[lapser]

Why is it that companies go towards bad UX when they start ramping up profits? Download size is one thing, but ignoring that, how is it that they thought the new (Reddit) website was a good idea? Sure it's mobile friendly, but it's barely useable on mobile and desktop? For example: why do I have to constantly click read more?

This seems to be a common thing with all kinds of companies, Digg, Facebook, many others. It's not like you can't build ads into the current site, right? Tracking can be easily built-in these days. Sure it'll decrease initial download speeds, but the UX won't be as terrible as what they keep coming up with.

[robador]

Not based on anything I can verify, but my feeling is that when a company gets to a certain size and becomes high profile, it will attract certain types of employees as well. The more high profile, the more a UI/UX department will want to put their stamp on it. Instead of looking at what would make the product more user friendly and accessible, they'll be attracted to the shiny new things that they can do, simply because they can. The little nuances that are present in the old are allowed to fester until all of them combined lead to a general view that the whole thing is crap. Instead of doing small incremental improvements, they'll convince everybody (up to c-level) that a complete overhaul is the only way to move forward. This usually tends to happen in an echo chamber, where everybody who doesn't have the same vision of grandeur is excluded as part of the conversation. That, combined with business goals around profitability, is a dangerous thing to happen, and from my experience usually ends up in tears.

But hey, I like boring things ;-)

[lapser]

But a complete revamp doesn't necessarily mean bad UI/UX. It just means something different. It can be done in an equally good or better way. In comparison, the Reddit UI was just horrendous. It's barely usable. Without old.reddit or 3rd party apps, I would have probably stopped using Reddit by now due to how horrendous it is to use.

[23B1]

I'm guessing it's because UX as a field has gone from focusing on usability and aesthetics to darkpatterns in the service of commercialization.

[dreamcompiler]

It used to be somewhat difficult to track a reader's progress solely from the browser's scrollbar. Not impossible, but it wasn't something the average code-camp newbie could figure out. So sticking a stupid "Read More" button on the page was the default solution.

That still seems to be the solution for a whole lot of websites, even though the Intersection Observer API now exists.

I don't get it.

[zelphirkalt]

Later in life of these social media websites governed by a profit oriented company, the new metric becomes engagement (Ka-ching! $$). It does not matter to them, how the UX suffers ... until it starts to matter. But by then it might be too late.