Isn't the best way to open old.reddit.com in a desktop browser?
When you are at a computer yes. But sometimes I am on my phone and neither the old UI or the new UI are acceptable. I slightly prefer the new UI on mobile but it definitely sucks.
Third-party Reddit apps are being crushed by price increases
111–120 of 438 posts
Re: Third-party Reddit apps are being crushed by price increases
#112https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35343748
This HN thread a few months ago about the removal of i.reddit feels prophetic.
Re: Third-party Reddit apps are being crushed by price increases
#113I've been a reddit user since 2010. I have over 40k karma points (whatever that means) and I've never once bothered to try any 3rd party app. I was only briefly cognizant of the "old.reddit.com" thing because some subs sidebars hadn't been updated. The official site is fine. I have one or two small gripes about the UI. The official iOS app is also fine. I have a few small gripes about the UI there, too. I guess I wis…
I used the official app for a while but got tired of being advertised literal scams, and found the app just a bit slow. Switching to Apollo was transformational in my usage and engagement, a far better product, and would be great even with ads.
As for the site, the new redesign seems to have improved a little in the last few months, but for years it has been nearly unusable. On an Intel Mac JS was just far too slow and my fans would spin up on any Reddit page. It was like this for years.
The Reddit UX might be good enough on mobile, and might have gotten better on web, but users have been burnt hard. I know so many regular users who use alternative apps or the old site.
Re: Third-party Reddit apps are being crushed by price increases
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, it enables endless scrolling, serving an ad once in a while.
It enables making ads indistinguishable from real content, to get more clicks through deception. That's another interpretation. You'd think ad buyers would have a problem with this, but I guess not. I've begun dragging a small "ultraportable" laptop with me, because it makes a lot of things bearable again: youtube, reddit, stackoverflow ... I'm not sure why people treat mobile users so horribly bad, but here we are.
> I'm not sure why people treat mobile users so horribly bad, but here we are.
Maybe because those people "don't care" about usability, or better said, never got to know what this even means. The young generation was socialized on mobile. They just don't know better so you can treat them like that without consequences.
Re: Third-party Reddit apps are being crushed by price increases
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I don't understand how a popular product like Reddit has so atrociously bad UI" Do you mean like... HN?
Could you point to specific deficiencies of HN?
No pagination, as mentioned.
No way to keep up with new comments on a post (Reddit doesn't have this either).
No notifications on reply, so it's difficult to get answers to clarifying questions (/threads helps but isn't it).
Ever-increasing indentation makes deep threads hard to read.
Generally hard to read and hard to click on mobile.
None fatal, but also none particularly tough to fix!
Re: Third-party Reddit apps are being crushed by price increases
#116Re: Third-party Reddit apps are being crushed by price increases
#117As long as old.reddit.com still exists for desktop, the site is semi-usable, although the insane moderation policies and narrow ideology makes the site basically useless except for niche reddits. Though I have gone from a daily user years back to maybe once a month. It's that bad. On mobile, I can still read direct links to reddit posts that crop up on HN using Firefox for Android. Can't say same for the Twitter, whi…
Reddit conveniently unchecks the “redirect me to old Reddit” button every ~6 months. Quite annoying. I’ve been using Reddit for ~8-9 years and it’s gotten palpably worse. I knew it was dying the first time I saw an emoji on there. Seems they want to go the way Digg did.
Re: Third-party Reddit apps are being crushed by price increases
#118As long as old.reddit.com still exists for desktop, the site is semi-usable, although the insane moderation policies and narrow ideology makes the site basically useless except for niche reddits. Though I have gone from a daily user years back to maybe once a month. It's that bad. On mobile, I can still read direct links to reddit posts that crop up on HN using Firefox for Android. Can't say same for the Twitter, whi…
This post seriously changed my life. I had no idea old was working. Thanks.
Be warned, either new reddit or the mobile apps (not sure which) deliberately insert extraneous slashes or underscores into links, so many links are broken when viewing on old reddit / need manual editing.
I'm pretty sure they're going to kill off old reddit, which will 100% certainly mark the end of my 15 years there.
Re: Third-party Reddit apps are being crushed by price increases
#119As a compromise reddit could require that 3rd party apps to show ads from reddit (so they get the money from clicks)
How could this be enforced?
Re: Third-party Reddit apps are being crushed by price increases
#120Reddit is past its expiration date anyway and I'm surprised no one has created a challenger site. Perhaps this was due to Reddit's friendliness toward programmatic access but it seems they are taking that away. This is a good opportunity to create a new community, and essentially take back messaging from the corporations (let's be real about what reddit is) and put it back into the hands of the people.
It is a similar problem to YT. Coding the site would not be that hard, but running it at scale is. Moreover, it's expensive. That is what reddit has struggled with itself, because the platform doesn't monetise their users as heavily as Google or Meta, and has always had more open and laissez-faire approach.
The only way to launch a competitor that is profitable is by going the Google/Meta way, but then users will just stay on reddit. Otherwise you need deep pockets or lots of VC money, but why would they invest in reddit clone that will just end up in the same place that the original finds itself in?
As for the corporations, you need them and their ad money, unless you want to run a subscription model. But that doesn't work either, because the majority of users will just stick to the free sites if you try.