I like it. The designers either haven’t noticed or don’t care. Is there a reason most designers go with 16px/1rem as the default font size? Feels comically large to me.
- troad 3y ago
  > The designers either haven’t noticed or don’t care. You seem to be discounting the possibility that you’re subtly degrading their experience, sufficiently slowly that they’ve yet to revolt en masse. The blind spot of A/B testing is slowly building resentment for a slowly degrading product. I couldn’t tell you every single specific way that in which Duolingo has slowly become terrible over the years, but I can tell you I am no longer a paying subscriber. > Feels comically large to me. I browse the Internet at between a 125 and 200 percent zoom, so I guess it feels comically small to me. I don’t understand why I should strain my eyes to “fit more content in” - scrolling is free, and I can only read one thing at a time anyway.
  - breckenedge 3y ago
    Do you use zoom on HN too?
    - troad 3y ago
      Yes. 200%.
      - breckenedge 3y ago
        And that’s on desktop, mobile, or both?

KerrAvon 3y ago

They could have reduced the info density and still not made it completely unusable, though. The implémention is the problem — it’s a labyrinth of barely functional JavaScript.

breckenedge 3y ago

Interesting. I maintain a forum (~50k visitors/day) and have been quietly, slowly turning up the information density on the site by reducing font size, padding, etc. Most of our users are 30-50 years old. Now they see about 25% more than they did before before on a mobile screen. Hasn't had any impact on traffic, but I like it. The designers either haven’t noticed or don’t care. Is there a reason most designers go with 16px/1rem as the default font size? Feels comically large to me.

troad 3y ago
> The designers either haven’t noticed or don’t care. You seem to be discounting the possibility that you’re subtly degrading their experience, sufficiently slowly that they’ve yet to revolt en masse. The blind spot of A/B testing is slowly building resentment for a slowly degrading product. I couldn’t tell you every single specific way that in which Duolingo has slowly become terrible over the years, but I can tell you I am no longer a paying subscriber. > Feels comically large to me. I browse the Internet at between a 125 and 200 percent zoom, so I guess it feels comically small to me. I don’t understand why I should strain my eyes to “fit more content in” - scrolling is free, and I can only read one thing at a time anyway.
- breckenedge 3y ago
  Do you use zoom on HN too?
  - troad 3y ago
    Yes. 200%.
    - breckenedge 3y ago
      And that’s on desktop, mobile, or both?