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>The fact that Reddit chose to take this course of action tells me that they don’t actually know that much about their own website. That might also explain why

>The fact that Reddit chose to take this course of action tells me that they don’t actually know that much about their own website. That might also explain why they never built out the tooling to begin with. It's seemed like that for years. They've had strong reasons to develop the site for years. The two main things they've done are build an app for phones and spend a relatively long time creating a "new" UI that changes the look of the site and provides more advertising space but has no major changes to the way the site works. It's like they don't have any idea how to actually develop the site, and they're limited to doing window dressing.

cjs_ac 3y ago
The visual design of the interface selects different segments humanity for the user base. That's why HN looks like this. A more 'friendly' UI attracts people who don't have much of note to say, will consume what they're given, and respond to ads more.
- ipaddr 3y ago
  Not the target market for a site who requires free writers with something to say
- sofixa 3y ago
  > A more 'friendly' UI attracts people who don't have much of note to say, will consume what they're given, and respond to ads more. That's a weird sort of elitism. Friendly UIs attract everyone, isn't that what a friendly UI means?
  - mrtksn 3y ago
    If friendly UI attracts everyone but the other attracts specific type of people, then you will have different concentration of user types. It's a bit like casual games Vs games which are hard to master - completely different types of users.
  - suby 3y ago
    The phrasing has elements of elitism, but zooming out I don't think the idea itself is inherently elitist. One of the issues with reddit's redesign is that they made it more 'friendly' by introducing more media inline. If you have a site that allows for discussion of any topic like reddit, but optimizes for gigantic pictures and animations and by default your feed is filled with content that is more suited for that (eg, things like cat pictures), then you're absolutely going to attract a different audience than a utilitarian pure text site. People who just want to scroll through a feed of cat pictures are going to spend their time on a site optimized for it. Of course, there is overlap in interests and you'll find a lot of people who'd prefer a utilitarian site to also occasionally like scrolling through cat pictures, but it seems clear to me that the shape of the ui will cause a divergence and overall different culture on a given site. A better example for this than reddit is probably imgur -- you're almost certainly not going there for intellectual discussion, right? I think the contention here is the word friendly being a proxy for less information density and for a larger number of images / video.
  - George83728 3y ago
    McDonalds is friendly, their workers all smile at you and wish you a happy day, may even give you three sauce packets for free. Their adverts are cheerful and positive, full of platitudes about how great everything is and how they contribute to your community... But can you honestly say McDonalds appeals to everybody? Some people would rather eat at an expensive restaurant where the host with a fake french accent turns away underdressed plebs.
  - xdennis 3y ago
    I think 'friendly' is the wrong way to look at it. I'd characterize it as "text-dense" vs "spacy and image/video oriented". The second is more immediate, it takes less concentration, so it attracts more people and more information that's not very meaningful. By keeping things text-only, you keep the information more meaningful.
badwolf 3y ago
It's also important to remember they didn't just 'build an app for phones' They bought AlienBlue - a 3rd party app, that they now claim shouldn't now exist, and should never have existed.
- tomomomomomo 3y ago
  Alienblue was the first app I bought. Then reddit bought it and latter canned it for the offical app. They kept changing it until it became the monstrosity we have today. On mobile, I browse reddit through old.reddit.com - anything else is an awful experience

cjs_ac 3y ago

The visual design of the interface selects different segments humanity for the user base. That's why HN looks like this. A more 'friendly' UI attracts people who don't have much of note to say, will consume what they're given, and respond to ads more.

ipaddr 3y ago
Not the target market for a site who requires free writers with something to say
sofixa 3y ago
> A more 'friendly' UI attracts people who don't have much of note to say, will consume what they're given, and respond to ads more. That's a weird sort of elitism. Friendly UIs attract everyone, isn't that what a friendly UI means?
- mrtksn 3y ago
  If friendly UI attracts everyone but the other attracts specific type of people, then you will have different concentration of user types. It's a bit like casual games Vs games which are hard to master - completely different types of users.
- suby 3y ago
  The phrasing has elements of elitism, but zooming out I don't think the idea itself is inherently elitist. One of the issues with reddit's redesign is that they made it more 'friendly' by introducing more media inline. If you have a site that allows for discussion of any topic like reddit, but optimizes for gigantic pictures and animations and by default your feed is filled with content that is more suited for that (eg, things like cat pictures), then you're absolutely going to attract a different audience than a utilitarian pure text site. People who just want to scroll through a feed of cat pictures are going to spend their time on a site optimized for it. Of course, there is overlap in interests and you'll find a lot of people who'd prefer a utilitarian site to also occasionally like scrolling through cat pictures, but it seems clear to me that the shape of the ui will cause a divergence and overall different culture on a given site. A better example for this than reddit is probably imgur -- you're almost certainly not going there for intellectual discussion, right? I think the contention here is the word friendly being a proxy for less information density and for a larger number of images / video.
- George83728 3y ago
  McDonalds is friendly, their workers all smile at you and wish you a happy day, may even give you three sauce packets for free. Their adverts are cheerful and positive, full of platitudes about how great everything is and how they contribute to your community... But can you honestly say McDonalds appeals to everybody? Some people would rather eat at an expensive restaurant where the host with a fake french accent turns away underdressed plebs.
- xdennis 3y ago
  I think 'friendly' is the wrong way to look at it. I'd characterize it as "text-dense" vs "spacy and image/video oriented". The second is more immediate, it takes less concentration, so it attracts more people and more information that's not very meaningful. By keeping things text-only, you keep the information more meaningful.

badwolf 3y ago

It's also important to remember they didn't just 'build an app for phones' They bought AlienBlue - a 3rd party app, that they now claim shouldn't now exist, and should never have existed.

tomomomomomo 3y ago
Alienblue was the first app I bought. Then reddit bought it and latter canned it for the offical app. They kept changing it until it became the monstrosity we have today. On mobile, I browse reddit through old.reddit.com - anything else is an awful experience