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Ask HN: What Happened to Reddit?

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Re: Ask HN: What Happened to Reddit?

#11

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

> Terrible UX

If you're browsing on a desktop, configure your account to always use the old reddit experience. If you lurk without an account, use old.reddit.com. If you can, install RES, it's a game-changer.

If you're browsing on mobile, don't use the official reddit app. It's garbage. Use one of the many 3rd party apps. Personally, I use Bacon Reader.

Don't bother ever browsing /r/all. Tailor your subscriptions to the subs you actually care about.

Try to find more niche subreddits. Subs like /r/AskReddit are just massive karma farms.

Re: Ask HN: What Happened to Reddit?

#12

Post by astrange »

Reddit has actually clearly improved; they’ve grown so large they no longer are a community and are just everyone on Earth posting stuff.

Usually this would be bad, but not when your old community was the dorks on Reddit. So they no longer have the problem where the first reply to every post is a long chain of bad puns and the second one is the answer.

Some of the default subs did seem to get all their content replaced with Facebook memes, and AskReddit shows me a teenager posting a new “how do I get the ladies to like me?” question every day, but that’s life.

Re: Ask HN: What Happened to Reddit?

#13

Post by TameAntelope »

You call it degradation, Reddit calls it "explosive growth".

The UX redesign was hugely successful in attracting new users, users who could then be monetized.

The "useless answers" are wildly popular responses because people generally prefer to meme, not solve problems.

Your complaint essentially boils down to, "Why do people not behave how I want them to?" and that, my friend, is a question as old as time itself.

From the HN guidelines, but it also applies to Reddit:

> Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob[0] illusion[1], as[2] old[3] as[4] the[5] hills[6].

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=926703

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=633099

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=582513

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=289254

[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=253657

[5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=66057

[6] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13852

Re: Ask HN: What Happened to Reddit?

#14

Post by orangepurple »

Dead Internet Theory (DIT)

TLDR: Large proportions of the supposedly human-produced content on the internet are actually generated by artificial intelligence networks in conjunction with paid secret media influencers in order to manufacture consumers for an increasing range of newly-normalised cultural products.

https://forum.agoraroad.com/index.php?threads/dead-internet-...

Re: Ask HN: What Happened to Reddit?

#15

Post by andrewmutz »

Some of reddit is good: many smaller subs feel genuine and have great discussion that I can't find anywhere else. Also, the product is less engaging than other social media networks, which is better for using it in moderate amounts (as opposed to more addictive products like twitter or tiktok). Some new innovative features like predictions.

Some of reddit is terrible: relentlessly pushing people to the mobile app, garbage notifications system.

Re: Ask HN: What Happened to Reddit?

#16

Post by bombcar »

jyu wrote: post #9

The leaders, managers, engineers need to do something to justify their promotions. They are growing because the internet is centralizing. It's succeeding despite all the bad user decisions being made, but at some point it will catch up with them. Reminds me of Meg Whitman running ebay into the ground while collecting billions and eventually getting wrecked by Amazon. They're still around but a shell of their former r…

eBay, Amazon, and Etsy have all devolved to an alibaba outlet with some differentiation.

It’s getting hard to find the things eBay was famous for (used goods) amongst all the buyitnow alibaba junk.

Re: Ask HN: What Happened to Reddit?

#17

Post by 0xRusty »

In terms of the UI/UX use old.reddit.com - I honestly don't understand how anyone uses the new default version. Comments are hidden, there are ads and other threads content on the page. It's literally impossible to use. It's such a disaster I can't understand how it ever passed testing.

The community itself when you get away from the big main subreddits isn't too bad. The best experience is had when you unsub from all the main subreddits and only browse the smaller niche ones. Although they can be pretty toxic too. If you're looking for better quality in depth discussion on a hobby or topic I'm sure you already know better forums, but if you want beginners guides and more superficial meme chat it's a great resource on the whole.

Re: Ask HN: What Happened to Reddit?

#18

Post by kordlessagain »

rockbruno wrote: post #6

There was a thread the other day about how every community is bound to lose its identity once it gets big enough, and it likely can be applied to this. Once Reddit caught the attention of the advertising world to the point where people with high karma were being asked to sell their accounts, the entire platform devolved into people reposting each other's content to farm karma. In the last couple of months people have…

Well, at least this place has the kind beatings into submission thing going for it. That's the advantage of having a paid moderator vs. group moderation. I think it builds a healthier culture.

Re: Ask HN: What Happened to Reddit?

#19

Post by jandrese »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #10
vehemenz wrote: post #5

It's hard to generalize about Reddit because each subreddit is kind of its own world. If you want good discussion, go to where the good discussion is. What is terrible about the UX? Are you not using old.reddit.com? If you're judging by /r/all, sure, it's not much better than YouTube comments. As much as I hate this word, it's mostly "normies" with "normie" views. The cream rarely rises to the top, except on humor th…

/r/all is heavily manipulated and it's quite obvious a small cadre of power users and power mods are responsible for the content and character of what gets shown. I would not be surprised at all if there is dark money behind all of this, especially considering the political nature of it all.

The default feed is completely worthless. Unfortunately I think that's what a lot of people see. Carefully curating a list of quality subreddits is key to a good experience, but most people either don't know to do this or don't know how.

Re: Ask HN: What Happened to Reddit?

#20

Post by tootie »

vehemenz wrote: post #5

It's hard to generalize about Reddit because each subreddit is kind of its own world. If you want good discussion, go to where the good discussion is. What is terrible about the UX? Are you not using old.reddit.com? If you're judging by /r/all, sure, it's not much better than YouTube comments. As much as I hate this word, it's mostly "normies" with "normie" views. The cream rarely rises to the top, except on humor th…

Yeah, and honestly that's a really great thing that they have pulled off very well. In the olden days, the front page was the only option and now it's really just their "Top of the Funnel" so to speak. Most user-generated content sites have a solid 90/9/1 split where 90% are passive consumers who are either not logged in or logged in only to curate their feed, 9% might make comments, and 1% are driving most of the submissions and moderation. The front page is dominated by the 90% and exists to drive SEO and ad views to pay for everyone else. If you are in the other 10%, you login, curate a feed that excludes /r/funny or /r/pics and just zooms in on the special interests you like and it's a fantastic experience. And yeah, you do that with old.reddit.com (or i.reddit.com).
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