I wonder if/how soon we'll see a degradation to similar poor usability in dubsmash, or if the people working there can manage to hang on to their product as it is...
At first, they would prompt you to install the web app every other page load, and now they don't even let you expand comment threads.
Why spend so much time and resources on rebuilding your web app if you're gonna cripple the experience so much? The funny thing is it makes conversion rates on the web app even worse, so they have even more reason to push you onto the native version.
The people who hate new reddit are a tiny minority I'm afraid to say, the majority of users on the site probably never even saw the old reddit design.
I introduced my S/O to Reddit ~6 years ago. It took a long time for the site to stick. What finally did it was having the iOS application.
If I can't find what I want, I'll start a new post, or reply to a comment… leading to people getting notifications, leading to clicks, more replies, …
* Good search means you could find stuff easily
* Bad search means you're more likely to post again and continue the re-engagement circle.
Echo chambers, flame wars, brigading, etc. – all were inevitable results of the way the entire platform is structured, and are far worse than the UI having more whitespace.
If I knew how to make a Reddit with all the positives but none of the negatives I'd probably do it myself haha.