What’s wrong with the app?
The app is very spammy with notifications/suggestions/recommendations and features nobody asked for like chat. It can all be disabled, until they add the n+1 feature next week that will need to be disabled too.
Ask HN: Why is Reddit so awful?
11–20 of 51 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit so awful?
#12They stopped being open source, added far more telemetry, changed the gold system to incentivize purchases, changed the design to the new one (slower, far more js), etc. Personally I stopped browsing reddit a few years ago. It used to be amazing.
what do you use now? i find that there are almost no alternatives to niche communities.
that's the problem. there's practically no other alternative if you want the variety reddit has. Hackernews is a great solid community, however it's only one community.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit so awful?
#13The days of old.reddit.com are obviously numbered. For those who simply want to lurk there are sites that scrap reddit and provide a less awful experience. One example is teddit.net, they even let you subscribe to subs with cookies so you don't even need an account -- which is probably a good idea since reddit has been collecting more and more data on users.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit so awful?
#14Reddit used to have an absolutely flawless mobile browser experience, which after they launched the app they're slowly making worse and worse (now with UI elements missing seemingly only provided by API/app UI). I understand that Reddit needed to monetize (e.g. ads, better engagement, etc) but a lot of these UI/design changes don't really seem aimed at that goal, they just seem like change for changes sake. When old.…
Honestly, Reddit desktop is one of the worst SPA implementations I’ve used. (And I’ve used some really snappy social media SPAs.) My pet conspiracy theory is that it’s deliberately bad to get more mobile app users.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit so awful?
#15That log out error is infuriating to say the least. The other day I typed out a huge response to an argument I was having only for me to be redirected upon clicking submit to the page that says something like, “logging you in,” which redirected me to the front page where I was logged out. When I’d click on the login button I would then be looped through the same “logging you in page,” until I just gave up and decided the conversation wasn’t worth it. I’ve wanted to ask a similar question and when I google this people only seem to think the content is bad, with very few hits discussing how it is technically an atrocious mess that would never pass a QA at where I work, let alone a company on the cusp of going public. I’ve wanted to stop using Reddit for over a year now (and I don’t mind the redesign, I just want it to be stable and work) but there simply isn’t a single alternative that fills the same niche.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit so awful?
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
what do you use now? i find that there are almost no alternatives to niche communities.
that's the problem. there's practically no other alternative if you want the variety reddit has. Hackernews is a great solid community, however it's only one community.
> Hackernews is a great solid community
No it's not.
HN is now eternal September, but leftist.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit so awful?
#17Monetization without restraint. (Gold sub was one thing, the awards are just out of fucking control.) Growth at the expense of usability. Redesigning to appeal to Social Media/Web 2.5 types. Hijacking the status quo to provide inadequate me-too integration. (Reddit self hosted images and video over Imgur and Youtube, for example) Add that to the existing problems that Reddit has always had that were never addressed,…
I honestly don’t mind the redesign, it is more aesthetically pleasing and allows people who weren’t used to old school BBS/top sites a more familiar UX. But the implementation of these designs is terrible, constantly I run into errors when even just /upvoting/ a post.
Think about that, the one thing that is Reddit’s most basic functionality, that has been there since the beginning and should be so tested it works 100% of the time, throws more errors today than it did 7 years ago when I began using Reddit (I seldom, if at all, remember getting errors from just upvoting a post before 2-3 years ago.)
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit so awful?
#18That log out error is infuriating to say the least. The other day I typed out a huge response to an argument I was having only for me to be redirected upon clicking submit to the page that says something like, “logging you in,” which redirected me to the front page where I was logged out. When I’d click on the login button I would then be looped through the same “logging you in page,” until I just gave up and decided…
The other day I typed out a huge response to an argument I was having only for me to be redirected upon clicking submit to the page that says something like, “logging you in,” which redirected me to the front page where I was logged out. When I’d click on the login button I would then be looped through the same “logging you in page,” until I just gave up and decided the conversation wasn’t worth it.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit so awful?
#19That log out error is infuriating to say the least. The other day I typed out a huge response to an argument I was having only for me to be redirected upon clicking submit to the page that says something like, “logging you in,” which redirected me to the front page where I was logged out. When I’d click on the login button I would then be looped through the same “logging you in page,” until I just gave up and decided…
The other day I typed out a huge response to an argument I was having only for me to be redirected upon clicking submit to the page that says something like, “logging you in,” which redirected me to the front page where I was logged out. When I’d click on the login button I would then be looped through the same “logging you in page,” until I just gave up and decided the conversation wasn’t worth it. I totally agree t…
Oh definitely as it was a heated argument, but still when the goal of your platform is to keep people engaged (keep them arguing) I can’t see this as anything but bad for Reddit itself.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit so awful?
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
The other day I typed out a huge response to an argument I was having only for me to be redirected upon clicking submit to the page that says something like, “logging you in,” which redirected me to the front page where I was logged out. When I’d click on the login button I would then be looped through the same “logging you in page,” until I just gave up and decided the conversation wasn’t worth it. I totally agree t…
Oh definitely as it was a heated argument, but still when the goal of your platform is to keep people engaged (keep them arguing) I can’t see this as anything but bad for Reddit itself.
Absolutely agree I doubt it was on purpose. I bet there's a cheeky browser plugin in that "feature" somewhere that helps you disconnect from an argument by literally frustrating you until you stop trying haha