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Reddit’s disrespectful design

ognjen.io

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Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#111

Post by CamelCaseName »

ishiz wrote: post #101
throwaway284534 wrote: post #82

Does anyone else want to rant about Reddit’s AMP pages that show up on Google? Oh I could go on about it… The managers at Reddit, in their infinite wisdom, decided that the preferred experience of a Google user searching for content on reddit should redirected to their wonky app. And if they don’t have the app, they should be punished with modals upon modals. “Reddit looks better in the app!” Oh, you disagree? Well p…

There is also a bug with the AMP pages such that the submission dates for the threads are often wrong. For example you're searching for threads that have been posted in the last month, some of the results will say something like "7 days ago" until you click and see it is actually 5 years old.

Are you talking about a Reddit issue?

Google is notoriously bad at indexing the correct time a Reddit thread is posted.

I have no clue why this is, I assume perhaps it is seeing a different date somewhere on the page (e.g. the "recently viewed threads" box).

It doesn't seem to be directional either. That is, it's not just old threads pretending to be newer, but new threads also sometimes appear older.

This is why I don't attribute any malice to the issue.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#112

Post by wdr1 »

The closing off subreddits is particularly annoying.

The Reddit mobile has a longstanding bug in how handle it handles GIFs. I have a bot (u/CalvinBot) that posts the official Calvin & Hobbes strip to /r/calvinandhobbes each day. GoComics, the copyright holder, only publishes it as a GIF, so that's how it's submitted to Reddit.

However, because of the bug in the app, people can view the GIF properly. The advice used to be just switch to your browser, but because of Reddit now breaking that, even that workaround doesn't work now.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#113

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

bluescrn wrote: post #97

Their app nags are the worst. Phones have very capable web browsers these days. Please let us use them! Has anybody written an app-nag-blocker yet?…

I’m confused how many people don’t seem to realize this has nothing to do with experiencing the site.

The App gets a ton of personal data they can’t get on a website.

That’s all this is. Data collection. They need you to install the App so they can access your advertising ID, better link your IP and location to your account, get you to click permission allowance, etc.

Shooting their own experience in the foot is an acceptable sacrifice.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#115

Post by e3bc54b2 »

jffry wrote: post #91
randallsquared wrote: post #13

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.

If you access Reddit via https://old.reddit.com it's always the better UI. Bonus is that this works even if you're not signed in. There's a handy browser extension for automatically redirecting you if you click a link to Reddit's other domains: https://github.com/tom-james-watson/old-reddit-redirect If you'd like to disable custom subreddit styles even if you're not signed in, you can add these custom filters to uBlo…

Instead of a full extension, I recommend a simple userscript, serving faithfully for 2 years now:

https://pastebin.com/raw/niGCX6AH

Then Mozilla had to go and fuck up extensions on mobile firefox, so now I simply avoid Reddit from phone. On totally unrelated note, I suddenly find myself with extra free time!

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#116

Post by bluefirebrand »

rognjen wrote: post #50
jcfrei wrote: post #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.…

Exactly. The lurkers are where their growth is because they likely outnumber posters 10:1.

Lurkers will always outnumber posters on any forum I think, but I have to believe Reddit has a worse ratio than most because the echo chambers are so strong and anything outside of them is downvoted to oblivion.

And it's easy to feel engaged by just reading threads mindlessly upvoting or downvoting endlessly.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#118

Post by GordonS »

Fully agree with everything in TFA. I'm an occasional Reddit user, and almost exclusively a lurker. But over the past few years they have been making it more and more intolerable to use, especially on mobile.

The most recent things have been blocking you completely from subreddits, and blocking you completely from threads below the second level (you hit "read more", and get a popup).

And beside the many dark patterns, there are also "stupid patterns" - for example, in a thread of only 20 comments or so, it only load about 4 by default. And if you want to load more from below a thread, it does a full page reload, now showing you only that subthread!

It really is an absolutely maddening experience, that must surely serve to drive users away and make them hate it?! For one of the biggest sites in the world, I just can't fathom how unbelievably bad the whole design is - every part of it!

And as only an occasional user, I don't want to install their shitty app (which requires a Reddit account).

Years back I used to actually like Reddit - now, I fucking hate it :-/

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#119

Post by ishiz »

CamelCaseName wrote: post #111
ishiz wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also a bug with the AMP pages such that the submission dates for the threads are often wrong. For example you're searching for threads that have been posted in the last month, some of the results will say something like "7 days ago" until you click and see it is actually 5 years old.

Are you talking about a Reddit issue? Google is notoriously bad at indexing the correct time a Reddit thread is posted. I have no clue why this is, I assume perhaps it is seeing a different date somewhere on the page (e.g. the "recently viewed threads" box). It doesn't seem to be directional either. That is, it's not just old threads pretending to be newer, but new threads also sometimes appear older. This is why I d…

I don't attribute any malice either. I can't remember where I read it but I heard somewhere earlier this year that Reddit was trying to fix it.
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