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Reddit is buying TikTok rival Dubsmash

cnn.com

51–60 of 150 posts

Re: Reddit is buying TikTok rival Dubsmash

#51

Reddit has always been shit since the redesign: broken scroll, broken video hosting, dark patterns up the wazoo. I wonder if/how soon we'll see a degradation to similar poor usability in dubsmash, or if the people working there can manage to hang on to their product as it is...

Recently they added notifications saying "multiple people are typing" and "see new comments!" which appear on posts even when newest comments are old. It's absolutely infuriating. I didn't want to cure my reddit addiction but they are trying real hard to help me with that.

Re: Reddit is buying TikTok rival Dubsmash

#52
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, a sizable enough number of us continue to use old.reddit.com that it seems like they realize they can't force us onto the new design and are relegated to maintaining the old one for essentially forever... which to me says something incredible about just how badly their design failed.

Recently learned about Teddit.net on HN. That's now my go-to... Better than old.Reddit.com However, teddit is limited to browsing. Can't reply / comment on it

> However, teddit is limited to browsing. Can't reply / comment on it

Maybe a feature, not a limitation.

Re: Reddit is buying TikTok rival Dubsmash

#53

Reddit has always been shit since the redesign: broken scroll, broken video hosting, dark patterns up the wazoo. I wonder if/how soon we'll see a degradation to similar poor usability in dubsmash, or if the people working there can manage to hang on to their product as it is...

Search has always been absolutely terrible... it's nearly 2021... how can a billion dollar outfit still have terrible search?

For a platform that drives revenue through continued engagement, clicks, views, and activity... could functioning search be considered an anti-feature?

If I can't find what I want, I'll start a new post, or reply to a comment… leading to people getting notifications, leading to clicks, more replies, …

Re: Reddit is buying TikTok rival Dubsmash

#54
post #26

Reddit is searching for something, but I don't think they've introduced a single feature that makes it better since they added subreddits. They've added and removed community chat rooms [0], they still have some other kind of chat that I don't know if anyone uses, when I happen to visit new Reddit there's some kind of streaming broadcasts that I don't see anyone liking. And of course the redesign, but I suspect that…

I mean, a sizable enough number of us continue to use old.reddit.com that it seems like they realize they can't force us onto the new design and are relegated to maintaining the old one for essentially forever... which to me says something incredible about just how badly their design failed.

The redesign was a massive success. The goal was to turn reddit into a typical social media property, and it worked. Real conversation was pushed aside into niche subreddits, and was replaced by typical social media filler crap, like r/funny and pics and wholesomememes, etc. It was bad before, but I just feel like the redesign made it 100x worse. Try opening the reddit homepage, new design, no account, and tell me with a straight face that that is a place where serious, well-thought discussion happens. The content on the front page is exactly what I would expect to see on my Facebook timeline or on the Instagram explore page, which I see now was Reddit's goal from the start.

Re: Reddit is buying TikTok rival Dubsmash

#55
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, a sizable enough number of us continue to use old.reddit.com that it seems like they realize they can't force us onto the new design and are relegated to maintaining the old one for essentially forever... which to me says something incredible about just how badly their design failed.

> forever I suspect a Reddit PM is watching a usage of old.reddit.com metric and waiting for it to hit a certain threshold before canning it. Perhaps the migration has taken longer than they planned but I have no doubt in time old.reddit.com will be retired.

The day reddit drops old.reddit.com is the last day I ever visit. The redesign is that horrible for anything but mindless scrolling watching clip videos.

Re: Reddit is buying TikTok rival Dubsmash

#56

Reddit is searching for something, but I don't think they've introduced a single feature that makes it better since they added subreddits. They've added and removed community chat rooms [0], they still have some other kind of chat that I don't know if anyone uses, when I happen to visit new Reddit there's some kind of streaming broadcasts that I don't see anyone liking. And of course the redesign, but I suspect that…

Multireddits is a good feature that has been introduced after subreddits, because there is a limit of how many different subreddits you get on your frontpage (wich goes up with gold IIRC).

On of the worst thing they did (excluding the new design obviously) was removing the upvote/downvote counter.

Re: Reddit is buying TikTok rival Dubsmash

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recently learned about Teddit.net on HN. That's now my go-to... Better than old.Reddit.com However, teddit is limited to browsing. Can't reply / comment on it

> However, teddit is limited to browsing. Can't reply / comment on it Maybe a feature, not a limitation.

It's definitely a limitation. I subscribe and participate in a number of smaller/niche/hobby related subreddits. Not being able to participate makes it completely useless for people like me.

There are great places and discussions on reddit once you filter out all the popular subs.

Re: Reddit is buying TikTok rival Dubsmash

#58

Reddit is searching for something, but I don't think they've introduced a single feature that makes it better since they added subreddits. They've added and removed community chat rooms [0], they still have some other kind of chat that I don't know if anyone uses, when I happen to visit new Reddit there's some kind of streaming broadcasts that I don't see anyone liking. And of course the redesign, but I suspect that…

I don’t think Reddit needs any major feature other than search. When I search google, I basically append ‘Reddit’ to my query. It’s where all the real answers are, there are no more websites (who would have thought, the real rival to google is Reddit).

On the opposite side of that, why should Reddit make their search better if everyone already knows not to use it?

Google works just fine.

Spending the money to improve and code a new search function doesn’t gain them anything. They’d just lose money on the implementation.

Re: Reddit is buying TikTok rival Dubsmash

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think Reddit needs any major feature other than search. When I search google, I basically append ‘Reddit’ to my query. It’s where all the real answers are, there are no more websites (who would have thought, the real rival to google is Reddit).

I don't either, but that's not how VC backed companies work. It's not good enough to stay usable for the current users, you need growth, and preferably as much as possible. I don't know what kind of service they're aiming for, but it's basically a meme feed now, with some political echo chambers thrown in.

I’ll address your last point. I think when you talk about scale, the fact will arise that a lot of the internet are just kids. Take a look at TikTok, at scale, you’re just going to get a lot of more kids using the thing. It’s probably one of the reasons we all gravitate to HN, because for better or worse, people here are working adults or on the cusp of it (college). I really cannot deal with a bunch of k-12/college kids discussing something. I have no clue how Reddit can solve this as they want growth (you need the kids).

Re: Reddit is buying TikTok rival Dubsmash

#60

Reddit is searching for something, but I don't think they've introduced a single feature that makes it better since they added subreddits. They've added and removed community chat rooms [0], they still have some other kind of chat that I don't know if anyone uses, when I happen to visit new Reddit there's some kind of streaming broadcasts that I don't see anyone liking. And of course the redesign, but I suspect that…

Multireddits is a good feature that has been introduced after subreddits, because there is a limit of how many different subreddits you get on your frontpage (wich goes up with gold IIRC). On of the worst thing they did (excluding the new design obviously) was removing the upvote/downvote counter.

I think Reddit would be better if they removed the karma counters completely. They can still use votes as a signal for sorting, but having numbers attached to posts and comments seem to affect people's opinions on that content too much.
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