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Reddit’s disrespectful design

ognjen.io

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Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#421

Post by code_duck »

If I couldn’t use the old reddit interface I would have stopped using reddit entirely a year or two ago. Not only because the new interface is even worse than the old one, but also using the old one allows you to dodge most of the issues listed in the article. I could list another 1/2 a dozen annoying changes or limitations, including massive functionality downgrades on mobile web. Once old reddit isn’t usable, I suppose I’ll be entirely done with the site which is a shame after 13 years.

Reddit went from being simple, bare-bones and friendly to overwrought, baffling and user hostile.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#422

Post by brailsafe »

wting wrote: post #207

I was the EM for Reddit's Growth team around this time. I am responsible for / contributed to a few features like the current signup flow, AMP pages, push notifications, email digests, app download interstitials, etc. There was a new product lead who joined with many good ideas, but some of them were dark patterns that I heavily protested. After a few months of this, it was obvious that I was going to be reigned in o…

So some of his ideas were dark patterns that you protested, and others were dark patterns that you supported, and in retrospect are happy that you implemented, due to revenue growth? Did you receive any pushback from engineers, and if so, how did you handle that?

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#423

Post by lutoma »

tmh88j wrote: post #381
asddubs wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think reddit did a rather clever thing in keeping around old.reddit.com. So power users got mad but they had a fallback, meanwhile the default experience is SPA dark pattern hell

For desktop, sure. I've tried a few mobile apps but the UI was worse than the mobile site in my opinion. I can deal with the UI of their mobile site, but all of the UX issues that OP mentioned keeps me away from it, so I never browse reddit on mobile devices. I just noticed a few users below mentioning that i.reddit.com exists, which seems to be a similar UI to old.reddit, but for mobile. From the couple minutes I've…

If you're on iOS, try https://apolloapp.io/. Using it on an iPad has become my main way of accessing reddit. Super customizable, has keyboard shortcuts and supports pretty much all reddit features. The developer is also very active and quick to respond to bugs.

(I know this is starting to sound like an advertisement which was not my intention, I just really enjoy using that app).

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#424

Post by intricatedetail »

RosanaAnaDana wrote: post #135

Reddit has completely jumped the shark in its UI design, the 'direction' its taken, and its basically complete capitulation to censorship at a corporate level. Its interesting to that they haven't IPO'd yet, because in my view, its a zombie carcass waiting for its replacement to find its way onto the net. There has always been a place, a need, and a demand for anonymous, free form discussions on the internet. Craigsl…

> There has always been a place, a need, and a demand for anonymous, free form discussions on the internet.

With the EU terreg and other countries like UK's online safety bill, owners will have to censor content on request or become liable. Free speech internet is going to be a pipe dream in a year or so. There is never going to be alternative to Reddit and remaining free speech sites will have to close or become compliant.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#425

Post by intricatedetail »

mustacheemperor wrote: post #298
ergot_vacation wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot has been written about the social and legal difficulties of running such a site (how much do you enjoy looking at child porn all day so you can ban the people posting it? How many mass-shooters would you like to have post their manifesto on your site?) But I think the real issue is just money. Even if you keep things pretty stripped down, as 4chan or the original reddit did, hosting still costs money. And if yo…

There was in fact a time where Reddit’s front page included a progress bar showing how much Gold needed to be bought/gifted that day to pay off that day’s server time, and shortly after it was introduced the bar was overfilled every single day and eventually set to a more arbitrary goal than actual server bills. I’m assuming that didn’t include salaries and other overhead, but it does indicate the userbase could basi…

It will be difficult if not impossible to find a payment platform to service donations. If you accept crypto, exchanges may block you if user pays with stolen coins.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#426

Post by hi5eyes »

erhk wrote: post #304
ethbr0 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd phrase it as "Reddit, the product" is fine. "Reddit, the investors who bought the product" are in a difficult spot. And certainly haven't shown an overabundance of creativity in monetization approaches. Suffice to say, you probably don't deserve a "front page of the Internet" tagline if your first display is a redirect request to your app.

Owning reddit allows ypu to own public opinion through censorship,thats a pretty important bit of value and im sure tencent would agree

reddit regularly gets mocked by every other corner of the internet

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#427

Post by styfle »

A somewhat counterpoint to the first example in the article:

I created a Reddit account (11 years ago) without an email address and forgot the password.

Now there is no way to reset the password and recover the account.

I never bothered to create a new account so I just stopped using Reddit in most cases.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#429

Post by blondin »

wting wrote: post #207

I was the EM for Reddit's Growth team around this time. I am responsible for / contributed to a few features like the current signup flow, AMP pages, push notifications, email digests, app download interstitials, etc. There was a new product lead who joined with many good ideas, but some of them were dark patterns that I heavily protested. After a few months of this, it was obvious that I was going to be reigned in o…

"power users complain—and still continue using the site—but the casual user does not..."

this summarizes the way i feel about every single application out there.

Re: Reddit’s disrespectful design

#430

Post by KeepFlying »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #141
throwaway284534 wrote: post #82

Does anyone else want to rant about Reddit’s AMP pages that show up on Google? Oh I could go on about it… The managers at Reddit, in their infinite wisdom, decided that the preferred experience of a Google user searching for content on reddit should redirected to their wonky app. And if they don’t have the app, they should be punished with modals upon modals. “Reddit looks better in the app!” Oh, you disagree? Well p…

The Reddit mobile web experience is so obviously bad that I can only assume it's intentional. There must be some huge incentive for Reddit to push users toward the mobile app. Most likely, the app allows for higher or more accurate monthly active user counts and enables more targeted advertising, both of which are critical to increasing advertising revenues. Reddit is in a difficult spot because they're mostly an ad-…

As a dev who works with telemetry in my day job I HATE when "better metrics" gets in the way of a feature or product improving.

(I also hate the pervasiveness of identifiable tracking but that's a whole different rant.)

You don't need to perfectly A:B test your two different offerings if that means preventing users from using the product in a way that best suits them. Stop putting shit behind "read more" buttons just because you want to see if people are actually reading your articles. Stop breaking things into multiple screens just so you can track your damn funnels. Better MAU _tracking_ (not even better MAU) does nothing for user experience and pursuing that at the expense of everything else is just plain foolish.

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