Fueling Reddit’s Future | Hacker News Reader

Fueling Reddit’s Future

redditblog.com

42 pointsFirebrand73 comments

Trying to use Reddit without the app is maddening. I am aware of old.reddit.com- but it is so annoying to have to change 'www' to 'old' every time I want to read something. On IOS/Safari, visiting any Reddit page results in a full page prompt to use the stupid app. No, I don't want to use the app right now, which is why I'm using Safari! If reddit wants to do anything for their future, they should address these basic usability issues.

> If reddit wants to do anything for their future, they should address these basic usability issues.

They did: they decided they are their future.

Those usability issues are intentional dark patterns. The web site is supposed to suck to drive app usage where they can mine more detailed user data.

I’m right there with you, but it can’t be “usability” oversight, can it? It’s so bad.

I have to assume it’s a very deliberate effort based on some business metric that the risk of losing people from the site is less than the profit gained from people on the app.

They've straight up started banning certain subreddits from the mobile website, forcing you to download the app. As I write this, I just noticed it was an A/B test and I'm able to go on the subreddit in question again ... Argh!

If you’re ok with an app that’s not Reddit (so no ads), try Apollo.

Which would be fine if the app wasn’t garbage. Constant bugs with data loading and swipes, and no way to disable all the “suggested” bs (I get why you can’t disable promoted items, but the rest should be removable).

> but it is so annoying to have to change 'www' to 'old' every time I want to read something

There's an add-on to fix that! So whenever you click a reddit link you are automatically redirected to old.reddit.com.

I use the Firefox one, it works great:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-reddit-re...

https://github.com/tom-james-watson/old-reddit-redirect

Apparently there is also a chrome extension but I haven't tried it so user beware:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/old-reddit-redirec...

There's also a general purpose regex based redirector if there are other sites you'd like to redirect:

https://github.com/einaregilsson/Redirector

I use this addon, it's great:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/privacy-redir...

Supports:

Twitter → Nitter

YouTube → Invidious

Instagram → Bibliogram

Google Maps → OpenStreetMap

Reddit → Libreddit

Google → e.g. DuckDuckGo

> annoying to have to change 'www' to 'old' every time

You can stop that from being necessary:

(1) Go to https://new.reddit.com/settings .

(2) Enable "Opt out of the redesign" ("Revert back to old Reddit for the time being").

(3) Visit https://reddit.com/ and you should then have the same experience there as when explicitly visiting https://old.reddit.com/ .

That requires having an account and logging in, neither of which I particularly wish to do

I might be remembering wrong, but you forgot a step. You need to change/delete the referer header. When Reddit detects that you came from Google, for example, it will not render all of the comments and instead try to do a similar rendering of suggested other posts.

Of course, this is not something you can turn off in your preferences. You need to use a browser plug-in to do this.

Anecdotally I don't have any such browser extension and it doesn't show me the "partial rendering with suggested posts" view when I'm opted out of the new reddit.

If not for Apollo (third party Reddit app for iOS), I'd have dropped Reddit long ago. Every change the company makes only serves to worsen the service.

Plus Google amp pages for another pointless unnecessary click.

And of course the new site is so modern it takes 10 times as long to render 10 times less content. Truly an example of progress.

> Trying to use Reddit without the app is maddening. I am aware of old.reddit.com- but it is so annoying to have to change 'www' to 'old' every time I want to read something. On IOS/Safari, visiting any Reddit page results in a full page prompt to use the stupid app. No, I don't want to use the app right now, which is why I'm using Safari! If reddit wants to do anything for their future, they should address these basic usability issues.

You could write a userscript to automatically change all intra-reddit links to old.reddit.com, and redirect you to old.reddit.com if you land there from somewhere else.

I had done something similar long ago when I actually used reddit.

At the risk of sounding like the "they changed it so it sucks" crowd, the changes Reddit keeps making to try and push monetization are slowly pushing me away from the site by robbing it of its simplicity. Contrary to others I was actually OK with the redesign at first, but now the forced chat, the opt-out animations/autoplay and the increasing slowness of the site are driving me mad.

If it weren't for Apollo on iOS I would have considered quitting Reddit.

The mobile site is essentially unusable now. Anything NSFW? gotta have the app. Video? Gotta have the app. Want to view comments more than 3 levels deep? Gonna need the app for that.

I like Sync, but I preferred just loading up reddit.com. This has reduced my usage a reasonable amount.

At least we can use old.reddit.com, although I'm not sure how long that'll last.

That's totally unusable on a small screen though.

i.reddit.com used to work but it's mostly gone now too.

How is it mostly gone? It looks like its working when I try it. The only thing that doesn't seem to work are videos hosted on reddit (v.redd.it)

Disagree. I only use old on mobile and vastly prefer the information density.

I'm perfectly happy to zoom in. ZUI beats low density mobile design by a mile.

teddit.net is slightly better

This might sound like a troll, but what’s wrong with using the app? Do you not use any apps?

The real question is: what was wrong with the website in the first place?

I don’t use social media apps if I can avoid it. You don’t really know what information is being collected about you. Even the website collects an obscene amount of information. Combined with the fact that Reddit is full of incendiary content, it’s better to avoid being fingerprinted.

The reason they broke the website to push the app is to get more user data to sell to advertisers and to make ad blockers harder to use.

What data? Now that people can block the advertising tokens on mobile as of the recent android and iOS releases I’m not sure what the difference is browsing on web vs the app?

Advertising identifiers are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to data collection. Disabling them (which you could already do in Settings) would barely make a difference.

Must be news to Facebook who is running a campaign against apple for disabling them!

Facebook knows that only tech savvy users know how to dig into opt-out settings like that. When Apple makes it an opt-in, it has a huge opportunity to reduce Facebook revenue since it requires extra effort from every user to enable.

Not OP, but...why should I need an app to browse a website?

Pretty outside the scope of this discussion. There are lots of reasons apps exist, Reddit is no different than Facebook, Twitter, any social media app. Heck, Instagram and Tiktok barely even have websites.

> gotta have the app.

> Gotta have the app.

> Gonna need the app for that.

This is why I changed my Reddit avatar to the Digg logo.

All the while at reddit hq: "See! The numbers don't lie, people like using the avatars."

I'll be gone from Reddit completely the day they turn off old.reddit.com, which surely must be fast approaching.

Meanwhile, limited to subreddits of only a few K users still captures something of that original feel, but smart conversation has long since moved elsewhere.

This reminds me of the Facebook situation: https://jakeseliger.com/2018/11/14/is-there-an-actual-facebo...: lots of complaints on places like HN, but I'd bet they're carefully running a/b tests and watching user growth.

> watching user growth

Metrics can be misleading - I don't doubt they're seeing short term user growth or increased engagement (which is all the employees really care about, as their compensation is tied to hitting those "OKRs"). But wouldn't this just end up eventually going back to normal (as the users adjust) or even worse, push users even closer to the breaking point past which they'll leave the product completely?

Reddit is better and better as a source of obscure information (like a more complete and less restricted Stack Overflow), but the only way to use it effectively is by external search.

Reddit is worse and worse as a community or a place to find things organically, for all the reasons everyone lists, and I, too, find myself going there less and less, when it used to be a default destination for idle moments.

As a very early user of Reddit and a founder and long-time moderator of a popular subreddit, it seems to me that Reddit is cruising towards an iceberg, and it's hard to envisage them turning the ship around at this point. There's so much momentum behind the toxic nature of Reddit now and many of the good moderators are getting fed up and either jumping ship or preparing to, leaving subreddits to be managed by more self-interested and less competent people.

Over the years I've created a list of suggestions that I would have made if I had the ear of somebody in authority at Reddit. But that's one thing they've never really done - made it easy for mods, who effectively do a large part of running their website 24/7, without pay, to provide feedback and have real discussions and input with the admins. And it is to the detriment of the website, its owners and its users. I believe that Reddit will fail in the next few years, unless it undergoes radical changes soon. And by fail I mean, it will probably still exist, possibly have more users, but it will be so toxic that anyone with any sense will not go there anymore. The garden is in very real danger of being completely overtaken by weeds.

And it's a shame. I really loved Reddit, it helped me on occasions and I also saw it help many other people.

But the only reason I personally still use Reddit is because I feel an affinity for the subreddit I created and have moderated for years, and the community I have managed to create, which I am proud to say is in stark contrast to the toxicity of many other popular subreddits.

I think the "everything should be free and no one should make money" mentality that is popular on the internet is very harmful in the long term. Moderators should be paid for doing a good job and content creators should be paid for good content. Making ads the only way to do this ends up forcing content to essentially become an ad. This is happening everywhere on the internet.

I agree. I think that the revenue model for websites like Reddit was what set them up for failure. In the beginning, focused on growth, it probably made sense to get as many users as possible, as quickly as possible. But Reddit doesn't need more users. It stopped needing more users a long, long time ago. It needs better users and healthier communities. And less incentive for mods to collect hundreds of subreddits and use them for self-interest.

Sidenote: Look at the growth of r/WallStreetBets https://subredditstats.com/r/wallstreetbets from January (less than 2 million users) to the beginning of February (almost 9 million users). There is no way the mod team could handle that, given the resources and tools they have available (I'm not affiliated with WSB).

It is the essential flaw of the VC growth model based on advertising. Not just for communities like reddit but for all companies. They take on more investors and more control goes to people who really don't care too much about it.

I think we're at the stage now where a solo indie founder (or 2) could start a site like Reddit that could run very cheaply and then get monetized by paid subscribers.

Even just 0.5%-1% paid subscribers could support a site like that with the right infra.

Of course, you'd have to start out in one small niche and then gradually grow outward.

They said they are doubling their staff. Maybe you should be the change you want to see in the world and apply. It's an opportunity to have a highly leveraged impact, because even though reddit is one of the world's big social media sites, the staff is small.

Would you have any suggestions for attracting people that can build communities around them on a platform similar with reddit (and HN) but built to federate using ActivityPub ? I'm building such a thing and I am interested in how to actually get people to use it. :D

I can't think of a major, user-driven[1] site that's more actively hostile to being used than Reddit.

If I Google and find a Reddit link, I'll try just about anything else first. Actually participating? Only if I must.

[1]: in the sense that without users, Reddit is nothing

> I can't think of a major, user-driven[1] site that's more actively hostile to being used than Reddit.

Don't visit Stack Overflow

What's wrong with Stack Overflow? Genuinely curious.

I interpreted that statement as asking a question on Stack Overflow (as opposed to just searching for existing content on SO) is openly hostile to new users. Some may consider "Hostile" an extreme take, but I'd be shocked if anyone on Hacker News felt that Stack Overflow was in anyway welcoming to new users.

That's fair, I just thought we were talking about UX here.

> that's more actively hostile to being used

They don't badger you to install an app, do they?

Pinterest.

I am not a fan of the changes being made and I’ve been using Reddit less and less for casual browsing as a result. However, I do the opposite when I’m looking for an answer to something specific. I find myself using “site:reddit.com” all the time when doing Google searches since the resulting discussions often have way more context, alternate suggestions, etc. than almost any other site I’ve found.

If they're fueling the dumpster fire that is their new website that looks like it was designed by 3 junior React engineers over a 1 month hackathon you might want to stand back because it's going to get even worse.

Their new layout is slow, hides information, full of dark patterns, full of egregious tracking and user hostile in a way that is rare to see.

Are there Reddit employees who are actually proud of this abomination? It's terrible!

Does anyone have a take on where Reddit might be, say, 5 years from now? A view on the path to profitability? The obvious outcome for an unprofitable Reddit is an acquisition by a big media company but I’m curious if anyone has a contrary view on how it can become profitable and what sort of shifts it’ll need to make.

Their majority shareholder is a big media company.

They are a top ten site on the internet. I don't see why Twitter is 45 B market cap but Reddit should be so hopeless, especially when their subreddit model lends itself much more clearly to ads than the "stream of conscious" of Twitter. They don't even need to worry about tracking/privacy as much, since just the subreddit name and nothing else is a huge hint as to what ads should be relevant.

The problem is when the subreddit content itself becomes ads, although they may have sufficient time to milk it while people figure it out and/or don’t have a better alternative

Another problem is that subreddits are under the ownership of the creators/moderators, who may have their own ideas of monetization as well as where the revenue should go...

Reddit seems to be following all the other social media platforms in increasing the time spent within their app.

Reddit Public Access Network (live streaming) could be further monetized by incentivizing tipping and venturing into gaming. They also purchased the short video app Dubsmash to compete with TikTok. Ads can be shown in between videos.

"...encourage under-represented creators to find a home on Reddit," seems to be hinting at making the platform appealing to influencers? If so, e-commerce and affiliate linking integration could be profitable. Not sure if the current reddit community would like that one, though.

I'm sure they could also squeeze in a Clubhouse copy too. Could be popular with communities like the /r/wallstreetbets crowd.

Centralized opaque moderation ruins every large subreddit. It's too bad because reddit could be 10x more interesting if it were more open. Network effects can only take you so far -- without real user-centric leadership, reddit will go the way of tumblr/digg in the next five years.

I find the opposite to be true, with the large subreddits not moderated enough. Compare HN to reddit and you'll see there's a massive difference.

The incentives of the site are not aligned with high quality moderation at the moment so mods spend minimal effort and find shady ways to monetize such as partnering with marketing agencies. I'm pretty sure HN mods get paid for what they do which is why they are good.

Without a doubt the worst subreddits are the unmoderated ones.

Tangent but probably related: it really bugs me that ceddit and removeddit both no longer function, and I suspect reddit deliberately changed its API to nuke that window into reddit's censorship.

I think most of them rely on pushshift.it’s probably their api/usage that’s the issue.

Good luck getting any of your content removed from that site as well. Ive asked and waited for months. It’s all like service.

These guys figured out that the money is in the award stand. That was clever.

We're deeply committed to using venture capital to systematically ruin something that you loved. We're just about done with Dropbox, so we'll be bringing that same great ethos to Reddit. Again.

I find it funny that software with relatively no r+d or initial costs have become burdened with VC.

That’s where spray and pray works best, because the initial costs are so low.

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