I still find it fascinating how bad the "new reddit" was and still is.
It is so badly coded there was an entire subreddit dedicated to finding bugs for a year or two that they simply shut down after a megathread analysed the amateurish spaghetti code that made up the frontend; race conditions, code duplication and library hell was everywhere.
It's still super sluggish and the pop-over functionality is still so laughably brittle that it's a mystery to me how this was coded by a professional team.
The entire strategization plan of Reddit as a product seems to be a box of hot shit right now. While the new UI in my POV seems to be shitty and slow, they also crammed in many shady practices like "this content is only available on the Reddit app", "this content loads better/faster on the Reddit app", "Open this page in: Reddit App, Chrome (magically assume all browsers are Chrome and that the users are foolish to not notice lol)", and... there are buttons everywhere that keep nagging "Use Reddit App".
Fuck your app Reddit, I am never gonna install your app just because you nag so much. I will use Relay for Reddit instead.
> I still find it fascinating how bad the "new reddit" was and still is.
Leading theory is that it's to push their mobile app (which is probably almost as bad).
The prerequisite for this is that they have a large enough userbase with enough of a network effect that relatively few users will move over the website crippling, the ads, or the mobile app (which I think is plausible).
Perhaps it's time to build an alternative on top of some federated protocol (not necessarily ActivityPub), then make a "bridge" between the two where you can add commends to a Reddit post on $ALTERNATIVE that compliant hybrid clients can render inline, which would allow you to bootstrap an alternative off of Reddit's existing userbase.
New reddit makes me feel flustered and annoyed. So much crap on the screen, and the content is just 1 thing at a time. With old reddit I can quickly scan titles for what I want to look at. Maybe you can fiddle with new reddit UI, I haven't given it much of a chance -- I just stay with what works.
It amazes how a client UI, which could be easily implemented by a single good engineer manages to come out so terrible with a supposed tech company backing it.
And its not like it hasn’t been iterated upon… they continue to change it and never for the better.
Speaks volumes about Reddit’s (lack of) engineering talent. Seriously don’t get why they don’t just contract it out to a talented person
For now. Reddit is clearly, and has been for several years, on a mission to make the web version as terrible as possible so that people will install their app instead. It’s the only reasonable explanation. But I will continue to use Reddit in the web browser until the day they make the web version completely unbearable. And then I will just leave.
This isn't working for me. I'm yet to find a way back to compact mode. Which basically means Reddit on phone is unusable. The information density is terrible on a small screen without compact mode. All pictures shouting for attention.
Edit: turns out the closed the backdoor into compact mode. Enshittification is now in full swing.
The new site is designed for actual children and it's mostly worked.
Generally as social networks age they skew older with the velocity of people leaving > velocity of people coming in = slow death by attrition.
Take AOL or when Yahoo had social features for example. The step before death was their transformation to online senior centers. Facebook is on that path right now.
Reddit has bucked that trend and is continually skewing younger. Teen related subs are some of the most popular on the site.
I also find the site terrible but I've never played roblox or minecraft either - the site is no longer for me, I'm too old for it.
But really congratulations to them for having an almost 20 year old social network that still gets avalanches of highschool kids coming in.
Deprecating the legacy interfaces will get us old people off the site and it'll probably help them - a teen party probably works better without some 35 year olds who are in the corner only because they've stuck around for 17 years.
And honestly we've all get better shit to do these days.
> But really congratulations to them for having an almost 20 year old social network that still gets avalanches of highschool kids coming in.
Yes, congratulations to them.
Unfortunately for them, high school kids rarely have any money to pay for the things being advertised on reddit, so their business model still doesn't work, because older folks don't want to sift through a shitty UI/UX experience with a bunch of high-schoolers who are posting mostly nonsense.
There are some nice subs that are excepted from this, mostly by staying small and well moderated by old-timers, but these small subs don't really pay the bills from what I understand.
Image hosting is a brutal, mostly thankless job that loses tons of money. I remember when Photobucket was the thing, then Imageshack, then tinypic, then imgur. Each one was meant to be simple photo hosting done right, but all eventually become the thing they were trying to replace - bloated websites with intrusive ads.
e: I just realized this is about i.reddit.com and not i.redd.it, but my point still stands.
And in turn, I have ceased using reddit on mobile after a 17-year streak. Guessing old.reddit.com will be the next to go, and then it's goodbye for good.
I would love to know their metrics for the different user experiences. I generally do not mind what they've done with the main page, and android app. The reactions on hackernews clearly do not share that sentiment, but I have to wonder how much of their user-base we really are.
old.reddit.com/r/something.compact still seems to give the i.reddit.com interface, but it's probably a matter of time before it disappears. I'm also a daily i.reddit.com user (during commute).
Basically it's jQuery mobile version of reddit, and it's super fast compared to whatever framework they are using for the regular mobile site.
I just want to read posts, comments and answer them, nothing more, the nag screens telling me to download an app? the loading screens or whatever, just not... why is that i.reddit version so fast and the regular one so slow?
[+] [-] kossTKR|3 years ago|reply
It is so badly coded there was an entire subreddit dedicated to finding bugs for a year or two that they simply shut down after a megathread analysed the amateurish spaghetti code that made up the frontend; race conditions, code duplication and library hell was everywhere.
It's still super sluggish and the pop-over functionality is still so laughably brittle that it's a mystery to me how this was coded by a professional team.
* Details on the "holy shit" (as one user puts it) React code here: https://old.reddit.com/r/reactjs/comments/spbylv/reddits_new...
[+] [-] princevegeta89|3 years ago|reply
Fuck your app Reddit, I am never gonna install your app just because you nag so much. I will use Relay for Reddit instead.
[+] [-] throw10920|3 years ago|reply
Leading theory is that it's to push their mobile app (which is probably almost as bad).
The prerequisite for this is that they have a large enough userbase with enough of a network effect that relatively few users will move over the website crippling, the ads, or the mobile app (which I think is plausible).
Perhaps it's time to build an alternative on top of some federated protocol (not necessarily ActivityPub), then make a "bridge" between the two where you can add commends to a Reddit post on $ALTERNATIVE that compliant hybrid clients can render inline, which would allow you to bootstrap an alternative off of Reddit's existing userbase.
[+] [-] legohead|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrguyorama|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adam_arthur|3 years ago|reply
And its not like it hasn’t been iterated upon… they continue to change it and never for the better.
Speaks volumes about Reddit’s (lack of) engineering talent. Seriously don’t get why they don’t just contract it out to a talented person
[+] [-] greenie_beans|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] livelielife|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jorams|3 years ago|reply
You can add .compact to any URL on old.reddit.com to get the same version that used to be on i.reddit.com.
[+] [-] codetrotter|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tootie|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yrro|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jabjoe|3 years ago|reply
Edit: turns out the closed the backdoor into compact mode. Enshittification is now in full swing.
[+] [-] ipcress_file|3 years ago|reply
I think I'm done. Maybe Teddit.
[+] [-] xolve|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kristopolous|3 years ago|reply
Generally as social networks age they skew older with the velocity of people leaving > velocity of people coming in = slow death by attrition.
Take AOL or when Yahoo had social features for example. The step before death was their transformation to online senior centers. Facebook is on that path right now.
Reddit has bucked that trend and is continually skewing younger. Teen related subs are some of the most popular on the site.
I also find the site terrible but I've never played roblox or minecraft either - the site is no longer for me, I'm too old for it.
But really congratulations to them for having an almost 20 year old social network that still gets avalanches of highschool kids coming in.
Deprecating the legacy interfaces will get us old people off the site and it'll probably help them - a teen party probably works better without some 35 year olds who are in the corner only because they've stuck around for 17 years.
And honestly we've all get better shit to do these days.
[+] [-] antisthenes|3 years ago|reply
Yes, congratulations to them.
Unfortunately for them, high school kids rarely have any money to pay for the things being advertised on reddit, so their business model still doesn't work, because older folks don't want to sift through a shitty UI/UX experience with a bunch of high-schoolers who are posting mostly nonsense.
There are some nice subs that are excepted from this, mostly by staying small and well moderated by old-timers, but these small subs don't really pay the bills from what I understand.
[+] [-] segasaturn|3 years ago|reply
e: I just realized this is about i.reddit.com and not i.redd.it, but my point still stands.
[+] [-] Dalewyn|3 years ago|reply
History thus dictates Discord will become a bloated, malvertisement mess in a few years' time. We'll see, I guess.
[+] [-] Sohcahtoa82|3 years ago|reply
So why hasn't someone made an image hosting site that uses Cloudflare R2?
[+] [-] marvin|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IronBacon|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] UberFly|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gukov|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] flerchin|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] __derek__|3 years ago|reply
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35278588
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35281562
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35283379
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35288552
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35343850
[+] [-] kzrdude|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] calvinmorrison|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] snwfog|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dmonitor|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] freewizard|3 years ago|reply
there are reasons to like old./i. but given reddit seems friendly with 3p clients like this one, Apollo and many others, guess it's time to move on.
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] beachwood23|3 years ago|reply
Orion Browser (by Kagi) can still access i.reddit.com.
This is the only way I will use mobile reddit. I don't need an app for something that can be a simple, clean web page.
[+] [-] anthk|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] civicsquid|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throw_m239339|3 years ago|reply
I just want to read posts, comments and answer them, nothing more, the nag screens telling me to download an app? the loading screens or whatever, just not... why is that i.reddit version so fast and the regular one so slow?
[+] [-] nicbou|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Rebelgecko|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] metalliqaz|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skyyler|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gammarator|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ftth_finland|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rwparris2|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JudithAnsten|3 years ago|reply
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