461–470 of 516 posts
A somewhat counterpoint to the first example in the article: I created a Reddit account (11 years ago) without an email address and forgot the password. Now there is no way to reset the password and recover the account. I never bothered to create a new account so I just stopped using Reddit in most cases.
I just stay away from Reddit links as much as possible. The user experience is atrocious and I agree with everything the article says. There is another point that the article missed (or perhaps never encountered because the author primarily focuses on the mobile experience). In desktop Reddit posts are actually modal dialogs (don't believe me? Open a Reddit post in your desktop browser). I have this bad habit of clic…
This is just shitty UX but not dishonest though. But I hate it too since I click as well. Plus, you often lose the scroll position. :\
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"dark patterns work" surprised pikachu face Did they think people use dark patterns for the fun of it...?
Yeah, it's a business, not a charity. People don't start businesses because it's cute and fun. Reddit needs to turn a profit or demonstrate ridiculous growth, and it seems to be working.
Of course they do, that's the whole point, dark patterns trick users into increasing your metrics. Doesn't mean it's a good idea to use them. That's like saying not allowing users to unsubscribe really decreases the unsubscription rate. No shit.
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 ran Product Engineering at a competing startup (hundreds of millions of MAUs) that tested/employed similar flows. And yes, they work in the short-term, and unless you are very principled, it's hard to avoid them. I'm glad you heavily protested them. But I'd like to further the argument for why they should be avoided. First, yes they do work in the short-term. You run an A/B test with some adversarial flow that bloc…
Following the links from your blog, it looks like you worked at Quora. Outside of news websites, Quora and Reddit are probably the two worst offenders of pushing dark patterns onto the Internet. I still don't understand why Google hasn't deranked Quora for cloaking its pages, a dark pattern that would get any other website banned from the SERPs.
I like your point about recruiting. I can't imagine many engineers would choose a job offer from Quora or Reddit over one from any other company. You're basically selecting for candidates who can only attract one offer.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I ran Product Engineering at a competing startup (hundreds of millions of MAUs) that tested/employed similar flows. And yes, they work in the short-term, and unless you are very principled, it's hard to avoid them. I'm glad you heavily protested them. But I'd like to further the argument for why they should be avoided. First, yes they do work in the short-term. You run an A/B test with some adversarial flow that bloc…
> I wrote the original Disrespectful Design post he links Following the links from your blog, it looks like you worked at Quora. Outside of news websites, Quora and Reddit are probably the two worst offenders of pushing dark patterns onto the Internet. I still don't understand why Google hasn't deranked Quora for cloaking its pages, a dark pattern that would get any other website banned from the SERPs. I like your po…
That said, they are far from the worst offenders. Facebook has done some really shady things around inviting your contacts, recommending people you may know, sharing/exposing your data to other apps, etc. LinkedIn has done some lawsuit-worthy shady things in that area too (e.g. [1]). News sites (and others) are paid to put tracking pixels on their sites so data can be harvested via data brokers and sold back into the ad/tracking ecosystem.
All around, Quora had some of the smartest, most passionate engineers / PMs / managers I've ever worked with (some of which have gone on to start very successful companies themselves). I'd be lying if I said I didn't think some product decisions affected recruiting at all, but it's a far cry from "candidates who only attract one offer".
[1] https://www.fastcompany.com/3051906/after-lawsuit-settlement...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Owning reddit allows ypu to own public opinion through censorship,thats a pretty important bit of value and im sure tencent would agree
reddit regularly gets mocked by every other corner of the internet
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, golden cohorts can work, but they are really hard to pull off, especially for logged out traffic (which is where you'd use most of these patterns anyway). Good luck tracking me over 6-24 months across different devices and locations. And cross-contamination is hard to prevent (for instance, the golden cohort might suffer from global effects like worse content due to loss of power users or even from stumbling ac…
The person who created Twitter's experimentation platform is also at Reddit, and heavily influenced Reddit's experiment design and review process. But yes, a revolving door of product leaders and decisions is going to bias towards short term optimization.
The audacity to claim “it works”, in italics no less.
The real shame of the current tech companies is they have no principles, no long term vision. They all feel like they follow the same curve, a bunch of managers hitting KPIs during their 2-5 year stint before trading up, ending in some PE firm diving in at the end for the final squeeze.
They’re lemons being juiced dry, when they should be a garden of lemon trees.
“But we got 20% more juice than last year!!”
Yea, you did.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Meh Reddit brings me a lot of value still. I enjoy it a lot. On the other hand I've never bothered with mobile games and have never paid for a microtransaction.
It was an analogy. You don't need to have played mobile games to see the connection OP is trying to make between "junk food" mobile games and "junk food" social media.