If they remove old reddit, I'm done. The "new" reddit UI is literally one of my least favorite things in the world. Filled with clutter and ads, requires too many clicks to see what you want to see, low information density... I could go on.
Something as basic as reading comments is still broken, after all these years. You can not navigate the comment section. Seems like a pretty big oversight, unless you betting the farm on doom-scrolling, and I think that exactly what's happening.
Reddit management left the community to it's own devices for years, now the ad revenue is drying up, they have an IPO around the corner (because no VC is going to throw more money into an anonymous message board). I don't really see any easy out for Reddit, they do need money, but I'm not sure they are going about it in the right way.
You're basically forced to hold control down, because expanding a comment might cause a page load, and the back button won't bring you where you originally were.
Someone looking to maximize user engagement metrics and ad impressions.
I.. did not hold back. I was polite, and encouraging, but the myriad of flaws was obvious. They seemed rather put out & defensive.
It was around about them I realized that it was not going to be a good fit.
This guy. https://www.wired.com/story/reddit-redesign/
To be fair I tried it again and it's speedier and better than I remembered, especially with the classic view.
I still prefer old Reddit though. Even to Lemmy, as I prefer the fluid layout and contrast between comments.
Yesterday I saw a thread on tildes where some new user presented changes to the site via custom style which introduces rounded corners and big elements all around: https://tildes.net/~tildes/16cl/i_made_a_thing_to_make_tilde...
Guess it's the generation gap - those who were growing up with mobile devices are fond of similar interfaces and that's what reddit tried to exploit
I'm on the opposite side: I prefer minimal interfaces, like old reddit, hn or current tildes. Lemmy seems to be more "modern" on that aspect
"Hey look, here's a paragraph to read... nope, I just realised there's an image near the top that I think is going to be huge so I pushed that paragraph below the fold... no, wait, that image is actually tiny so here's that paragraph again... ooooh, but now there's a sidebar, so I've just resized and reflowed the paragraph that you had kind of started to read - good luck finding your place again!"
As for how broken the "back" button is, fuuuuu.....