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Reddit’s disrespectful design

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Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#231

Post by irateswami »

zozbot234 wrote: post #223
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 comp…

It's about pumping up engagement metrics, pure and simple, regardless of the quality of the user experience.

Any and all social media is poison.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#232

Post by lazyweb »

00jimbo wrote: post #92
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…

speaking of their google results, let's also draw attention to the fact that they lie about post dates in google results to get you to click on a result from this week, only to click through and find that it's a post 7 years old

Yes! I've noticed that as well lately. So incredibly dishonest.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#234

Post by cunthorpe »

Yep, Reddit is basically a junk site at the moment and it gets worse by the day. Just this month they started restricting “potentially NSFW” posts from being opened unless you login.

This is their direction now, soon enough we’ll have popunders like TripAdvisor, other successful junk site.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#235

Post by archon810 »

rm445 wrote: post #228

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.

Why do all this complaining and ignoring instead of just downloading an app like "rif is fun", logging in once, and then having great reddit experience on mobile?

Everyone here is aware of the dark patterns on reddit. We know they're not going anywhere. We continue to read reddit posts every day, so why not make it easy on yourself instead of endless misery and complaining about things that you know won't change?

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#236

Post by grishka »

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.

It works for metrics. It works for making more money than you know what to do with. It absolutely doesn't work for keeping your user base loyal. The moment you implement the dark patterns, the users immediately start looking for alternatives to your platform that respect them.

That said, I still use reddit. Except I use the old design and RES. And a third-party app on my phone.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#237

Post by demux »

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…

You say power users complain but the casual user does not (as a result of these features) - this sort of position ruins reddit's community as it suggests that reddit doesn't really care about the members who have contributed all kinds of content over the years and instead favors trying to get new members who are just marginally interested, or worse, just like endlessly scrolling through a timeline. This thread has mentions of several users that don't use reddit anymore (me included) and as reddit continues shoving monetization down the user's throat you'll see that those members will continue leaving until the platform is indistinguishable from the likes of Facebook, Digg, etc.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#238

Post by kzrdude »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #156
tfsh wrote: post #108

It constantly amazes me how bad Reddit's interface is, videos either don't play or randomly start playing despite them not being in the viewport. They run random A|B experiments which add unnecessary components such as avatars next to peoples comments. Random acts of monetization are shoved down my throat at every turn. I honestly think the Reddit team are on a purpose built mission to design the most user hostile fo…

Seconded. The old.reddit.com UI is still pretty bad on mobile, but it's the only remotely usable one. The default mobile site goes out of its way to make it difficult to read the thread, while also confusingly merging other threads into the page.

Both old. and i.reddit.com are slowly being left behind by new features and such things. It breaks conversation when new reddit can use one syntax for code blocks and old reddit can't see it like it's supposed to look.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#239

Post by twirlock »

Reddit deserves to die. It's like their entire goal was to consolidate forum culture and then astroturf it to shit. Every single powermod glows like the sun. The political content is a joke, just a full on non-stop campaign to indoctrinate kids into the worldview of the neoliberal intelligentsia. Reddit is spooks dancing on the grave of the pre 10's internet. They deserve to fail.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#240

Post by wting »

zozbot234 wrote: post #223
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 comp…

Features are only launched after running a successful experiment.

We try to appeal to power users when possible. For example with the current signup flow has optional emails, though intentionally non-obvious.

This means new users sign up with an email which means we can reduce churn through digests and also reset passwords / prevent account takeovers, a large burden for Reddit's anti spam teams.

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