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Ask HN: What Happened to Reddit?

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Re: Ask HN: What Happened to Reddit?

#61

Post by blueblob »

0xRusty wrote: post #17

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 al…

There are ads in the old version too. They show up as sponsored posts though I don't know if they are as egregious because I also use old.

The only thing that I feel I miss out on in using old.reddit.com is the predictions. The /r/muaythai has a predictions tournament that's pretty fun but there's no way to get notifications that there are new predictions to be made with the old interface (as far as I know).

Re: Ask HN: What Happened to Reddit?

#64

Post by hackernewds »

As an avid user, in my personal opinion there are multiple factors, but the most significant one is that during lockdown and school closures, a lot of kids, blue collar workers and amateur investors (/r/wallstreetbets) were suddenly attracted to reddit due to the abundance of content, community and opportunity. In the reddit community, this used to be called summer reddit when kids were on summer vacations, but this time it seems the userbase has been retained.

Re: Ask HN: What Happened to Reddit?

#65

Post by Sunspark »

happythebob wrote: post #38

Unfortunately I think it's a combination of popularity and exposing what happens in upvoted systems as opposed to discussion forums; the lowest common denominator rules. "Both sides" fallacies, typically having a political meaning, are naturally going to get exploited on social media sites where both sides upvote the poorly baked, emotionally charged fallacies. It is alarming to me as a statnerd that the NBA and NFL…

The NBA community is just for entertainment purposes not serious sports research and discussion. It has 5 million nephews. If 1% of that number decide to participate on any given day, that's going to be 50,000 nephews out in force.

Re: Ask HN: What Happened to Reddit?

#66

Post by peterkos »

My philosophy is to never browse reddit as a "whole" but instead just go to specific subreddits for what I need. It's been 10x more "normal" and each subreddit has a better balance between full of snarky replies (r/programmerhumor) or more helpful (r/rust) rather than the more popular ones (r/funny, etc.)

Re: Ask HN: What Happened to Reddit?

#67

Post by barrysteve »

Every community worth some money was captured by a specific interest group. All the organic growth got turned off and the places that still nurture organic growth are front ends for shopify/unreal engine/alibaba, ect.

The real sense of community which enabled so much valuable information flow was stamped out. Community was replaced with politics, auto mods and feudal lords crushing dissent instead of leading discussion.

Re: Ask HN: What Happened to Reddit?

#68

Post by jesuslop »

hnuser847 wrote: post #29

Honestly, despite the UX changes, Reddit has stayed remarkably consistent over the past decade or so I've used it. Big, generic subreddits are trash and always have been, but small, focused subreddits are great. Reddit is still hands down the best place on the internet for product recommendations, candid product reviews, niche hobbies, and discussions about TV shows, movies, and games. Edit - to prove my point furthe…

Agreed. I see a "Use new Reddit as my default experience" preference checkbox not to click if you don't want (longtimer here...) . It also supports RSS for subreddits, that's nice.

Re: Ask HN: What Happened to Reddit?

#69

Post by KallDrexx »

0xRusty wrote: post #17

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 al…

To offer an opposite argument, I hated reddit before the redesign and always take "old." out of links.

Every reddit looked like a geocities offering to me, they were inconsistent in coloring and contrast and all the bullshit I don't care about. Non-old reddit gave me a more consistent and less distracting way for me to quickly browse subreddits and posts I'm interested in and getting out.

Re: Ask HN: What Happened to Reddit?

#70

Post by enumjorge »

It’s troubling that Reddit doesn’t really have a lot of competition, and the new user hostile UI on mobile shows their leadership knows it. I still remember when Digg made those big changes that caused a bunch of people to migrate over. But there isn’t a credible alternative to Reddit. It feels like most of them focus on anti-censorship or little moderation which means they get taken over by fringe groups.

We have old.reddit.com for now, but I feel like that’s just temporary sugar for the medicine to go down while people get used to getting pushed to the mobile app. If they took that away, and there’s really no guarantee it’ll always be there, I don’t know what else I’d use. There’s Discord but it’s such a different interaction model that it doesn’t feel like a valid alternative.

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