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Comment by Rebelgecko | Hacker News Reader

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 reddit

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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.

And you find people talking about new features in a way that is totally foreign to you because old reddit doesn't support them. I don't know whats someone's profile says or what their profile picture is.

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.

>mobile inherently discourages longform text and encourages images

As I read on a site on with no images or video and entirely in the form of thoughtful responses via mobile device.

That is not designed for mobile and does not have a mobile app.

HN, as its name indicates, do not aim at a universal demographic. The demographic it does cater to is also very likely to use a keyboard heavily during the day, and so retains some good habits of longform discourse even when contributing via mobile.

Right so then the bad habits are not tied to mobile but is rather a cousin issue. Most people use mobile and, independently, longform discourse does not have mass appeal.

Friction is a feature, so few people seem to get that.

I don’t want to argue, just maybe help you expand your horizons a bit. I am 85,000 words into my novel with almost all of those written on my IPhone using Scriviner. I like to sit in my backyard and actually purchased a big comfy writing chair recently.

After my last laptop broke I simply decided I didn’t need another one. Like most people on this site I have a beast of a desktop computer I write code on all day and then like to get away from to write my novel.

I’ve been able to maintain 2k words per day with some 5k days when I am really jiving with the scene I am writing. All from my iPhone. Times they are a changing.

You are an outlier, writing a novel from a phone keyboard (and, of course, writing a novel at all). The general public that Reddit targets does not invest the same energy in longform text from their phones. The device you see as a means to relax and focus on your novel, for most Reddit users is a more cumbersome means of expression, and moreover most of them are operating within an app that encourages inane content.

There was interesting study [0] about typing speed on mobile devices, which they say approaches physical keyboard typing (37k participants). If you have some time to kill, I wonder what your typing speed is [1]. Mine is near the mean.

0. https://userinterfaces.aalto.fi/typing37k/

1. https://typingtest.aalto.fi/

I've used reddit since around 2008 and I actually prefer the redesign (customized to not show the annoying "cards" subreddit view, and with the editor default changed from "fancy" to Markdown).

I find the avatars extremely obnoxious and wish I could disable those. But besides that, it does look a bit better to me.

They are trying so hard not to have that Digg moment but we'll see if it succeeds when they sunset old.reddit.com...

There needs to be a replacement if they are going to have a diff moment. I’m open to hearing about alternatives.

Didn't they nerf old reddit interface? I ditched my account not too long ago after seeing a sudden increase in blank posts on old reddit which when viewed on new reddit would feature images or video.

I ran into the same thing. It turns out that if you turn on the "auto-expand media previews" option in your user preferences, the content shows up as expected.

I reported this as a bug about a year ago and never got a response.

Ironically, i read your comment and now i keep getting a cookie banner on old.reddit.com cant cannot be remomved, and redirecets to new.reddit.com instead.

You can block this banner using ublock origin: right click on it > Block element > Create

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 gave the app about 5 minutes before the harassment to enable notifications made me uninstall.

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...

I use Apollo on iOS, and recently discovered I can click the share button (at top right of new reddit design), and then select "Open with Apollo".

Yes, it'd be nice if I could auto-open reddit links in my client of choice, but it's like a two-or-three tap thing. I use it increasingly often.

It got too big. It's the internets default forum, it's actually a testament to the subreddit model that it actually has been able to keep growing without completely going to shit. I know there's people who think it has but there's still plenty of value in subreddits which have a defined purpose and moderate accordingly.

This is the curse of VC-funny-money-backed companies. Bribe them with a free hit or 5, and then start charging for it once you're hooked.

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