Live data from Hacker News

Reddit’s disrespectful design

ognjen.io

31–40 of 516 posts

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#31
post #16

Hostile design either makes the user login (a user reddit can monetize) or makes the user to close the site (a user reddit can't monetize, thus no need to waste resources), both scenarios is a win for reddit.

If I can't access it, I can't share the posts nor will I click on ads. So it's not a clear easy win for them.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#32
Here's how reddit's business model probably works: you have power users which create or submit the content and write the witty comments and then you have the lurkers which just browse. what reddit is trying to monetize is the interaction with the latter user group: comments provide little space to promote ads, so most of them are hidden by default. instead they promote lots of posts with images interspersed with ads. the power users on the other hand use dedicated apps and have a custom interface anyway. they are (so far) not really bothered by the changes and continue to create and submit content.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#33

The only way I can stomach using Reddit is via Reddit Sync. I firmly believe that soon Reddit will prevent third party clients from using their API. Perhaps there'll be a subscription service where paid accounts can still use it with their client of choice, or maybe they'll just kill the ecosystem in an attempt to get people on the official app. Either way, that's me done with it. The hostility makes it somewhere I'm…

Edit: apparently I’m misreading the traffic page and third party apps are not included. So disregard this paragraph. I really doubt they’ll kill API access. From the stats on my (medium sized) sub a full third of uniques (desktop and mobile combined) are from unofficial clients.

And that’s not to mention the number of near-essential bots used by many subs for community management.

Now, what they are doing is not putting new non-core features into the API, like chat and RPAN. But while that’s still irritating, it is a bit different than killing API access.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#34

The most disrespectful pattern I encounter regularly on reddit is that it forgets that I want the nicer, more compact interface. There will come a day when they remove it entirely, clearly, and that will be the end of my reddit usage, more or less.

How does it keep forgetting? I just change that in settings and it’s never forgotten or reverted for me.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#35
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why must every app monetize through ads? Why can't they provide features worth paying for?

I think you kind of answer your own question. Social media is just a gossip page on steroids. None of their features are worth paying for; at least, not enough people are willing to pay for it. They realized given showing ads and charging customers, showing ads probably generates 10x revenue for them. Plus, what's to stop another person to offer a free reddit clone?

People pay for junk food all the time. Maybe internet companies are being too greedy and they are pricing themselves incorrectly.

Would you pay $2 USD for all of reddit for a year? How many users does reddit have? It'd probably be a lot of money, but not super profitable. Hence they use adds because they won't shift on price.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#36
post #3

Not sure I agree with the Marketplace angle. Ads are fine but forcing everyone into the app is odd. Will ios14 change any of that?

Reddit has pathetic ad revenue per user versus every other social media platform. Part of this is likely due to anonymous users that they lack data on for proper targeting. This is their attempt to "fix" that.

What advantages does a user account have over anonymous session ids? User accounts survive users clearing cookies, but I doubt users clear their cookies often enough for that to be a problem.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#37
post #3

Not sure I agree with the Marketplace angle. Ads are fine but forcing everyone into the app is odd. Will ios14 change any of that?

Reddit has pathetic ad revenue per user versus every other social media platform. Part of this is likely due to anonymous users that they lack data on for proper targeting. This is their attempt to "fix" that.

It makes sense - there will be greater revenue for a few years maybe, in which time the team/product VP responsible would have been promoted. By the time the site culture/userbase dies (maybe in 5 years) these people would be long gone. Maybe even the higher management don't care about a timeline longer than 5 years tbh.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#38
post #16

Hostile design either makes the user login (a user reddit can monetize) or makes the user to close the site (a user reddit can't monetize, thus no need to waste resources), both scenarios is a win for reddit.

If I can't access it, I can't share the posts nor will I click on ads. So it's not a clear easy win for them.

...assuming you don't cave and log in anyways.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#39
I don't have a reddit account but some small subreddits are quite good. I use https://teddit.net/ on the desktop and RedReader from F-Droid. Teddit doesn't have infinte scroll and RedReader can be limited to how many are loaded each time and you have to press to load more. This way it's much easier to not doomscroll, there are far fewer dark patterns, it's lighter, less tracking. You can bookmark subreddits on a browser and pin them in RedReader. Subreddits also have RSS feeds although I wouldn't advise it for popular ones because of the amount of hits you'll get.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#40

Surely the most annoying thing is the endless requests to download the app. So irritating! I refuse to download it just because they insist so hard. Reddit is the most basic site ever, there is absolutely no need for me to have an app.

old.reddit.com is not mobile optimized at all, but still infinitely better than reddit.com. Alternatively, get one of the non-official apps (on Android I use rif).
Post reply on HN