Have you tried browsing the site with an ad blocker enabled? It's likely all the ads from elsewhere. I do quite well with chrome and ad block plus.
Ask HN: Why is Reddit so slow and unreliable?
31–40 of 48 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit so slow and unreliable?
#32Well their JavaScript "new" site sucks so horribly that it even brings my heavy gaming PC to its knees. Clearly they have no clue what they're doing (probably at management level, even bad devs can do better than this) or they have a ton of legacy code they're trying to write around. But even the old one had its issues. Deep threads with thousands of posts would often crash when you clicked the "read more" to go deep…
Don’t even ask about the app which take 20+ Seconds to load in content.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit so slow and unreliable?
#33Gyfcat / gif slowness I think is a big part of this. Now that did not answer your question, but at least reddit routinely pokes fun at itself under /r/funny and /r/yesitstrue where its servers are depicted as 1 old overheated pizza box. Also 34% of all resources are spent running rule engines to "enforce" posting compliance.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit so slow and unreliable?
#34After using this mess of website reddit I am wondering why people didn’t like usenet and prefer centralised private and censored services.
Usenet became unusable due to spam / people trolling with illegal material of the worst kind. You can kind of filter it or pay for a good Usenet provider to sort most of that out, but the good old days of being a Usenet node and having a manageable amount of traffic disappeared 25-30 years ago.
The moderated platforms looked better (Slashdot for example) but the spammers and chancers ruined that too.
As a link aggregator, Fark or Digg or (threw up in my mouth) 4Chan all either censored themselves stupid or became a cesspit of humanity that no self respecting adult could tolerate.
Reddit looked like it might be able to find a way forward but as others have suggested, if your business model completely relies on your community doing your work for free, it is eventually doomed to fail as soon as it becomes popular because the amount of work becomes overwhelming.
Yet we are stuck because the conclusion all these sites seem to come to (heavy, paid moderation) makes the sites so antiseptic they stop having anything interesting on them.
The real answer seems to be: use it until it can't be used and move to the next thing when that happens. Reddit is not quite unuseable for the specialist subs but it's getting close.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit so slow and unreliable?
#35Use the API via the mobile app RIF (Reddit Is Fun) for Android and avoid the site's anti-usability-patterns like the plague. * https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.andrewshu....
Doesn’t help me. I don’t have android.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit so slow and unreliable?
#36They pay their engineers below and in cases half of market rates, place no organizational value on quality engineering, their CEO/head engineer is a buffoon and they have a history of screwing people with regard to equity compensation. It's not a complicated explanation at all.
> their CEO/head engineer is a buffoon and they have a history of screwing people with regard to equity compensation. It's not a complicated explanation at all. This is the first time I’ve heard something negative about Huffman. Could you elaborate?
I mean, this was pretty embarrassing. Seems like poor judgment. https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/23/13739026/reddit-ceo-stev...
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit so slow and unreliable?
#37I assume they want to nudge everyone onto their app so they can bypass ad blocking and anti tracking efforts. Just like Instagram, tiktok, Snapchat, Pinterest, etc.
Doesn't the app pull from the same servers that are down? When I have browser issues, I usually have app issues too.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit so slow and unreliable?
#38Well their JavaScript "new" site sucks so horribly that it even brings my heavy gaming PC to its knees. Clearly they have no clue what they're doing (probably at management level, even bad devs can do better than this) or they have a ton of legacy code they're trying to write around. But even the old one had its issues. Deep threads with thousands of posts would often crash when you clicked the "read more" to go deep…
their website is terrible. even if i stumble across a post in my desktop that i want to read ill try search for it on my phone instead because their site works better on (third party) mobile apps.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit so slow and unreliable?
#39I assume they want to nudge everyone onto their app so they can bypass ad blocking and anti tracking efforts. Just like Instagram, tiktok, Snapchat, Pinterest, etc.
Doesn't the app pull from the same servers that are down? When I have browser issues, I usually have app issues too.
I use redreader and it works like a charm with no ads.
If I happen to look at the actual website on mobile, it will freeze the browser almost instantly. So meesed up.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit so slow and unreliable?
#40I assume they want to nudge everyone onto their app so they can bypass ad blocking and anti tracking efforts. Just like Instagram, tiktok, Snapchat, Pinterest, etc.
Doesn't the app pull from the same servers that are down? When I have browser issues, I usually have app issues too.
I would not put it past people to cause accessing the website via browser to randomly have more errors or slowdowns in order to get people to try the app and then show people a better experience on it.