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Sunsetting Secret Santa and Reddit Gifts

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Re: Sunsetting Secret Santa and Reddit Gifts

#111

Post by pasabagi »

Aardwolf wrote: post #78

"We made the difficult decision to shut down Reddit Gifts and put more focus on enhancing the user experience on Reddit" Oh, enhancing user experience sounds good: so they'll reinstate the old reddit UI back as the default, the one that doesn't block viewing threads in a mobile browser half the time?

The thing I find weird is that they essentially paid money to degrade the user experience to the extent that large parts of previously OK functionality don't work anymore, and subreddit mods typically advise people to use the 'old' UI.

I mean, the new UI is not to my taste, but it is also just really buggy, slow, and full of things that straightforwardly don't work (videos, search, etc).

Now, I'm not an MBA, but I don't really get how you make money by paying developers to degrade your service.

Re: Sunsetting Secret Santa and Reddit Gifts

#112

Post by nichos »

miked85 wrote: post #85
jayd16 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There's really nowhere left to hide from the rigorous enforcement of orthodox leftist thought. Whats your thought on sites like voat that were seen as escapes but immediately turned into cesspools and then ghost towns?

Voat turned into a refuge for people on the far right who only wanted to talk politics, 100% of the time. Even if you lean towards that side of the political spectrum, it gets very tiresome.

Agreed, vote became the exact opposite of reddit, far right. Most of America is middle of the road, but online sites are very polarizing. I still wish Usenet would make a comeback.

Re: Sunsetting Secret Santa and Reddit Gifts

#113

Post by acatton »

pseudo0 wrote: post #34
Rebelgecko wrote: post #17

Maybe I'm not the typical user, but to me reddit seems to be losing sight of why people use the site. They're killing aspects of the community that people actually care about. In the meantime, most of the site's new features seem to be centered around avatars and selling cosmetic microtransactions. I can't blame them too much for trying to monetize, but I wish their strategies were more inclusive of the way I use red…

Their push for people to use the mobile app has gotten user-hostile to the point of ridiculousness. Some subreddits now just prompt you to either continue in the app or return to the homepage, there's no option to continue in the mobile browser.

I personally just gave up trying to access Reddit from my mobile browser.

I used to have "Compact Reddit Redirect"[1] on my phone browser. But it got more and more broken in the last two years.

Now, I use RedReader[2][3] on my phone which is open source and gives "an 'old' reddit feel".

It is really sad to use an app to access a website :( . I need to accept that I'm not the target audience of that website anymore...

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/compact-reddi...

[2] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.quantumbadger.redreader/

[3] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.quantumbad...

Re: Sunsetting Secret Santa and Reddit Gifts

#114

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

uDontKnowMe wrote: post #52
ehsankia wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least they have still kept old.reddit.com around, which thankfully doesn't have most of the new bullshit. The day they kill that is the day reddit will be truly dead.

This was some comfort years ago, but these days, the vast majority of reddit users are mobile and new-reddit, whose UX's favor more meme/video mindless scrolling and throwaway comments. So while the old reddit experience is there in looks it feels more hollow nowadays. You go into a common interest subreddit and where 8 years ago you might have found interesting discussions now it's all memes, inspiration photos, etc…

I am convinced even had Reddit kept the old design, it would still suck now, because any site focused on a universal demographic will inevitably get most people coming in on mobile, and mobile inherently discourages longform text and encourages images.

I find that for various special-interest, hobbyist forums, you need some kind of friction to prevent low-effort posters from taking over, and ensure more people are participating from desktop/laptops. I have gone back some phpBB fora I have neglected after Reddit's ascent, and while there are fewer people around and they skew older, I am amazed at how substantial and competent discussions are compared to their subreddit counterparts.

Re: Sunsetting Secret Santa and Reddit Gifts

#115

Post by ValentinPearce »

pasabagi wrote: post #111
Aardwolf wrote: post #78

"We made the difficult decision to shut down Reddit Gifts and put more focus on enhancing the user experience on Reddit" Oh, enhancing user experience sounds good: so they'll reinstate the old reddit UI back as the default, the one that doesn't block viewing threads in a mobile browser half the time?

The thing I find weird is that they essentially paid money to degrade the user experience to the extent that large parts of previously OK functionality don't work anymore, and subreddit mods typically advise people to use the 'old' UI. I mean, the new UI is not to my taste, but it is also just really buggy, slow, and full of things that straightforwardly don't work (videos, search, etc). Now, I'm not an MBA, but I do…

My guess would be that newer users that decide to stay move to the app on mobile where they can't have an ad blocker

Re: Sunsetting Secret Santa and Reddit Gifts

#116

Post by ginko »

mattalex wrote: post #95
bob1029 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stories like reddit are why I keep telling our executive staff that I am completely against a buyout. We have one angel investor and all the control we could ever hope for. Our customers love us. Why the fuck do people screw these things up? Are they that hooked on other people's money? I feel like reddit was managing to pay the bills before the series of sellouts and poor product choices...

You can only do that if you can afford it: I'm pretty sure reddit never made money and was bleeding it quite profusely. At some point you have to start making money, but reddit (and most other internet/digital companies) valued growth at all cost. Now they are probably billions in the hole and they have to look for outside investment. You also make the strong assumption that executive staff/founders actually care abo…

I wonder if a community-owned project similar to a food cooperative could work with sites like Reddit.

Have people pay a membership fee for a share in the project. Non-members still have access but with basic ads.

Re: Sunsetting Secret Santa and Reddit Gifts

#117

Post by Black101 »

pasabagi wrote: post #111
Aardwolf wrote: post #78

"We made the difficult decision to shut down Reddit Gifts and put more focus on enhancing the user experience on Reddit" Oh, enhancing user experience sounds good: so they'll reinstate the old reddit UI back as the default, the one that doesn't block viewing threads in a mobile browser half the time?

The thing I find weird is that they essentially paid money to degrade the user experience to the extent that large parts of previously OK functionality don't work anymore, and subreddit mods typically advise people to use the 'old' UI. I mean, the new UI is not to my taste, but it is also just really buggy, slow, and full of things that straightforwardly don't work (videos, search, etc). Now, I'm not an MBA, but I do…

But when they add a new feature to the new Reddit, they don't backport it to old/ns.reddit.com (surveys being one example and there was at least another one other that I can't think of right now).

Re: Sunsetting Secret Santa and Reddit Gifts

#118

Post by willis936 »

fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: post #40
xanaxagoras wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me reddit lost sight of why I used the site about 3 years ago, or maybe that's just when it got bad enough that I no longer felt unsubscribing from all defaults was a suitable solution. There's really nowhere left to hide from the rigorous enforcement of orthodox leftist thought. It's mostly a mutual admiration society where the boundaries of allowed disagreement and interesting discussion may touch here and ther…

The average large subreddit has low quality left wing discourse, and the large conservative subreddits have low quality right wing discourse. I thinking mentioning them by name might ruin them, but there are definitely subreddits out there with a diverse range of political views and good discussion on those topics. I think it’s impossible for large subreddits to maintain reasonable conversation about politics because…

HN is not reddit. I wouldn't mention HN by name on reddit for fear of damaging the community. The reverse is not true.

Re: Sunsetting Secret Santa and Reddit Gifts

#119

Post by koheripbal »

pasabagi wrote: post #111
Aardwolf wrote: post #78

"We made the difficult decision to shut down Reddit Gifts and put more focus on enhancing the user experience on Reddit" Oh, enhancing user experience sounds good: so they'll reinstate the old reddit UI back as the default, the one that doesn't block viewing threads in a mobile browser half the time?

The thing I find weird is that they essentially paid money to degrade the user experience to the extent that large parts of previously OK functionality don't work anymore, and subreddit mods typically advise people to use the 'old' UI. I mean, the new UI is not to my taste, but it is also just really buggy, slow, and full of things that straightforwardly don't work (videos, search, etc). Now, I'm not an MBA, but I do…

Reddit is actively trying to reduce the average age of their userbase. The mobile app, and forcing kids to install the mobile app, is a big part of that effort.

Getting teenagers in high school addicted to Reddit is a huge part of their strategy, and it's very evident in the way the front page content has shifted in the last decade.

The bigger issue is that while a lot of older users remain in the niche subs, I find that there aren't great alternatives to Reddit for threaded sub-specific commentary.

Re: Sunsetting Secret Santa and Reddit Gifts

#120

Post by yalogin »

Worst part is they don’t give any reason. Looks like it’s purely a cost cutting measure. It probably doesn’t meet their ad percentages for a sub and it probably throws a wrench into their load balancing plans as the sub only gets active in December and after that it’s dormant.

It’s a shame because this was what endeared me to Reddit among other things a long time ago. They should think of this as an investment just like Netflix throws money at content to get users. Someone over there is not making good decisions, first the new UI, definitely takes away user experience and now this.

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