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Comment by me_me_mu_mu | Hacker News Reader

Reddit user experience is awful. I like the Reddit communities I follow but my god is it annoying af to use it on mobile browser or even the desktop client. I don’t want to install your app. Deal with it, because I’m dealing with it by not using it and I hope more people follow. The app which I’ve tried crashes often, and the video auto play sometimes breaks which is annoying and requires a restart. If I was logged out and login, I get taken to the fucking home tab. Why doesn’t it redirect me on the page I had open, I mean I can understand not being able to code (considering half the other stuff that doesn’t work) the position in the thread I was in, but at least put me on the same thread. Anyway GG no RE, barely use Reddit anymore because of this poor ux.

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Tbf there are third party apps that work quite well, I'm somewhat fond of Relay for Reddit myself and never have any issues with it. The official app is unfortunately complete trash.

Right now I'm not seeing any of these problems that OP is talking about when using old.reddit either. I think I may have ublocked all the banners and popups at some point.

On iOS I went from Alien Blue (which reddit bought and killed, fuck 'em) to Apollo and it's been a bliss, would never be able to use reddit if it wasn't for Apollo and RES on my desktop browser... Not really sure how they are attracting new users, the "new" reddit UI on a SPA is really, really awful.

It's impressive how much engineering effort reddit is able to waste, that isn't cheap.

Apollo is a really good mobile app for Reddit, but I expect Reddit will eventually buy it.

As for new users, it's likely a lot of people that reach Reddit from Google - their SEO seems to have gotten loads better in recent years. They also don't remember how simple oldreddit was, so they have no reference point.

API is being removed soon, which will break all third party apps.

Really? Have they announced this or is it speculation/inside information on your side?

I can't see any mention of that being the case anywhere, are you sure?

Source: trust me bro.

I use Boost for Reddit and it's great! So much better than the website in any form or the official app.

They had something good and ruined it due to investors squeezing out ad revenue. Shame.

It’s all a cycle. I’m sure something like early Reddit will pop up soon (might already exist).

You might already be posting on it :)

No? HN is not in any way, shape or form a replacement for Reddit.

Eh, HN is very much like reddit /r/technology + /r/programming but without fancy editor.

More like Reddit in the days before subreddits.

Well it actually IS what reddit used to be. It's almost a carbon copy of the early versions before subreddits were a thing, though HN has slightly worse css and usability, presumably to keep out the normies and to make it run from that one raspberry pi that ycombinator has allocated to hosting it.

I do sorta wish HN had reply notifications.

> I do sorta wish HN had reply notifications.

There is a 3rd party app for that, though I haven't tried it yet.

https://www.hnreplies.com/

I use it. It's excellent and works well.

The only problem with it is that it does not send you replies to your submissions, e.g. AskHN posts.

It's by design to make flame wars harder to sustain

I'd believe that if it wasn't computationally intensive and HN wasn't already struggling under the 5 people that visit. I'm sure it's merely this way to reduce server load.

I personally use it as my reddit replacement ;) But I agree.

FYI both Ycombinator and reddit have the same age, both were created in 2005 according to Wikipedia.

It kinda weird because for some reason in my mind Ycombinator was 5 year-ish older.

https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy

PSA: Don't use this for a Tor hidden service forum as it heavily relies on JS to be functional.

>selfhosted

AAAAAND you lost literally 95% of every single person who might even consider using this. Stop trying to make "fediverse" happen. It's not going to happen. All you do is end up putting great developers into projects that will literally never, ever amount to anything due to an insistence on decentralization.

I disagree, I think slowly communities of reddit will migrate to self hosted versions of it, be them lemmy or any of the other federated alternatives that are out there. I work on one of those, and I have been contacted twice by moderators of small/medium subreddits being interested in using my software for taking their users off reddit. Sadly, nothing concrete happened, but it shows me that there really is an interest.

I think that Lemmy is not really a replacement for the old reddit. Lemmy devs are too fond of frontend Javascript to qualify in my opinion.

The federated alternative that I'm building[1], is trying to specifically keep some of the benefits of old reddit (and of HN, and of lobste.rs), most important of which being that it has no reliance on Javascript and that it has a minimal size footprint.

[1] https://littr.me (just a demo instance)

I think tildes.net is an interesting one and has potential, though I must confess that I don’t really go there all that much because there’s too little activity for me to find what I’m interested in, so far.

Maybe it’s just me but when I Google something, and land on a reddit result, and then am forced to open it in the app, the link opens the app but doesn’t navigate to the post. Therefore it’s actually impossible to see the full result, even if you have the app installed, without re-finding it in the app. Super frustrating!

The official client is rubbish, but the 3rd party ones are OK. BaconReader works well for me.

https://baconreader.com/

P.S.

I suspect that one of the issues with Reddit is a large number of regular visitors who lurk. No account, no login, never post, never upvote... but spend hours a day on the site.

Serving them means that features for actual active contributors have low priority. I suspect that looking at the site and its features with that in mind may explain a lot.

I used to use baconreader but switched to Boost for Reddit

Hmmm. I am happy for now but I will take a look on a spare device. Thanks!

> I suspect that one of the issues with Reddit is a large number of regular visitors who lurk. No account, no login, never post, never upvote... but spend hours a day on the site. Serving them means that features for actual active contributors have low priority.

They would be shooting themselves in the foot because the lurkers are looking for posts and comments. Prioritizing contributors would keep lurkers engaged longer, watching more ads.

Also, never underestimate the need of people to voice their opinions. Controversial topics will tempt lurkers to contribute.

I don't disagree. It's a rare model for a social media site, though, and so it's noteworthy.

I have the app and use it to casually browse. But the moment someone sends me a link on Discord, it opens in the built-in webview and tells me to fuck off unless I open it in the app I just abandon my attempt. Sorry but I value the second it takes to switch the app more than the content.

Try out Boost for Reddit. Better than website in any form, the official Reddit app, and every other 3rd party app imo

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