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That's the issue. The thing that made them worthwhile was a very basic set of functionality. Every single other feature they've tried to add was poorly implemen

That's the issue. The thing that made them worthwhile was a very basic set of functionality. Every single other feature they've tried to add was poorly implemented and not picked up by users. It just doesn't make sense as a business. You don't need a million devs to run a forum site, you need them to add more and more bloat to convince investors you're growing. All they have done is pushed ads harder. That is all they really have to offer.

cactusplant7374 3y ago
They are growing every year. https://www.statista.com/forecasts/1309791/reddit-mau-worldwide https://www.statista.com/forecasts/1309791/reddit-mau-worldw...
- queuebert 3y ago
  And they still have one of the worst apps (and website) in the game. Seems like that would be some low-hanging fruit.
  - tempsy 3y ago
    i still use the old version on web and it works great i agree the new version is very busy and buggy on mobile web
    - __rito__ 3y ago
      Yeah, I have Old Reddit redirect on all of my devices, and I won't touch the official app with a ten foot pole.
      - dmix 3y ago
        Never got the complaints with the official app. What's the issue? Last time I asked someone this question they mentioned some power user stuff that didn't really apply to regular Reddit content consumers / casual posters.
        tempsy 3y ago
        imo it's just unnecessarily busy and can be buggy. if you spend some time using the old web version, which feels very HN like, you'll wonder why you'd ever use the new one.
    - weaksauce 3y ago
      the app is absolute trash and the new.reddit is almost as bad. if they remove old i'm out
- babypuncher 3y ago
  That growth is predicated on a feature set that has been more or less untouched for over a decade. That core feature set is still very good. I've seen no evidence that anything they've introduced in the last 10 years has contributed to any of that growth, and my evidence is that just about every feature announced or implemented since then is now either gone or largely ignored by the userbase.
  - jsheard 3y ago
    Even the overhauled UI has gone ignored by many users, thanks to the old UI remaining available as an option, but I imagine it's only a matter of time before they pull the plug on that so they can "enhance the sponsored post viewing experience".
    - trogdor 3y ago
      I have no evidence for this, but my hunch is that an inconsequentially-small percentage of Reddit users go out of their way to use Reddit’s old UI.
      - VHRanger 3y ago
        Those users are disproportionately mods and active users though. Reddit can't easily do away with it. They considered this around the 3rd party app fiasco and it was clear old Reddit has a few years left because mods allhate the new Reddit UI
      - throwaway48476 3y ago
        Yes but what percent of active posters use it? It's going to be much higher and the site will die without new content.
  - PaulHoule 3y ago
    There is nothing special about Reddit unless you mean Reddit was in the right place and the right time to establish a two-sided market. It's very hard to kill a two-sided market when it gets established. Look at Craigslist or Twitter. An interesting thing about Reddit to me is many people who look at it see strongly offputting things like being overrun by image memes but when you look at it closely there is so much there about so many subjects. From time to time you find those brilliant social media posts that remind me of some of the emails from the Enron Emails data set where people talk about what they did for training in the army. Perhaps that is what keeps people coming back or maybe they are all about the memes.
- gustavus 3y ago
  Now show us the percentage of those that are real people and not bots, and the number of accounts that are from previously banned users. I mean heck I've gotten to the point where I can only go 2 or 3 months before my account gets banned and then I have to spin up a new one. Come to think of it that might be a reason why their ban happy, more people you ban who come back looks like a new user signup.
  - Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
    > I mean heck I've gotten to the point where I can only go 2 or 3 months before my account gets banned and then I have to spin up a new one. User error. It's really not hard to not get banned. Site-wide, at least. I'm pretty active and my account is nearly 13 years old.
    - 9991 3y ago
      Pretty easy if you have no controversial opinions.
      - Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
        This reeks of "Oh you know the ones" https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/1050391663552671744?lang=en https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/105039166355267174... Conservative: I have been censored for my conservative views Me: Holy shit! You were censored for wanting lower taxes? Con: LOL no...no not those views Me: So....deregulation? Con: Haha no not those views either Me: Which views, exactly? Con: Oh, you know the ones
        cactusplant7374 3y ago
        There is a blog post describing the criminal history of a particular mod. If you post that link on Reddit you are automatically banned.
        gustavus 3y ago
        If you must know some reasons I got banned is horrible awful terrible evil opinions such as - suggesting that COVID-19 was the result of a lab leak due to not following safety protocols - Questioning if the full shutdown of schools for a disease which had a relatively low mortality rate in children was the best decisio and if we fully had considered the impacts. - suggesting that predators could abuse gender self identification laws to gain access to new victims. - and one satirical posts advocating "let us grill it all in a beautiful nuclear inferno." It seems though you are suggesting there are only a narrowly defined opinions that are acceptable to hold and that deviations outside of those are so heretical that should not be allowed to exist.
- realusername 3y ago
  Interesting, I used to be a member of the French community which peaked around 2017/2018 and kept decreasing ever since. I wouldn't say it's a ghost town now but it became a minor forum. I guess they grew in other countries.
- darkhorse222 3y ago
  Ah, but I would guess those are low quality users, i.e. they don't vote, they don't comment, they don't post. While that doesn't matter to advertisers, it does matter to the health of your content network. And their features have had zero positive effects on their community health. You can run an ad on a subway and get more users. That doesn't mean you're doing a good job. The only reason those users have something to see is because of community health.
  - dageshi 3y ago
    I would guess they're no different to any other users in the past decade. In other words a percentage will comment and a small percentage will post. It's always been that way.
    - dwringer 3y ago
      LLM's-at-home are in a vastly different place than they were 10, 5, or even 2 years ago, so I'm not sure the assumptions about typical traffic from then hold true now.
  - dmix 3y ago
    What are you basing this on?
pipes 3y ago
I rarely use it now because of the web front end. Yeah old.reddit.com and plugins to redirect to it help a bit. Also why on earth would I want to use an app instead of a web browser for a site that lists wen links. Oh yeah they stopped making the site about links and more about internal content. It really is a pile of shit compared to what it used to be.
moritzwarhier 3y ago
Reddit is the forum to end all forums, with a spice of imageboards. And it is ad-supported. People who have partaken in small PHPbb style forums probably can tell the story - moderation and bandwidth cost time. That's all, a simple, dumb business model based on advertising and market share, or better: mind share. The last part is Reddit's moat, no more, no less. My 2 cents.

cactusplant7374 3y ago

They are growing every year. https://www.statista.com/forecasts/1309791/reddit-mau-worldwide https://www.statista.com/forecasts/1309791/reddit-mau-worldw...

queuebert 3y ago
And they still have one of the worst apps (and website) in the game. Seems like that would be some low-hanging fruit.
- tempsy 3y ago
  i still use the old version on web and it works great i agree the new version is very busy and buggy on mobile web
  - __rito__ 3y ago
    Yeah, I have Old Reddit redirect on all of my devices, and I won't touch the official app with a ten foot pole.
    - dmix 3y ago
      Never got the complaints with the official app. What's the issue? Last time I asked someone this question they mentioned some power user stuff that didn't really apply to regular Reddit content consumers / casual posters.
      - tempsy 3y ago
        imo it's just unnecessarily busy and can be buggy. if you spend some time using the old web version, which feels very HN like, you'll wonder why you'd ever use the new one.
  - weaksauce 3y ago
    the app is absolute trash and the new.reddit is almost as bad. if they remove old i'm out
babypuncher 3y ago
That growth is predicated on a feature set that has been more or less untouched for over a decade. That core feature set is still very good. I've seen no evidence that anything they've introduced in the last 10 years has contributed to any of that growth, and my evidence is that just about every feature announced or implemented since then is now either gone or largely ignored by the userbase.
- jsheard 3y ago
  Even the overhauled UI has gone ignored by many users, thanks to the old UI remaining available as an option, but I imagine it's only a matter of time before they pull the plug on that so they can "enhance the sponsored post viewing experience".
  - trogdor 3y ago
    I have no evidence for this, but my hunch is that an inconsequentially-small percentage of Reddit users go out of their way to use Reddit’s old UI.
    - VHRanger 3y ago
      Those users are disproportionately mods and active users though. Reddit can't easily do away with it. They considered this around the 3rd party app fiasco and it was clear old Reddit has a few years left because mods allhate the new Reddit UI
    - throwaway48476 3y ago
      Yes but what percent of active posters use it? It's going to be much higher and the site will die without new content.
- PaulHoule 3y ago
  There is nothing special about Reddit unless you mean Reddit was in the right place and the right time to establish a two-sided market. It's very hard to kill a two-sided market when it gets established. Look at Craigslist or Twitter. An interesting thing about Reddit to me is many people who look at it see strongly offputting things like being overrun by image memes but when you look at it closely there is so much there about so many subjects. From time to time you find those brilliant social media posts that remind me of some of the emails from the Enron Emails data set where people talk about what they did for training in the army. Perhaps that is what keeps people coming back or maybe they are all about the memes.
gustavus 3y ago
Now show us the percentage of those that are real people and not bots, and the number of accounts that are from previously banned users. I mean heck I've gotten to the point where I can only go 2 or 3 months before my account gets banned and then I have to spin up a new one. Come to think of it that might be a reason why their ban happy, more people you ban who come back looks like a new user signup.
- Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
  > I mean heck I've gotten to the point where I can only go 2 or 3 months before my account gets banned and then I have to spin up a new one. User error. It's really not hard to not get banned. Site-wide, at least. I'm pretty active and my account is nearly 13 years old.
  - 9991 3y ago
    Pretty easy if you have no controversial opinions.
    - Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
      This reeks of "Oh you know the ones" https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/1050391663552671744?lang=en https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/105039166355267174... Conservative: I have been censored for my conservative views Me: Holy shit! You were censored for wanting lower taxes? Con: LOL no...no not those views Me: So....deregulation? Con: Haha no not those views either Me: Which views, exactly? Con: Oh, you know the ones
      - cactusplant7374 3y ago
        There is a blog post describing the criminal history of a particular mod. If you post that link on Reddit you are automatically banned.
      - gustavus 3y ago
        If you must know some reasons I got banned is horrible awful terrible evil opinions such as - suggesting that COVID-19 was the result of a lab leak due to not following safety protocols - Questioning if the full shutdown of schools for a disease which had a relatively low mortality rate in children was the best decisio and if we fully had considered the impacts. - suggesting that predators could abuse gender self identification laws to gain access to new victims. - and one satirical posts advocating "let us grill it all in a beautiful nuclear inferno." It seems though you are suggesting there are only a narrowly defined opinions that are acceptable to hold and that deviations outside of those are so heretical that should not be allowed to exist.
realusername 3y ago
Interesting, I used to be a member of the French community which peaked around 2017/2018 and kept decreasing ever since. I wouldn't say it's a ghost town now but it became a minor forum. I guess they grew in other countries.
darkhorse222 3y ago
Ah, but I would guess those are low quality users, i.e. they don't vote, they don't comment, they don't post. While that doesn't matter to advertisers, it does matter to the health of your content network. And their features have had zero positive effects on their community health. You can run an ad on a subway and get more users. That doesn't mean you're doing a good job. The only reason those users have something to see is because of community health.
- dageshi 3y ago
  I would guess they're no different to any other users in the past decade. In other words a percentage will comment and a small percentage will post. It's always been that way.
  - dwringer 3y ago
    LLM's-at-home are in a vastly different place than they were 10, 5, or even 2 years ago, so I'm not sure the assumptions about typical traffic from then hold true now.
- dmix 3y ago
  What are you basing this on?

pipes 3y ago

I rarely use it now because of the web front end. Yeah old.reddit.com and plugins to redirect to it help a bit. Also why on earth would I want to use an app instead of a web browser for a site that lists wen links. Oh yeah they stopped making the site about links and more about internal content. It really is a pile of shit compared to what it used to be.

moritzwarhier 3y ago

Reddit is the forum to end all forums, with a spice of imageboards. And it is ad-supported. People who have partaken in small PHPbb style forums probably can tell the story - moderation and bandwidth cost time. That's all, a simple, dumb business model based on advertising and market share, or better: mind share. The last part is Reddit's moat, no more, no less. My 2 cents.