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Lessons from Building and Scaling Reddit's Ad Serving Platform with Go

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Re: Lessons from Building and Scaling Reddit's Ad Serving Platform with Go

#71

Post by Semaphor »

untog wrote: post #42
somethingroma wrote: post #7

Cool. Maybe these guys should get in touch with the redesign guys and get them fired. Also fire any executive that thought it was a good idea. Because all the hard work to serve ads more efficiently goes to waste when the site is a mess and unusable.

What are the actual complaints with the new design? I've been using it on and off and I can't say I've noticed any major issues. Though I'll admit most of my browsing is one on the mobile app these days.

I get scroll lag on the redesign with my desktop computer. But that seems to have been resolved as I just checked.

Still, the interface is much clearer on old Reddit, new Reddit really shows the optimization of watching pictures and videos instead of articles and comments.

Re: Lessons from Building and Scaling Reddit's Ad Serving Platform with Go

#72

Post by bmurphy1976 »

untog wrote: post #42
somethingroma wrote: post #7

Cool. Maybe these guys should get in touch with the redesign guys and get them fired. Also fire any executive that thought it was a good idea. Because all the hard work to serve ads more efficiently goes to waste when the site is a mess and unusable.

What are the actual complaints with the new design? I've been using it on and off and I can't say I've noticed any major issues. Though I'll admit most of my browsing is one on the mobile app these days.

I get obnoxious multi-second lag when entering text into a comment box on my phone, even on a thread that only has a couple comments. It's... befuddling how this made it to production and remains. And no, I don't want to use your stupid app. I'm not a fan of loading 1000's of shitty apps on my phone when a simple web page is sufficient.

Re: Lessons from Building and Scaling Reddit's Ad Serving Platform with Go

#73

Post by ihuman »

jjoonathan wrote: post #68
ihuman wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have an account, you can use the old version of reddit by default by unselecting "Use the redesign as my default experience"

That didn't work for me and many others. I had to install an extension.

It looks like that option is only available on old reddit. If I opt out of both beta tests and the redesign in the "Account settings" section of my user settings, I go back to old reddit by default.

Re: Lessons from Building and Scaling Reddit's Ad Serving Platform with Go

#75

Post by cco »

supernovae wrote: post #63
grey-area wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were already using a third party service. It was slow and opaque, so they ditched it. At the scale of reddit, and because this is how they make their money , this is clearly something they want in house and something it would be a competitive advantage to control, if nothing else it gives them a much clearer conduit to their advertisers, and much greater control over things like ad selection.

The problem with Reddit ads isn't their tech, it's their people. The ad approval process is a farce - and human-managed. Oh, and those humans are assholes. You have to go through many denials - for no reason - submit a ticket to get another approver and approved - for no reason stated. It was the most upsetting process I've ever dealt with.

What were you trying to advertise out of curiosity?

Re: Lessons from Building and Scaling Reddit's Ad Serving Platform with Go

#76

Post by pjc50 »

supernovae wrote: post #63
grey-area wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were already using a third party service. It was slow and opaque, so they ditched it. At the scale of reddit, and because this is how they make their money , this is clearly something they want in house and something it would be a competitive advantage to control, if nothing else it gives them a much clearer conduit to their advertisers, and much greater control over things like ad selection.

The problem with Reddit ads isn't their tech, it's their people. The ad approval process is a farce - and human-managed. Oh, and those humans are assholes. You have to go through many denials - for no reason - submit a ticket to get another approver and approved - for no reason stated. It was the most upsetting process I've ever dealt with.

It seems odd that there's a stringent ad approval process when the site proudly lets Redditors post any garbage they want. I'd have expected anything SFW and not obviously fraudulent to be allowed.

Re: Lessons from Building and Scaling Reddit's Ad Serving Platform with Go

#77

Post by simias »

RandallBrown wrote: post #53
overcast wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, no way on average an article gets 166 comments. That must be page views or something.

Why not? Most front page posts have several thousand posts, which seems like it might be enough to offset the 0 comments that most submissions will get.

The front page is obviously not representative in any way of 99% of the posts made on the platform. Look at the slew of posts made on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/all/new/

Most will be lucking to reach 10 comments.

Re: Lessons from Building and Scaling Reddit's Ad Serving Platform with Go

#78

Post by zeveb »

yourbandsucks wrote: post #67
supernovae wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with Reddit ads isn't their tech, it's their people. The ad approval process is a farce - and human-managed. Oh, and those humans are assholes. You have to go through many denials - for no reason - submit a ticket to get another approver and approved - for no reason stated. It was the most upsetting process I've ever dealt with.

This is the QA process that yields us precocious-looking stock photo 'MIT grads' trying to sell me a wine subscription on every other pageload?

reddit has ads? I hadn't noticed …

More-pertinently, I wonder how many of the developers of reddit's new ad system themselves have ad blockers installed. Do any of them actually see the results of their work?

Re: Lessons from Building and Scaling Reddit's Ad Serving Platform with Go

#79

Post by simias »

jjoonathan wrote: post #65
somethingroma wrote: post #7

Cool. Maybe these guys should get in touch with the redesign guys and get them fired. Also fire any executive that thought it was a good idea. Because all the hard work to serve ads more efficiently goes to waste when the site is a mess and unusable.

The redesign is terrible for usability, but it does one thing very, very well: punish you for using an adblocker (sorry, "software blocker," lol). There are a few other dark patterns hidden in there too, all coincidentally pushing in a direction that's good for reddit. I suspect that's the real purpose of the redesign and that all complaints will fall on deaf ears until someone actually manages to disrupt reddit.

>I suspect that's the real purpose of the redesign

I mean at this point I don't think there's any doubt whatsoever. Is there even a plausible other explanation?

I only lurk on reddit but it's rather comical how bad it's become. And not just the interface, the content too, /r/all is basically Facebook with a slightly younger audience and you have to get deeper and deeper into niche subreddits to find worthwhile discussions.

Re: Lessons from Building and Scaling Reddit's Ad Serving Platform with Go

#80

Post by zeveb »

jrockway wrote: post #31
kokey wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember when Digg was bigger than Reddit and then after a certain Digg site redesign they lost a significant number of their users to Reddit and never really recovered.

Where are people going to go this time? I feel like people usually copy their competitors which is why they consider redesigns worthwhile... but which Reddit competitor is Reddit copying here? I don't think there is one. Obviously Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/Snapchat kind of worry them, but then again, I feel like people are "done" with "social media" so I wouldn't be _really_ worried if I were Reddit. They have the a…

I mostly went to HN. My own migration was Slashdot → reddit → HN. I'm on lobste.rs too, which feels like it's in the growth stage. Fewer comments, but fewer bad comments still. HN is nowhere near reddit levels of decay, which is nice.
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