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

471–480 of 516 posts

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#471

Post by okareaman »

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…

For those trying follow along, from Andrew Chen's site: DAU/MAU is a popular metric for user engagement – it’s the ratio of your daily active users over your monthly active users, expressed as a percentage. Usually apps over 20% are said to be good, and 50%+ is world class.

How did this metric come into use? DAU/MAU has been a popular metric because of Facebook, which popularized the metric. As a result, as they began to talk about it, other consumer apps came to often be judged by the same KPIs. I first encountered DAU/MAU as a ratio during the Facebook Platform days, when it was used to evaluate apps on their platform.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#472

Post by oliv__ »

I clicked the link expecting to agree with the author but to be honest, I don't think those are dark patterns. Pushy? Yes. Annoying? Sure. But still not what I would call dark patterns.

Try booking a cheap airline ticket on RyanAir or something, there you'll find some real dark patterns

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#473

Post by the_lucifer »

tmh88j wrote: post #446
lutoma wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're on iOS, try https://apolloapp.io/ . Using it on an iPad has become my main way of accessing reddit. Super customizable, has keyboard shortcuts and supports pretty much all reddit features. The developer is also very active and quick to respond to bugs. (I know this is starting to sound like an advertisement which was not my intention, I just really enjoy using that app).

I tried appollo a while back and I was not a fan. My biggest gripe with the UI of appolo and post-redesigned reddit is that it feels like instagram or a facebook. I don't like endlessly scrolling through pictures and auto-playing videos since most of them are of no interest to me. If I want to view a picture/video I'll click on it. It clutters up the page with content I don't care about. Mobile browsing (for me at le…

You can completely customize Apollo. I have it setup like so with a compact layout where images and gifs and videos play only when I tap on the thumbnails. Otherwise, they stay out of my way and I can focus on the title more. (Also autoplay is customizable even if you use the large layout).

That being said, I still use the desktop reddit with RES, old reddit redirect and VIM-like keyboard shortcuts. The day they gimp the third party app apis and push people to their redesign is the day I stop using reddit.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#474

Post by the_lucifer »

soneil wrote: post #242
PossiblyKyle wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I know, reddit is not entirely to blame on its own on this. Apple's policy only lets the first party app open certain domains, like YouTube (please correct me if I'm mistaken) and Twitter. Overall, a decent workaround is an app called Opener (link to follow) which lets you switch to specific apps from the share sheet. Apollo also has this feature for reddit links specifically. However, I do agree that reddi…

That's a tough cookie to solve. So here's the hypothetical. I create a trashware game app. Typical low-hanging fruit. I set it as a handler for amazon.com links. Then in my app I handle these links in a convincing web container. And obvious, mangle the links with my referrer URL in the process. I call this a hypothetical, but the only reason it is, is that apple wouldn't allow me to register as a handler for amazon.c…

Incidentally this is also one of the arguments that people point to for App Store lockdown. Otherwise, they claim that there would be nothing stopping you from making such a "trashware game app" and injecting referral links.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#475

Post by darepublic »

rd wrote: post #295
demux wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They recently rolled out chat and I have already received messages from some obvious bots with fake female avatars. No real chat though

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#476

Post by e3bc54b2 »

jffry wrote: post #149
e3bc54b2 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thanks for proper explanation on why this is better. I stand corrected.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#477

Post by fiestaman »

tazjin wrote: post #263
kzrdude wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

old. now has a new EU cookie banner which, to accept or configure cookies, takes you to the new version. I blocked the banner in my adblocker. If they're turning off the old reddit anytime soon I'll probably just leave.

Try out js4.red as an alternative.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#478

Post by cunthorpe »

realce wrote: post #359
cunthorpe wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have good content and good comments. Funny junk is interspersed with news and occasional trivia and life stories. The thoughtful comments really are great and have helped me understand some POVs and hear about other people’s lives. This just does not happen on Facebook for example. Most groups and posts are run into the ground by junk comments that make discussion impossible because there’s no downvote that even…

Ever notice the difference is that people on FB have identities to defend but reddit users are just anon usernames with no identity tied to it? I think this is a serious aspect of why they produce different conversations.

I think you haven’t been on Facebook in a while. People say the most ridiculous things and bully each other. No such thing as shame on Facebook.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#479

Post by noduerme »

Ozzie_osman wrote: post #466
TechBro8615 wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Honestly, yes, Quora and Reddit both have some bad patterns around their signup flows (esp mobile). I won't defend those. 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 (a…

As a consumer of posts who wants to occasionally read Quora on my phone's DDG browser, I just no longer bother to click the link. Ditto with Reddit unless I feel like fighting their popups. Logging in or downloading the apps? You've gotta be kidding. Nothing would be a bigger waste of time or storage on my phone. FB is obnoxious in that they only let you view one page w/o logging in, but I never had a FB account so I just ignore any links to them. I suspect a lot of other people as consumers - not privacy advocates or engineers - find these login/download walls annoying enough to drop engagement. Quora is particularly obnoxious and I've never had an account with them, but removing a few invisible divs in the dom editor usually lets me read what I need to.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#480

Post by rhaksw »

Reddit's biggest dark pattern is showing your removed comments as if they are not removed when you are logged in. You can try and see it for yourself here [0]. I built a site primarily with this issue in mind [1].

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/CantSayAnything/about/sticky

[1] https://www.reveddit.com

Post reply on HN