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Comment by dralley | Hacker News Reader

The day "old reddit" stops being a usable option is the day I stop using reddit entirely.

Especially since they're trying to kill third-party apps a la Twitter: https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_ca...

Wasn't their a post linking this on the front page and now it's gone?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36141083

The interest rate squeeze is making everything so much fun to use. :)

It's absolutely wild that all these years later new reddit is still so bad that a sizable portion of the overall traffic fights the defaults to use old reddit. Users never fight defaults... unless you screw up as badly as new reddit did.

I still distinctly remember the survey they had post new reddit launch. After answering it as accurately as I could given the rather limited options available and submitting it I was given a response of 'sorry you're so change averse, suck it up'. Obviously paraphrasing, but the idea that someone could only dislike the new UX because they were change averse has stuck with me as being particularly brain dead.

Why bother making a good UX?

The best UX is usually contradictory to monetization.

The best UX takes a ton of extra work.

Why not let the Executives in Sales and Growth erect the walls and moats that keep your users stuck in place?

The best thing for Reddit's business would be to hide communities as much as possible and turn their app into a version of TikTok that throws nothing but ads disguised as viral videos in front of users. They probably want to do this badly.

Actually, what if someone came up with an app that had no user created content whatsoever and was just an infinite-scroll of corporate ads? I bet it would make millions.

Did you know there are two new reddits?

If you login as a user you see comments in a different style than the guest view of comments. The guest view of comments on new new reddit is even more awful.

Users never fight defaults, unless you provide an easy and officially supported way to revert.

Is the official old reddit setting still broken, forcing users to either rewrite URLs themselves or install a plugin to do it for them?

No it mostly works, but does revert and need to be rechecked seemingly randomly. Used to be more frequently actually, now is only every few months for me.

Personally I re-wrote it once and my cookie has has my back for a few years right now, but YMMV depending on how often you change browsers, delete cookies etc.

If you're doing that often or if you're part of the "HN Crowd" it should be trivial to write a quick bookmarklet to do the re-write for you.

Nah.

DeviantArt's UI update was just as bad if nor worse, it's amazing companies don't learn from these

I've started using reddit only after they rolled out new. I hate old UI, and i've tried it many times.

People don't like when someone changes their toys. But that doesn't mean that new toy is a screw up, it's not something you got used to.

It has little to do with the look and feel. Loading a "new" reddit page feels like going on a 2010s news page without an adblocker. The page takes 15 seconds or more to load. Elements are shifting around during that time. If I'm not logged in, I get a screengrabbing beg ad to install their apps.

Reddit code is trash. The old version is just much simpler and therefore less annoying. If it weren't for the fact that the smaller subreddits have lots of value, no one would put up with it.

> feels like going on a 2010s news page without an adblocker

I don't think it's any better now...

I used Reddit before the new UI and... also prefer the new one. It's much better for browsing funny memes. But I don't use Reddit for "serious" stuff. There are subreddits for topics I'm interested in, but I would spend most of my day correcting people if I was subscribed there, because they are so bad. Funny cats are ok though.

As another comment here points out...why is old reddit better?

Performance.

Just get new reddit design to load content as quickly and 80%+ of the complaints will go away.

I think you and I are far from alone in that sentiment.

They would have killed it a long time ago otherwise.

I would keep using Reddit sync I guess.

They just confirmed killing 3rd party apps with unreasonable pricing

This may be an unpopular opinion, but I prefer new Reddit when I’m on my phone (which nowadays is my primary causal scrolling device). I think part of the reason people stick to old Reddit is because they haven’t ripped off the nostalgia band-aid yet

How do you deal with "Please open in app to see all comments" and other similar bs? If you don't want to install app and/or login only old.reddit works on mobile web.

Admittedly those are bullshit. They do go away if you create an account and login though

100%

The real value of reddit goes down annually.

They got rid of the boobies and kept the gore and violence.

Its mostly a machine for manufacturing Marvel & SW fandom.

I don't know what Reddit you're seeing but I assure you there are still plenty of thriving NSFW subreddits. I might even say tons. I've seen a few get deleted here and there but it was always for pretty specific, targeted reasons.

The only NSFW subs taken down were the unmoderated ones for the most part

Same here. When Digg came out with their v4 redesign I switched to Reddit and never looked back. Though now I prefer HN more and use Reddit less these days, so it won’t be too much of a loss to me.

Old reddit + darkreader +ublock origin extension on Firefox is my preference.

I’d like to know others’ opinions on darkreader: is it a great security threat. I perused the information it discloses it gets access to but have not seen many online criticisms.

Huh. I thought I was the only one. The new one just seems like a dictionary illustration for Information Poor Interface.

Agreed. Though at this point, I basically don't unless it shows up in search results anyways.

Whats the best alternative after leaving reddit though?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com