Ask HN: Is Reddit trying to kill old Reddit? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Is Reddit trying to kill old Reddit?

#11

Post by streptomycin » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 1:29 PM UTC

chistev wrote: post #8

al_borland wrote: post #3

As far as I can tell, the only reason old.reddit exists is to avoid the bad PR they’ll get from killing it. They seem to be trying to make things worse and worse, to lose the users through attrition, so the eventual shutdown is a non-event. Also, maybe they learned something from Digg v4. That was a hard cut over, users hated it, but they had no way to revert and it killed the site. They’re probably trying to avoid t…

Do we know if the number of people using old reddit is significant enough?

If you mod a subreddit you can see stats. On the biggest one I mod (35k subscribers) 2.5% of the traffic comes from Old Reddit, compared to 41% from New Reddit and 16% from Mobile Web, and the rest from mobile apps. Unsure why they differentiate Mobile Web from the others, since it's possible to view either Old or New Reddit in mobile browsers. Regardless, Old Reddit is not very popular.

Re: Ask HN: Is Reddit trying to kill old Reddit?

#12

Post by r721 » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 2:48 PM UTC

ChrisArchitect wrote: post #7

Some more discussion: Tell HN: Old Reddit Now Requires Login https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48983857

Another discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49005747

Re: Ask HN: Is Reddit trying to kill old Reddit?

#13

Post by firefax » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 8:05 PM UTC

if they kill old reddit i will post like it's reddit here, so i am sure dang has a team of lobbyists peeling out from a philz like they're the men in black to make sure that doesn't happen

(it's a lot simpler with js off, and who among us doens't turn off js to do a little osint? don't kill it!)

Re: Ask HN: Is Reddit trying to kill old Reddit?

#14

Post by gaws » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 4:28 PM UTC

CM30 wrote: post #10

They definitely want to. Old Reddit is simple, efficient, and mostly free of the obnoxious limitations and extra 'features' found on the new design. It's the exact opposite to what a company pushing a mobile app wants to see. But they're in an interesting situation where they can't really get rid of it, because many of the site's power users are using it. Subreddit moderators use it for tools that aren't available in…

Reddit isn't "stuck." The moment all the features they want in the new interface are implemented and working, they will kill old.reddit.com and will force users to migrate. The old.reddit.com "superusers" are the minority, and Reddit won't care if they lose those users during the transition.

Re: Ask HN: Is Reddit trying to kill old Reddit?

#15

Post by gaws » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 4:31 PM UTC

al_borland wrote: post #3

As far as I can tell, the only reason old.reddit exists is to avoid the bad PR they’ll get from killing it. They seem to be trying to make things worse and worse, to lose the users through attrition, so the eventual shutdown is a non-event. Also, maybe they learned something from Digg v4. That was a hard cut over, users hated it, but they had no way to revert and it killed the site. They’re probably trying to avoid t…

> avoid the bad PR they’ll get from killing it.

What "bad PR"? They easily survived requiring accounts to view old.reddit.com. Moving from one interface to another won't result in as big of a backlash as the API changes.