New reddit is insanely slow. Just touch your mouse and it fires off 30 network requests.

New reddit looks like a fake spam site and is completely unreadable at a glance.

Legitimate or not, what the user perceives as problematic may make total sense for the business providing the service. Google (Facebook, Reddit, etc.) is not a non-profit or government agency that acts in the interests of the people. It's a business operating on capitalist principles, so profit is, by design, their main drive (of the business as such, not necessarily of the individuals who work there).

Somehow we insist on treating these mega-corporations as if they are always beneficent, and anytime one of them does something that doesn't align the user's and business interests, there is a storm of complaints like this.

Sure, it would be nice if a mega-corporation always acted in its user's interests, but that's not how the current system works.

Ideally, we'd end up with a system where you just pay a company to host your on-line end-points, keeping all data and the software you use personal, and you have the option to move to a competitor at a moment's notice, keeping all identifiers (like an email address now). Where just not there yet.

Now we have a loading indicator and an animated image for the user to watch the progress as they need that.

You have a good point, which is that cars have a horrible UI. One of the most important requirements is the ability to brake fast in an emergency, yet the UI requires you to physically move your foot to another pedal before you can even start to brake.

Why don't they change the UI, then? Mostly because of regulations, I think. It's unclear to me whether bringing a new driving UI to the market would be horribly difficult, costly and risky, or just plain impossible.

While you and a million others might not like the new $webapp UI, it's still a good thing that they can and do get changed. Especially in this case considering you can start using any email client anytime if you don't like the web UI.