2 things about Reddit's "use our app instead!" buttons: 1. They cycle through a couple of different messages, and the buttons get switched around 2. The wording is such that you read it twice and still aren't sure which button will just take you to the damn website I don't mind them promoting their app, but these dark patterns truely rile me
It’s actually working well to curb my reddit addiction by making it harder to idly browse on the phone.
Now all they need to do is remove the old design and I might be able to quit for good.
2 things about Reddit's "use our app instead!" buttons: 1. They cycle through a couple of different messages, and the buttons get switched around 2. The wording is such that you read it twice and still aren't sure which button will just take you to the damn website I don't mind them promoting their app, but these dark patterns truely rile me
I do mind them promoting their app, it’s a horrible app and they’ve continually ruined their website. The only way I can stand to use reddit anymore is through Narwhal, at least until they kill their 3rd party apps API.
I use a third party mobile client and am very happy with it, but I know it's only a matter of time (despite what they've said in the past) before they kill/rate limit/price the API in such a way to kill off all the third party clients.
It’s funny, the web app used to be really good. Much better than the native app. Since then they have been making the web app increasingly worse over time, actively degrading its functionality and pleasantness to use.
The degradation seems to directly correlate with the modern-feel of the page. I'm not sure if that's intentional. It seems that modern front end fashion is a huge step backwards from earlier fashions in web development.
i.reddit.com. 2010 mobile app feel, blazing fast, light on resources. As it should be.
Reddit is awful. I used to absolutely love reddit in 2010, 2011. Back then, reddit was at a stage where it was just starting to be mainstream. Most of the people who had found reddit on their own or by word of mouth, and who had liked it, were cool and smart, so to speak. At the same time, reddit was becoming very popular and being seen more and more as a meme-ey social movement. As the importance of reddit became more apparent, it galvanized all those cool, smart people to work very hard to create excellent content and generally nurture the community. That was the key to the goodness of early reddit: a very high caliber subset of the user-base being driven to put tons of effort into content creation and community management — driven by the intoxicating idea that reddit was the next big thing more or less. I remember visiting a friend at UCSB in 2011, and everybody talking about reddit. One of his female roommates asked if I browsed reddit. It was just a very exciting thing back then. But now look at it.
Ever since the site redesign in May, popularity has been falling (source: Alexa Top Websites): https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/reddit.com I hope that affected the amount of money they raised. As a reddit fan, the site redesign has not been pleasant. The mobile experience, too.
I hate it because of the tracking, scroll around with dev tools open and see the activity. Call me paranoid but I bet they're building a psychological profile on each user by watching how they interact with topics. I hate it so much I did something about it.
I actually hate Reddit these days. I've never really been into their various communities/subredits- and on occasion they're really useful spots of information or entertainment. But... Their current "force you into app" (which appears to leave you logged in, able to make account changes, even if you change your password) approach is fucking horrible. Their mobile navigation is broken by design and.... for what? What i…
> What incentive do I have to sign up? Arguably the best Reddit experience is only available when you are signed in. Reddit's greatest value come from niche communities. Personally I enjoy things like r/savagegarden, r/mycology and r/askhistorians, so when I log in I see pictures of mushrooms and carnivorous plants, and get to read interesting articles about history and science. If you don't log in and subscribe to t…
Fine, show it for the front page. What is the advantage when you are already at a subreddit or a specific thread?
I hope your superiors realise how much they are stealing users from the future.
You've basically given your competitors a free USP - "it's like Reddit but without all the bullshit".
It amazes me the kind of sheer incompetency their product team has demonstrated over the past 2-3 years. (Edit - as pointed out in replies to this post, this is an unfair characterization fueled by my recent frustrations with the direction the site is going. I don't think it is unreasonable to point out that reddit is failing the expectations of their users, but I don't doubt for a minute that the individuals working…
If nothing else, I think your conclusion that the product team is incompetent (or displays a lot of incompetency) is debatable. That seems very uncharitable. Reddit isn't flush with money the same way Google, Facebook, Amazon and Netflix are. They can't throw wild amounts of cash at a problem to solve it or attract the talent who can. I think your characterization of Reddit's infrastructure challenges - which basical…
Yeah, you're right - that's an unfair characterization given the way you've posited the problem.
My strong reaction comes from being a formerly very engaged user of the site observing a continuous detraction of all the reasons I started using the site in the first place.
It amazes me the kind of sheer incompetency their product team has demonstrated over the past 2-3 years. (Edit - as pointed out in replies to this post, this is an unfair characterization fueled by my recent frustrations with the direction the site is going. I don't think it is unreasonable to point out that reddit is failing the expectations of their users, but I don't doubt for a minute that the individuals working…
I find this sort of slightly gloating incredulity at just how "obvious" the things a company ought to be working on are to be surprising. You have almost none of the information required to make informed judgements about whether or not Reddit's product team is incompetent (maybe they're doing way better than they should be under the circumstances?), or whether they're focusing on the right things. There are definitel…
It's hard to understand, as a programmer, how some website bugs that are obviously visible can remain unfixed for months and months. Presumably, the developers encounter these bugs themselves when using the site (assuming the developers use the site).