Hacker News Reader

Comment by kabacha | Hacker News Reader

You can still browser old UI without any of these issues via https://old.reddit.com AFAIK

Then sometimes you click a link and it takes you out of old and into the hellscape that is modern reddit.

Can't wait until some manager decides old needs to go. They'll end up losing a bunch of long time users and some other site will finally gain traction.

If you're on desktop Reddit Enhancement Suite has an option for forcing the old version. I've never been brought back to the new design.

But yeah, old.reddit.com probably won't be around forever.

In my discussions with Reddit admins, they've said that old.reddit.com will be around forever. However, it won't get new features (or a very watered down version of new features).

After all, .compact links [0] still work, and those are super old.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/hackernews/comments/imcl1h/reddit_a...

Yea sure, and Oculus will never require a Facebook account.

>However, it won't get new features

From the new features they have been adding lately, I'd call this a benefit... And that is the big disconnect between admins and the old community.

It's also just a regular profile setting to use the old design. RES isn't required.

This has some serious Eternal September vibes, like when we reached the tipping point of more normies than nerds using the web. It makes me unreasonably angry that average users are being led down this path and are blithely accepting it, with those who object seemingly a shrinking minority.

I was practically shouting at my screen the first couple times I got thrown into the new design (before I figured out how to avoid it). If reddit really does shut down the old interface, I will absolutely be gone.

> This has some serious Eternal September vibes, like when we reached the tipping point of more normies than nerds using the web.

Sure, but there's something positive about this. Usenet's external September happend with maybe a million users, Reddit's with hundreds of millions. Which means that bigger communities are possible without the problems happening :)

On the other hand, Reddit surely changed during its growth, so there were probably multiple similar events. After all, HN was created as PG felt that was not a good place to discuss startup ideas.

There is a plugin for chrome which forces old.reddit.com, can't remember the name but should be easy enough to find. And for mobile I use the Apollo app, which is fantastic. I've actually switched from using reddit mostly on desktop to using it almost exclusively on mobile because Apollo is so good

I added a rule in HTTPS Everywhere that redirects everything to the old site.

Even if that’s possible I personally feel that if those who run Reddit don’t want to web experience to be user-focused then I feel that I don’t want to spend my time there. I rather use HN or Lobsters instead.

I'd never heard of Lobsters before, I am assuming you are referring to this site: https://lobste.rs/ Looks interesting, thanks!

I occasionally checked https://tildes.net/

This seems great, thanks for the recommendation. I love that gruvbox and atom one are default themes.

i.reddit.com is even better.

Edit: As a number of others have mentioned below. I too have reduced reddit intake due to the poor UI amongst a realisation of its not a good use of my time.

Last time I saw the redesign, there was an option to "opt out of the redesign" in the user menu. It worked — I have never seen it again.

You can even set the old UI to be your default in your preferences, so it will even render the old UI on the standard domain.

The preferences require that you're logged in. If you're logged in, then reddit knows how frequently you're checking r/ChainLinkFences.

There's a Firefox add-on that will ensure that you always see the old Reddit, even without logging in.

Not on mobile though...

Well, full support for add-ons is coming to Firefox Nightly for Android soon(ish), at least.

On mobile and non-mobile, I use Firefox' Redirector addon to redirect all reddit links to https://ns.reddit.com/* which might be the same as old.reddit.com

Then download one of the many applications that use reddit's API and enjoy it before they shut down that too.

The problem seems bigger than user hostile UI.

If the company decided to make the UI not friendly, they will likely continue to make user hostile decisions in the name of maximising growth and profits.

In this case using addons seems like playing catch up with low chance of a long term win.

... checks r/ChainLinkFences ...

NOW there's a sub that needs more love imho.

Wouldn’t they know via fingerprinting your device via the device settings or IP?

They could but seeing how good Reddit's UI is, how good do you think their log scraping is? And do they have the budget for keeping all access logs of anonymous users so they can try to line up all the ChainLinkFence enthusiasts with the people who also frequent r/MarijuanaEnthusiasts and r/WhiteMenGoneWild.

Unfortunately if you make a new account, they have removed that option

Reply on news.ycombinator.com