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Reddit’s disrespectful design

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Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#291

Post by sebow »

Reddit is bad (not to say completely garbage after the "new UI") since about 2015.It become even more prevalent when Tencent(known destroyer of online communities, especially in gaming) throwed some money into it about 2 years ago.

Everything from usability, moderation, non-transparency in decision-making continues to make it a bubble that completely defies the what it used to be when it first took off.

It's not worth even going into details, and sadly alternatives like mastodon or something are not yet there (for again, a multitude of reasons).

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#292

Post by specialist »

GordonS wrote: post #118

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…

Yes and:

I just don't understand reddit's UI. I'd probably use the subreddit's I join a lot more if their forum features were more like HN & lobsters.

> ...it does a full page reload, now showing you only that subthread!

Some times expands in place, some times link to new page. Since I can't predict what will happen, I rarely drill down into threads.

I lurk on r/awww and the like. (Mental therapy during the apocolypse.) I have no idea why OC is shown or not. Further, the UI for submitting posts is turrible. I legit have no idea what will happen. So I've stopped trying.

I wouldn't mind using a native or 3rd party client. Shit, I cut my teeth on CompuServe, BIX, FidoNet, etc. They had thriving ecosystem of offline clients. But the reddit clients I've tried just haven't gelled with me. (Didn't care enough to think about it too much.)

Now that I'm using Firefox regularly again, I may try Reddit Enhancement Suite again.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#293

Post by mioasndo »

demux wrote: post #237
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 me…

The purpose of reddit at this point is to keep as many naive and docile users as possible, and keep them clicking. Anything that could cause cognitive dissonance is bannable, while advertising and astroturfing are essentially encouraged. Any interesting comment or opinion that's actually worth reading will be hidden near the bottom or middle of any popular thread. If you try to engage in any potentially controversial conversation, you are at risk of getting banned, or having several comments in the convo deleted. The only thing left worth anything in on reddit are relatively small, niche subreddits.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#294

Post by tyre »

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…

“I made it worse for users but it is making me rich” is peak Silicon Valley.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#295

Post by rd »

demux wrote: post #237
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 me…

This happens with any social media. The great Digg exodus happened, and Reddit boomed. Reddit’s content and community grew healthily, then Reddit blew up exponentially, and now the content and community have grown sure, but very unhealthily.

Actually, unhealthily for what Reddit used to be (long form content and discussion), healthily for what it’s becoming (social media a la infinite scroll, chat, and notifications galore).

The point I’m trying to make is I don’t think this sort of effect is preventable - any community which encounters growth will see an influx of shitty content, unless you keep the community exclusive purposefully. Reddit just decided to roll with the punches so they could make some stacks on a nice IPO I imagine in the future.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#296

Post by uDontKnowMe »

fullshark wrote: post #255
RosanaAnaDana wrote: post #135

Reddit has completely jumped the shark in its UI design, the 'direction' its taken, and its basically complete capitulation to censorship at a corporate level. Its interesting to that they haven't IPO'd yet, because in my view, its a zombie carcass waiting for its replacement to find its way onto the net. There has always been a place, a need, and a demand for anonymous, free form discussions on the internet. Craigsl…

All those things suck at reddit, but to me the fundamental issue with reddit is upvoting/downvoting + a massive user base. Subreddits get too large and are dominated by lowest common denominator quips and memes to the point that the content is junk food for echo chambers. Every so often some bit of insight can rise, but by and large that's the problem and it's fundamental to reddit's DNA and no UX fixes would solve t…

I disagree that UX can't play a role in this aspect of Reddit. Old reddit was a lot more insightful and had higher quality content and discussions, because the UX was geared towards that. Now the UX is heavily geared towards mindless scrolling of a feed on your phone, and so that is the kind of content you get.

Just look at Hacker News, it is upvote/downvote-based, but it has way better quality discussion than anywhere on (new) Reddit. Maybe comparable to some of the best subs 10 years ago, and that's because Hacker News has the same UI reddit had 10 years ago.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#297

Post by minsc__and__boo »

411111111111111 wrote: post #247
zozbot234 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> streamlined signup flow It was more streamlined before. You literally only had to input a username and any password, no policies, email or anything else you had to adhere to/provide. I stopped using reddit back then after using it several hours daily for years, so not every power user ignored these changes

Sign up flows serve more purposes than just a funnel for new users (which IMO is part of a problem with how we build websites in general, but I digress).

Anti-scam/fraud account identification can rely heavily on inputs up front. I'm honestly surprised reddit went so long without requiring other inputs, despite their rising popularity.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#298

Post by mustacheemperor »

ergot_vacation wrote: post #184
RosanaAnaDana wrote: post #135

Reddit has completely jumped the shark in its UI design, the 'direction' its taken, and its basically complete capitulation to censorship at a corporate level. Its interesting to that they haven't IPO'd yet, because in my view, its a zombie carcass waiting for its replacement to find its way onto the net. There has always been a place, a need, and a demand for anonymous, free form discussions on the internet. Craigsl…

A lot has been written about the social and legal difficulties of running such a site (how much do you enjoy looking at child porn all day so you can ban the people posting it? How many mass-shooters would you like to have post their manifesto on your site?) But I think the real issue is just money. Even if you keep things pretty stripped down, as 4chan or the original reddit did, hosting still costs money. And if yo…

There was in fact a time where Reddit’s front page included a progress bar showing how much Gold needed to be bought/gifted that day to pay off that day’s server time, and shortly after it was introduced the bar was overfilled every single day and eventually set to a more arbitrary goal than actual server bills. I’m assuming that didn’t include salaries and other overhead, but it does indicate the userbase could basically sponsor the hosting fees. That was also before Reddit directly hosted images and videos, so those bills have presumably gone up quite a bit.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#299

Post by ss2f »

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-…

Which is why I think alternatives like Lemmy[0] ought to up their UX/UI and mobile applications because on the backend, they offer much respectful design and since they are not after money, operate under less duress. Such alternatives offer real possibilities to challenge Reddit but they have a long way to go on user interface.

[0] https://join-lemmy.org/instances

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#300

Post by minsc__and__boo »

lowkey wrote: post #225
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…

>Why not double down on the things the community has already indicated it wants.

Diminishing returns and a huge variety of communities with diverse wants.

Steve Huffman's approach has been to not touch it as much as possible (except with engagement it seems), which leads to it's own issues.

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