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Not entirely. The spelling reform (about 10 years ago) somewhat reduced the use of ß but you still use it frequently after a diphthong (as in "Straße" [street]).

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That's just a long vowel, not a diphthong (literally "two sounds"; incidentally, "sounds" has a diphthong in it).

I started living in Germany right after it was adopted, and still cannot get the long vs short vowel history for ß.

They just sound the same to my hears, so I got around it by memorizing the respective use cases.

I tend to still write in the old spelling (I didn't have to take exams in the reformed spelling yet so I never bothered to memorise all the braindeadness) and rely on Word/Outlook to correct me where necessary. That works quite well so far.

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