TL;DR: Condé Nast will take every nice thing they acquire or own and try to covertly (at first) focus on short term gains with dark patterns. And I mean dark patterns even outside of websites.
Reddit’s disrespectful design
481–490 of 516 posts
Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design
#482Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a sucker born every minute. When I was 10 I bought Pokemon cards, which looking back on, was a huge waste of money, but at least it wasn't all that much money in the end. I was a newbie to the scene, and I got taken advantage of. Lesson learned. 10 years later when phones were just coming into everyone's pockets, a whole new wave of gamers emerged. Game companies could either develop for the previous wave, by…
Pokemon cards were pretty awesome. What are you talking about.
> nostalgia is pretty awesome.
Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design
#483Earlier 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…
> I can't imagine many engineers would choose a job offer from Quora or Reddit over one from any other company.
Considering these dark patterns translate to growth (and thus more money), I don't know why they wouldn't. Lots of people are still working for the tobacco industry.
Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design
#484Earlier quoted context omitted.
reddit regularly gets mocked by every other corner of the internet
Hate to break to you but, every corner of the internet mocks every other corner of the internet. Even HN is heavily mocked on other sites.
I am curious if you have examples. What is hn or the hn community mocked for?
Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design
#485Earlier 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…
One of the ways to measure long term impact is through the use of a golden cohort that is never opted into experiments. Unsurprisingly, I could not get this work prioritized on the roadmap. We also worked with growth consultants (read: Bay Area B2C product leads) in scoping out some of these ideas. We accrued what I call "product debt" where we launch the MVP but never followed up to polish the feature[0] as they don…
> Regarding long term impact, we measured this through various dimensions in marketing, recruiting, and user research. The outcomes are largely positive.
You almost make it sound like this is something the users like and want.
As a long time Reddit user I can say that if they force the new site on to me along with their mobile app, I'm gone. It's not worth it.
Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design
#486Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design
#487Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't that basically Medium?
> moderators I suggest to compensate creators not moderators.
Reddit moderators do not support self-promotion [1]. They won't moderate posts where OP is being paid and they aren't.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/6bj5de/state_of_sp...
Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design
#488Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't that basically Medium?
(Can't reply to the other comment) > Reddit has 10x the traffic because it's free. Reddit acquired more traffic because it's free, true. But now, they aren't looking to acquire more traffic. They're looking for more revenue. One way to get that revenue is to allow already existing content creators to charge for a part of the content. I think that would not only encourage better content but would bring in other users…
> One way to get that revenue is to allow already existing content creators to charge for a part of the content.
Brave can do that for reddit and other social media sites now [1]
[1] https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/articles/360030752872-Whi...
Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design
#489Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It’s shocking to me how people sell out like this. You have to know deep down that all these hostile short term juicers destroy the brand, each malfeasance creating more room for a competitor. I mean you guys replaced Digg, cmon. 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 cu…
It is not shocking when you realize it is about self-interest. You get your bonus and salary in the short term who really gives a shit what happens 7 years from now?