Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Reddit’s disrespectful design

ognjen.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 516 posts

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#221

Post by intended »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #157
ethbr0 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Reddit is a potential B Corp or non profit masquerading as a VC backed tech startup with exit or ad revenue potential. Bag holders get tired eventually.

Reddit is building the best content moderation tools for humans - by blundering in every possible direction, often in direct opposition to potential progress.

Mod tools and the data on what works is the untapped resource.

Every other major data or tool set for moderation is behind an NDA.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#222

Post by Dreako »

wting wrote: post #207

I was the EM for Reddit's Growth team around this time. I am responsible for / contributed to a few features like the current signup flow, AMP pages, push notifications, email digests, app download interstitials, etc. There was a new product lead who joined with many good ideas, but some of them were dark patterns that I heavily protested. After a few months of this, it was obvious that I was going to be reigned in o…

makes sense.

Also if anyone doesnt like the new mobile redesign they should probably try using "i.reddit.com"

(which is a light mobile client)

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#223

Post by zozbot234 »

wting wrote: post #207

I was the EM for Reddit's Growth team around this time. I am responsible for / contributed to a few features like the current signup flow, AMP pages, push notifications, email digests, app download interstitials, etc. There was a new product lead who joined with many good ideas, but some of them were dark patterns that I heavily protested. After a few months of this, it was obvious that I was going to be reigned in o…

> These practices are done because it works.

Which practices, though? A number of the practices you note (e.g. streamlined signup flow) are not user hostile at all, and others are a mixed bag. (E.g. one could argue that AMP + a properly featured mobile site and 'official' app were necessary steps with a subpar implementation). But when looking specifically at the dark patterns that power users are most likely to complain about, it's unclear that they would help DAU/MAU much, if at all. Casual users might not complain overtly all that much, but they're almost certainly discouraged by many such practices.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#225

Post by lowkey »

troydavis wrote: post #200

Imagine you’re Steve Huffman, Reddit’s CEO and co-founder ( https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3cxedn/i_am_steve_huf... ). What strategy would you propose to your board? For the sake of argument, assume that: - You would prefer not to make your creation frustrating to use. (Of course, the team may think that their changes are better, but let’s assume that’s not the case) - The board cares about ARPU and ARPU grow…

As a product manager, here is what I would do if I was in Steve’s shoes. Instead of employing dark patterns that take advantage of casual user’s trust, I would actually listen to users and evolve the site in the direction users are asking for.

Reddit just killed their Santa Program, this year will be it’s last. The Secret Santa program was amazingly popular but perhaps complicated to manage so instead of improving it, they killed it - favoring dark patters to drive mobile adoption, lol.

Why not double down on the things the community has already indicated it wants. My analysis says they should evolve into a marketplace to drive more peer-to-peer activity between users while enabling monetization that could scale significantly.

Reddit seems to be mentally stuck in the Advertising model and lacks vision. Encourage more peer-to-peer interaction, make it a marketplace, drive real economic activity between users, adopt cryptocurrencies as well as conventional payment mechanisms to enable commerce between users. Think different.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#227

Post by jasonladuke0311 »

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,…

Every local subreddit I have ever visited is a radioactive dumpster fire. I would like to single out r/Denver in particular, because I live there.

I genuinely cannot believe the comments people post there sometimes. It's like some sort of misanthropic, one-upmanship circle-jerk.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#228

Post by rm445 »

I can't be alone in just pretending Reddit doesn't exist on mobile. It's weird, I like Reddit a lot, on desktop I post and comment, but on mobile it is so shabby that I just ignore it instead of seeing if it can be made bearable by being logged in to an app.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#229

Post by jeedomer »

arcturus17 wrote: post #155

Yea, fuck all this noise. I've been meaning to quit any and all digital activity that's a bottomless well (ie, you can get more content ad infinitum). This includes social networks, Youtube, Netflix, etc. Of these, Reddit was probably my worst vice, as I could just pop up my phone and endlessly read mind-numbing crap, no matter the place and time. My monkey brain has been completely addicted to this motion for well o…

I only begrudgingly got a smartphone last year - after watching everyone else get addicted to them "from the outside" and I've fallen right into the trap with them. Finally made an account to ask, can you be more specific about what qualifies as a bottomless well? I have Messenger for talking to my family but never use the rest of Facebook. Does that disqualify it? What about only using Youtube for channels like Techmoan or Mark Felton?

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#230

Post by zozbot234 »

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-…

> There must be some huge incentive for Reddit to push users toward the mobile app.

From what we hear, the app isn't even that well designed. It seems that many users are still using unofficial clients because the app can feel heavy and sluggish, with only a barely acceptable UX.

Post reply on HN