Reddit is full of these patterns in order to drive users from mobile web to app. Reddit mobile web really sets the bar for user-hostile UI in my opinion.
Who the hell thinks what I want when I click on an article is to bring it into a related article feed with 1.5 comments showing? If I accidentally click outside of the article area the whole thing vanishes with no way to get back where I was. I had thought these issues would be obvious and they would clean it up, but here we are months later and it is still broken from a UX standpoint.
I guess all of the devs moved over to work on their bespoke media player? You know, the one that barely works half of the time.
And now it renders Gifs inside replies and every single fucking thread has the "omg gifs!" thread voted to the top.
The modern Reddit UI is a complete and utter tragedy of design and engineering. But it serves ads, so who cares.
They only redesigned it so that they could make ads first-class.
And which becomes more difficult when sites break middle-clicking and other shortcuts to open links in new tabs, or when the "links" ain't actually links but just something on which they tack on an onClick() and run a bunch of JS to reinvent the concept of a link.
What we need is something that locally duplicates the page state into another tab. But then, sites already break that by a) firing off requests that can be dangerous to duplicate (not idempotent) and b) synchronizing state across tabs (argh!) so you can’t have different state in different tabs for the same domain (or just session, idk).
Facebook is notorious about that last bit and won’t let you eg have one tab with your feed best visible and another with a conversation hovering over it all.
There was a Reddit tech lead on YC News a day or two ago who straight up admitted that they do this on purpose to drive up DAU/MAU. He also said that his options are up, so fuck you.
It's may not be the cleanest interface, but it's a nice reminder of the more utilitarian days.
- the categories page is cluttered.
- results page is messy and annoying to parse.
- the site only supports plaintext posts and has an annoying POSTing funnel.
I haven't looked but I wouldn't be surprised if there was a QoL extension made to cover all the holes left by the 'nailed design'. It's good but not great, as no web design lasts forever.
Why would they? It works.
Reddit doesn’t want you to lurk without an account or browse on mobile on a browser. They make less money that way. Eventually I am sure they will break old.reddit.com once they think they no longer need the holdouts (who I suspect are a lot of power users).
As someone who has used Reddit for probably 10 years at this point, it makes me sad that some place that I at times legitimately felt like a “member of a community” would break my use case like this (I have accounts but on mobile I sometimes just want to lurk/browse without logging in). But it’s their website and they can do what they want with it. Our only recourse is to complain and try alternatives.
Likewise, the "1 comment displayed" thing seems like a "please consume the media and move on" effort potentially. Remember, they don't make money from you reading comments. They make money from you going back to other surfaces where ads are displayed. Namely your feed or another post.
Oddly enough, the video player on old still works way better than the one on new.
- Be logged in.
- Set the view to "classic".
- Always open threads into a new tab. Never just do a left click to open them, use a middle click.
When I click it my iPhone opens the App Store. The App Store then has a big blue "Open" button to launch the app, but of course all context is lost and opening from there brings you to your Reddit front page.
OTOH, once I get there, a lot of Reddit content makes me wonder why I bothered. :-)
To make this more ergonomic, you can add the URL as a search engine with a keyword, e.g.
URL: https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site:reddit.com+%s
Keyword: red
In Firefox you most likely want to use a bookmark with a keyword instead of their new search engine crap.
Now, in the Reddit scenario 99% of the Reddit users don’t mind downloading an app. It’s just us, techies, that 1% who cares. This is totally fine for Reddit. Working as expected.
This is more or less "social network publisher side monetization" SOP.
Then again, my ATM machine still asks me which language I want service in. It’s my hope if I choose something other than English, it calls 9-1-1, slows down the prompts and does nothing irreversible.
Twitter does this too. How the fuck is it even possible?
Will Twitter ever have more than two 9s of reliability as measured from the user's POV?
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-11-specifica...
Granted, I'm aggressive at turning off startup items, managing what services run on boot, and so on, but my point is, each of the things you mention may have been true at one time, but they are not necessarily true today.
edit to note: I'm not defending Microsoft's use of dark patterns, they definitely do push them out and then sometimes back off if there is enough pushback. And that is bad, and should be called out. Just aiming for accurate information here.
it's just a matter of time at this point
The Windows installation process is annoying for sure, but once you get through it, you are able to disable or rework everything you mentioned. iOS honestly has everything you mentioned as well; in fact, it's installation process pushes even more services than Windows does, but I never see people complain about it. I find both process annoying, but I forget about them once I get everything setup because it goes away. I don't want a reddit account because I basically only visit the site when a friend sends me a link. I am guessing I can also have their stuff go away if I download the app and sign up, but it's not as essential to me as using Windows or iOS.
I don't even need to use old.reddit.com for daily browsing now. (Unless need to comment)