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Reddit’s disrespectful design

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Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#141

Post by PragmaticPulp »

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…

The Reddit mobile web experience is so obviously bad that I can only assume it's intentional.

There must be some huge incentive for Reddit to push users toward the mobile app. Most likely, the app allows for higher or more accurate monthly active user counts and enables more targeted advertising, both of which are critical to increasing advertising revenues.

Reddit is in a difficult spot because they're mostly an ad-supported business but their users are vehemently opposed to advertising and any forms of tracking. They have to tip-toe around all of the advertising and user tracking that they do. Strangely, their users mostly seem to give them a pass on the tracking. Their users are relatively trustworth, viewing Reddit as far more trustworthy of a company than Facbeook, despite the two companies having largely similar business models.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#143

Post by diminish »

tbrake wrote: post #54

I've long thought about making a thread like this so I'm happy to see it. Fed up with this actively user-hostile web experience to try and drive people to the app. My main gripe is definitely expanding comments - > First of all, only the top comment will be shown. Then you can tap view more which will load another two. But you cannot open all the comments. Because the "create an account to continue" toast pictured is…

Reddit has become another VC invested company where crippling features, dark patterns on forced "adoption" and dark "growth" hacks du jours are the norms.

I'm a very early and long term user, and I slowly moved away after "the" investment.

HN on the other hand is still safe, as the huge success of YC and their aim of gathering talent and readers gives more financial freedom. What if some investor now invests in HN, gathers a board, assigns a CEO with the profitability and "growth" target? I'm afraid to ask this, but the same could happen.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#144

Post by iratewizard »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #104
BusTrainBus wrote: post #74

Reddit is an absolutely grotesque website, both for these UI issues and the toxic hate it engenders on all the subreddits. It’s magnitudes worse than any other social network. I have a genuine question: do people openly say they work for this company or is it workplace where people have to hide that they are part of it?

> the toxic hate it engenders on all the subreddits. I always see people saying this and I have to wonder what subreddits they're subscribed to. My experience is basically fine, sure there's some shitty discussions or a few hostile idiots lurking about, but it's no worse than message boards generally, and most conversations seem rather good. Part of me wonders whether some posters are just extraordinarily sensitive,…

I sometimes wonder if reddit was designed to spread groupthink, or if it was just a happy accident.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#145

Post by diydsp »

They keep burying the link to old.reddit.com deeper.

I don't understand why they submarine their ads. Just put them out front like everyone else. It's reasonable. Sometimes they're even worth it.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#146

Post by agumonkey »

jonplackett wrote: post #23

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.

Not Reddit per se but I find it hard to wrap my head around the app thing for Reddit or similar. HTML5/CSS3 is so sufficient for this... The web gave birth to an economy going away from itself. And. Ow everything is there twice or thrice.

Surely there's some good economical or political reason it. Maybe systemic (any large market will create redundancies.. I don't know)

Yay to old.reddit.com

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#148

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

While not disclosing that e-mail is optional is a dark pattern, it's still better than what almost every other site does, which is making it a hard requirement.

Another dark pattern on Reddit is that the web version only allows you to open content in their app. If you already have a compatible third party reddit app installed, "open in app" just sends you to the Play store. (Normal behavior is that if you have an app that can open those links, that app opens).

I think Reddit has realized that they have more savvy users who would flee if forced the official app, risking the same fate as Digg, but they're trying to push every other user into their ad-infested app.

Ironically, the harder a company tries to push their app, the more obvious it is to me that I cannot under any circumstance allow it to be installed on my phone. They're clearly trying to do something (almost certainly against my interest) that they can't do without the app.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#149

Post by jffry »

e3bc54b2 wrote: post #115
jffry wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

The "full extension" I linked is 800 bytes of JS, and thanks to being an extension it can redirect network requests before the page even loads (useful because sometimes Reddit can be quite sluggish to respond, and also because it's good nettiquette to not make spurious requests).

Besides which, applying a UserScript requires a much larger "full extension". I'd much rather have a small purpose-built extension which is, via browser-enforced policy, only allowed to run on the specific domains for which it is required.

I audited the code, installed it, turned off updates, and it has faithfully served me for a while now.

To each their own, I suppose.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#150

Post by ethbr0 »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #141
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…

The Reddit mobile web experience is so obviously bad that I can only assume it's intentional. There must be some huge incentive for Reddit to push users toward the mobile app. Most likely, the app allows for higher or more accurate monthly active user counts and enables more targeted advertising, both of which are critical to increasing advertising revenues. Reddit is in a difficult spot because they're mostly an ad-…

I'd phrase it as "Reddit, the product" is fine.

"Reddit, the investors who bought the product" are in a difficult spot. And certainly haven't shown an overabundance of creativity in monetization approaches.

Suffice to say, you probably don't deserve a "front page of the Internet" tagline if your first display is a redirect request to your app.

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