To me, Hackernews is what Reddit was 10 years ago, just without subreddits. Clean top quality content.
It's 2021, I don't want to see a "Loading..." icon like I'm on dial-up in the 90s.
Compare with https://old.reddit.com — open them side by side, refresh, click around.
We can have a serious discussion about what sucks in the "new" UI, but I really hope it's obvious.
Whereas about 80% of other sites on the Internet were unbrowseable until I installed an adblocker.
My main driver isn't the fastest (skylake i5) but it's much slower than any of the other sites I use. And on my gaming pc (Ryzen 5 5600) it's slow too. And I have 1gbit fibre.
Ps serious question, isn't it difficult being a UX designer when you've been off the internet for 8 years? Stuff has really changed a lot.
I really don't think the Web has changed very much at all in the time I was gone. Pages are much better at being responsive. Bloat is 100X worse, but was solved by installing an adblocker. The cookie pop-ups can fuck themselves. But, fundamentally, nothing is different. I like that CSS and HTML have advanced to the point where it is simpler and cleaner to write good code if you are a decent human being.
1. Stability: videos rarely play for me. Sometimes I break Reddit too (their words, not mine).
2. Slow: if I want to read the comments, I have to wait 3-5 seconds for them to load. I know that the comments could load instantly because the i.reddit.com interface can do it.
3. Unhelpful interface: it is not easy to identify how to expand a comment thread. But more important, the interface often won't tell me that a comment chain keeps going - it looks as if it just ended, even though it keeps going several levels deep. You can keep reading the chain if you click on the last comment, but again, why would you click on it if you don't know whether it keeps going?
3b. In relation to the previous point: I saw your comment because I was scrolling pretty deep into this thread. In the new Reddit UI it would have been cut off.
4. Annoying: if you're not logged in, content is kept from you just because. Again, the i.reddit.com interface shows everything, but the "regular" interface keeps pestering you with "Log in to see this content" or "Open in app". These popups cannot be dismissed.
All of these changes are pro-metrics and anti-user. Sure, the interface itself looks fine (once it rendered, if it renders). But interaction-wise? It sucks.