Reddit is slowly killing the old interface? native image galleries are invisible
old.reddit.com
old.reddit.com
But the web UI, combined with Google AMP, made it unusable.
I’ve gone back to the app but with iOS screen time restrictions.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/apollo-for-reddit/id979274575
That is until they become even more greedy and ban third party apps. Probably by the end of next year. The reasons will be 'privacy of users' and 'letting users access reddit via a unified interface'. Or some bs like that
In the old view, I can read a page full of threaded comments on a thread I've clicked into. In the new layout, you get maybe five comments, and a scroll to the next thread. It is awful.
old.reddit.com alleviates this but not for much longer I'm sure.
Then the lovely firefox will periodically decide not to allow 'trusted site exceptions' disallowing you from visiting old.reddit.com. All in all I find it's too much work most of the time.
[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.quantumbad...
[1] https://apps.apple.com/sk/app/apollo-for-reddit/id979274575
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.laurenceda...
So, if I cannot get to old.reddit, I stop going there, very simple.
I am glad hackernews/ycombinator still has what I consider the best WEB/Comment setup I have ever seen.
1. Why are they forcing me to use their app so much? it's just not practical: for example if I quit the app and come back it doesn't return me to the page I was looking at; worse it often doesn't display comments for me (infinite loading).
2. Why is the web redesign so bad? Who are they trying to cater for? There's just so much friction in reading comments from multiple posts now, when I click on a post to read the comments an then outside it scroll back up to the beginning. Why can't I read comments if I'm not signed in?
* did someone pause on a post, mark it * time on page, * whatever other crazy metric you can show to advertisers * in-line advertisements
Also, the walled garden makes it so you get the endorphin hit of clicking the button and it can algorithmically entice you back with notifications and other engagements.
Having an account and using their mobile app makes it easier to track you, easier to show you ads and likely worth more per advertisement.
Try https://www.reddit.com/r/Watches/ in an incognito window to see it in the new Reddit, then try it old reddit.
I can't tell you the number of times I thought I was having a meaningful conversation only to find out, after asking, that the user was a kid.
It's much more bearable if you always open posts in a new tab (I'm talking on desktop; on mobile use a third-party app). You can configure it in the feed settings. Then the view is very similar to old Reddit, and you keep the posts list unchanged.
That's an awful trend.
Social Media isn't about innovation anymore. It's about buying a stake and rent seeking. And guess what nobody is going to sell you an acre to get started just because you feel like giving it the college try.
I'm sure they put a lot of effort into serving their own images and video and placing ads in just the right place for maximal accidental clickage but why would the user care?
I'd argue that the following are fundamental changes that have impacted the community in a big way:
- Selling 10% of the business to Tencent/Chinese investors
- Firing their community managers in 2015 and not replacing them
- When I first joined Reddit it was more technology focused, now it's all pop culture and memes. Although Tech subs are still plentiful so it can still be that site. (With some effort)
- Banning any Sub-Reddit's that go against whatever the admins mood is on a particular day, or content that no longer fits with their "We have shareholders and need to keep them happy" mantra. Reddit is absolutely not a place for free speech/uncensored discussions these days. Because of both toxic mods and horrible admins.
- Huge increase of censorship across the site in Sub-Reddit's, Posts and Comments
- Users care about the video stuff because Reddit's video hosting is fundamentally broken and hardly works, but they would rather keep it broken because it makes it harder to download videos (DASH)
- The whole new design is anti-user, the site is just masses of white space, super slow, JS heavy and pretty much unusable outside a third party mobile client. The day old.reddit.com gets shut down will be a sad day.
None of this stuff was a problem 14 years ago
Although some of the above comes with the toxicity that tends to come with huge community growth.
You can argue the above isn't significant, but as someone who's been on the site for 14 years, it sure ain't the same place I signed up for all those years ago.
On desktop the new design is much easier to use, it took me awhile to realize, but being able to hit esc and be right back where you were in the story feed is super nice.
Previously you'd get a token in the URL that was some type of state that hopefully let you resume, but it didn't work if you spent too long reading comments and then pressed the back button.
The new reddit UI solved this problem by simply not having users ever "leave" the home page.
The default subreddits are as bad as you'd expect, but there's many awesome smaller ones. Pray your niche subreddit never becomes default.
IMO this is why they keep old reddit around. Some use reddit for bite-sized entertainment; others use it for serious advice and discussion. It makes sense for the site to have two modes.
That hasn't stopped any company from total collapse before and it won't now. Other social media sites have people somewhat locked in since it's all about staying in contact with friends and following certain people. You need to push the entire crowd at once to have a good replacement, but those sites still die when they screw up enough. Reddit's a place where people mostly read comments, see some funny pictures or news, and then go about their day. There's a lot less keeping people from dropping it and moving on.
1. Status customization. Apps and games based on communities have proved that this business model can bring lots of $$$, the whole idea is to let users customize the way they appear to others in exchange for money. Think "skins". I've heard even discord does it.
2. Competition platform. Trade will always flow if things work well, but how can people trade on your platform? Allow people to produce themes and plugins for communities, and create a marketplace for customizing your own community. Then take a cut.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CalvinBot/comments/bdxb6h/why_are_p...
It's been over a year & the bug is still there.
A good example of this is GitHub-style ``` ... ``` codeblocks, which don't work on old.reddit.com, but do in the new UI.
EDIT: Nevermind, after investigating the issue does not seem to be the CSS.
Obligatory cred: first used reddit in...2006? Used it to chat with friends around the world on subjects of mutual interest. It was fun, of course. I've mainly lurked since then.
Now? If one sifts through the records there is great info in there, but most subs I want to enjoy are overrun with, how to say, self-congratulatory amateurs. It's neither useful nor entertaining.
Even joke subs feel tired and decadent.
Meanwhile, mob rule downvoting pervades.
It is broken.
Good riddance.
Is this a good thing? Of all social media, Reddit seems to me like it has the most potential to actually do something positive for society. They’ve seriously been dropping the ball with execution in the past several years but I don’t know that we’d be better off with them disappearing without a better alternative.
For now, you can still edit the target URL manually.
There's 3 new comics per week. It's not like you can sustain a whole website on that.
I don't know, xkcd.com seems to be doing just that.
I only use Reddit from behind Tor, on desktop, so I open a bunch of tabs to amortize the load time, then read them in sequence and close each one as I read it.
If you have fast Internet and a short attention span, and faith in your web browser's back button, maybe that doesn't make sense.
Note that I have my mobile settings to use the desktop version and I only use the old interface.
It's possible there's a bug that rolled out affecting galleries posted after 1AM UTC.
Give me plain HTML, minimal CSS, and a template engine any day of the week.
I was really hoping WASM might fill this gap, and it still might, but it'll be a while from what I can tell.
This flow is obviously not ideal, and would be prevented with a little Javascript.
The principle that site designers need to start abiding by is to not reinvent the browser--there's no need to use JS for routing or single page apps. The browser does that fantastically already. All that's needed of JS is to add asynchronicity to pages that need to update state without interrupting a running service.
Modern reddit does not gracefully degrade: it requires JS to click buttons, to load images, to scroll, etc. Old reddit still works well without JS. So does Google for that matter.
The new web caters to advertisers, and rightly assumes that everyone has a browser that follows JavaScript standards.
... Or better standards that don't require JavaScript. The jump from "we need seamless navigation" to "let's use a Turing-complete language" makes zero sense.
(14 days ago) https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/jrmclg/gallery_...
Here’s a list of alternatives: https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/hi97fz/...
Whereas if I go to the root page of reddit, I get content.
I think that's a huge turn off for alot of people.
Show interesting content, and let the product speak for itself.
If you go to Hacker News, you see content, you don't see a page explaining why Hacker News is great.
I just closed the Parler website rather than figure out what hoops I have to jump through to see content and what it's like.
If you're going to make an X alternative, you have cater to it's core audience. In Reddit's case, it's the power users (folks who post all the content) the moderators, and the commenters.
If you don't give them stuff Reddit won't, you won't do well. A new platform has to be significantly better for all of those groups or it doesn't have a chance