4 ms·

Old Reddit is now completely unusable without an account. Maybe it's time for me to finally stop using it.

hedora 1mo ago
Do database dumps of it still exist? Maybe it’s time to just download it and Wikipedia, then point an LLM / vectordb at it.
- toomuchtodo 1mo ago
  See if https://github.com/Tryhard-cs/reddit-download-tool https://github.com/Tryhard-cs/reddit-download-tool works, the readme enumerates the data sources it pulls from. Perhaps the way to solve for X is having a scraper serve the data via torrent and/or IPFS vs centralized systems like nitter and xcancel.
- novok 1mo ago
  Yes they do, there are archives that are up to date for the month.
throwaway85825 1mo ago
Old reddit on the tor onion domain still works for me.
- pbhjpbhj 1mo ago
  All the time? It wasn't working for me using tor-browser, nor Brave. I was only a reader of Reddit. I'm on fediverse/Lemmy, mainly https://old.lemmy.world https://old.lemmy.world which feels very familiar! I've not taken the effort to understand fediverse yet, but it feels very old-internet.
ryandrake 1mo ago
Interesting--I'm still using old.reddit.com with no problem, without an account. Maybe the change is not broadly rolled out?
- chrysoprace 1mo ago
  Could be regional - however it's odd that it pops up on old.reddit.com but not reddit.com.
  - thayne 1mo ago
    It happens to me on not old reddit as well
- alex_c 1mo ago
  They’ve been rolling it out gradually. There was a thread on HN about it a couple of weeks ago, it just started affecting my IPs a few days ago. It’s managed to do what years of self-imposed content blockers etc. on my own side have failed to do - finally broke my Reddit addiction!
- 4bpp 1mo ago
  I think gradual rollout is underrecognised as the utterly devious way of implementing user-hostile changes that it is. It doesn't take a lot of scrolling through the comments here to find instances of people who are unaffected by some change or another being inexplicably hostile towards posters who are, implicitly accusing them of anything from incompetence to drama-mongering and misinformation. In that way, some of those who would complain about a change are worn down early on, and by the time the change is rolled out to more people they have already resigned and moved on, preventing a critical mass of opposition from forming.
  - kotaKat 1mo ago
    That's the magic of A/B testing. You get to send an entire "B" group into paranoia and upset about the change they didn't want/like while everyone in "A" gets to gaslight B that B isn't experiencing what they're getting and that it would never happen to A...
  - account42 1mo ago
    Yes, it's a kind of boiling the frog where instead of slowly cranking up the degree of enshittification you do it with the number of affected users instead. In both cases the goal is to avoid a critical mass of user outrage. A/B tests in general should require informed consent just like any other study on human participants. But then most software developers don't care about ethics so this is nothing new.
mrtesthah 1mo ago
Use a LibReddit/Redlib/Teddit/etc. instance.
- account42 1mo ago
  To what end? We're discussing this on a post about the equivalent for another platform being (hopefully temporarily) shutdown so this will never be a reliable long term solution.
  - mrtesthah 1mo ago
    Until we finally overcome this inevitable enshittification by migrating everyone to decentralized communication platforms?
beart 1mo ago
New Reddit is too. They were A/B testing it for a while, but now you can't use it without the login pop-up after a short timespan. The funny thing is, it has nothing to do with how much content you view. So if you really want to read something, you can hit F5 and scroll back down every time the pop-up is shown. Still not worth it. But honestly, Reddit content has taken such a plummeting nose dive over the last few years, this just feels like a final reminder that it's time to move on.
- madaxe_again 1mo ago
  Cynically, I think the purpose is to inflate page view counts. You refresh 10x to read the comments, they report 10x user engagement, and high five each other over successfully meeting their KPIs.
account42 1mo ago
It was time for that a long time ago lol.
pcrh 1mo ago
The changes to old.reddit mean I've started using redlib.catsarch for simple browsing.
DavideNL 1mo ago
You may want to check out Libredirect: https://libredirect.manerakai.com/ https://libredirect.manerakai.com/

Do database dumps of it still exist? Maybe it’s time to just download it and Wikipedia, then point an LLM / vectordb at it.

toomuchtodo 1mo ago
See if https://github.com/Tryhard-cs/reddit-download-tool https://github.com/Tryhard-cs/reddit-download-tool works, the readme enumerates the data sources it pulls from. Perhaps the way to solve for X is having a scraper serve the data via torrent and/or IPFS vs centralized systems like nitter and xcancel.
novok 1mo ago
Yes they do, there are archives that are up to date for the month.

throwaway85825 1mo ago

Old reddit on the tor onion domain still works for me.

pbhjpbhj 1mo ago
All the time? It wasn't working for me using tor-browser, nor Brave. I was only a reader of Reddit. I'm on fediverse/Lemmy, mainly https://old.lemmy.world https://old.lemmy.world which feels very familiar! I've not taken the effort to understand fediverse yet, but it feels very old-internet.

ryandrake 1mo ago

Interesting--I'm still using old.reddit.com with no problem, without an account. Maybe the change is not broadly rolled out?

chrysoprace 1mo ago
Could be regional - however it's odd that it pops up on old.reddit.com but not reddit.com.
- thayne 1mo ago
  It happens to me on not old reddit as well
alex_c 1mo ago
They’ve been rolling it out gradually. There was a thread on HN about it a couple of weeks ago, it just started affecting my IPs a few days ago. It’s managed to do what years of self-imposed content blockers etc. on my own side have failed to do - finally broke my Reddit addiction!
4bpp 1mo ago
I think gradual rollout is underrecognised as the utterly devious way of implementing user-hostile changes that it is. It doesn't take a lot of scrolling through the comments here to find instances of people who are unaffected by some change or another being inexplicably hostile towards posters who are, implicitly accusing them of anything from incompetence to drama-mongering and misinformation. In that way, some of those who would complain about a change are worn down early on, and by the time the change is rolled out to more people they have already resigned and moved on, preventing a critical mass of opposition from forming.
- kotaKat 1mo ago
  That's the magic of A/B testing. You get to send an entire "B" group into paranoia and upset about the change they didn't want/like while everyone in "A" gets to gaslight B that B isn't experiencing what they're getting and that it would never happen to A...
- account42 1mo ago
  Yes, it's a kind of boiling the frog where instead of slowly cranking up the degree of enshittification you do it with the number of affected users instead. In both cases the goal is to avoid a critical mass of user outrage. A/B tests in general should require informed consent just like any other study on human participants. But then most software developers don't care about ethics so this is nothing new.

mrtesthah 1mo ago

Use a LibReddit/Redlib/Teddit/etc. instance.

account42 1mo ago
To what end? We're discussing this on a post about the equivalent for another platform being (hopefully temporarily) shutdown so this will never be a reliable long term solution.
- mrtesthah 1mo ago
  Until we finally overcome this inevitable enshittification by migrating everyone to decentralized communication platforms?

beart 1mo ago

New Reddit is too. They were A/B testing it for a while, but now you can't use it without the login pop-up after a short timespan. The funny thing is, it has nothing to do with how much content you view. So if you really want to read something, you can hit F5 and scroll back down every time the pop-up is shown. Still not worth it. But honestly, Reddit content has taken such a plummeting nose dive over the last few years, this just feels like a final reminder that it's time to move on.

madaxe_again 1mo ago
Cynically, I think the purpose is to inflate page view counts. You refresh 10x to read the comments, they report 10x user engagement, and high five each other over successfully meeting their KPIs.

account42 1mo ago

It was time for that a long time ago lol.

pcrh 1mo ago

The changes to old.reddit mean I've started using redlib.catsarch for simple browsing.

DavideNL 1mo ago

You may want to check out Libredirect: https://libredirect.manerakai.com/ https://libredirect.manerakai.com/