The website itself, not the content.<p>Although I'm just a casual user of Reddit, it's hard to avoid the fact that Reddit is absolute garbage. It seems to me as everything they've done in the past few years is to the detriment of users; especially with them following the trend of writing it all in a shiny SPA (that doesn't work half the time).<p>Apart from constant connection errors, lots of the time the site "forgets" I'm logged in, then all a sudden remembers, actively bombards users on mobile to install their app (even though the site could work fine on mobile, alas they are probably trying to crank their app install numbers up), uses dark patterns all over the place and is just generally unpleasant to use.<p>Thank goodness for old.reddit.com but I don't know what all of the users who have starting using the old subdomain are going to do when they eventually shut it off.<p>Really makes me wonder as a small time dev what's went wrong in Reddit the company to produce this absolute garbage site.<p>Just my 2c of course, and this was just a small list of the problems, I'm sure if you really wanted too you could spend all day listing them.<p>Interested to find out what others feel.
Reddit used to have an absolutely flawless mobile browser experience, which after they launched the app they're slowly making worse and worse (now with UI elements missing seemingly only provided by API/app UI).<p>I understand that Reddit needed to monetize (e.g. ads, better engagement, etc) but a lot of these UI/design changes don't really seem aimed at that goal, they just seem like change for changes sake.<p>When old.reddit.com finally goes dark, I'm leaving. I highly doubt Reddit will notice or care, but I don't think I'll be alone and ultimately a lot of people who leave are the first-mover types that made Reddit popular to begin with.
Monetization without restraint. (Gold sub was one thing, the awards are just out of fucking control.)<p>Growth at the expense of usability.<p>Redesigning to appeal to Social Media/Web 2.5 types.<p>Hijacking the status quo to provide inadequate me-too integration. (Reddit self hosted images and video over Imgur and Youtube, for example)<p>Add that to the existing problems that Reddit has always had that were never addressed, such as the powermod system... and you basically have a toxic environment that caters to the lowest common denominator.
Wait till you try Reddit app, it is a bigger fuckup. Every update to app, resets your settings. Reddit keeps introducing myriads of new user preferences and defaults are most permissive options.<p>For last few months, I kept thinking these frequent changes sooner or later gonna compromise security. Sure enough recently I had to abandon my 10 year old Reddit account because it got compromised. Once I noticed account compromised, I put a note of account being hacked in my account about page and changed password, few hours later receive email from Reddit security that my account is compromised, they locked the account, and I should change password. Only thing I could mutter, “no geniuses you didn’t detect account compromised, you detected my actions after account was compromised and trying to show you care”. Instead of trying to get account unlocked, I decided to abandon it. At this point I don’t care.<p>Previously you could create account without providing email, no more.
I worked at a smaller social media website. We were constantly pressured by investors+management to grow new users and grow engagement of existing users. It turns out these 2 requirements were constantly in tension, so naturally we had 2+ teams that were constantly changing the same page templates in a perverted Yin/Yang struggle.<p>One of Steve Job's best (IMHO) jobs at Apple was to constantly apply pressure on all teams+products to _simplify_ everything. The universe (including social media websites) tends towards entropy, so it takes a special kind of product team to both achieve primary goals <i>and</i> continue to keep the UX/UI clean and unobtrusive.<p>I've noticed sites that combine<p><pre><code> - cookie warning,
- app download prompt,
- browser notifications permissions,
- browser location permissions,
- nudge me to login just to lurk,
- use tracking/analytics such as QuantCast which occasionally offers the viewer a survey to gather demographics,
- display multiple ad networks,
- then pop up dialog/modal for a "special offer" after my mouse leaves the viewport
</code></pre>
Each of these in isolation is a business requirement, perhaps even a reasonable one. It requires a rare type of business hierarchy to allow one department to override another's business requirements for the sake of something as vague as "a better look and feel".<p>Craigslist is the only site I'm really envious of. It has been around for basically the lifetime of the web, but has managed to keep the UX/UI the site very minimal and still managed to provide a decent product which makes a healthy profit.
The days of old.reddit.com are obviously numbered. For those who simply want to lurk there are sites that scrap reddit and provide a less awful experience. One example is teddit.net, they even let you subscribe to subs with cookies so you don't even need an account -- which is probably a good idea since reddit has been collecting more and more data on users.
> Thank goodness for old.reddit.com but I don't know what all of the users who have starting using the old subdomain are going to do when they eventually shut it off.<p>I looked it up once, and Spez mentioned somewhere that they plan to keep it alive indefinitely. Although this can always change in the future of course, given that i.reddit.com is still online, I'd say that Reddit has a pretty good track record of keeping old versions alive for people who want it.<p>The biggest issue is that some new features aren't supported, like ``` ... ``` code blocks which render badly. I looked at the new reddit code to see if I could hack around that in some way by ajaxing the new Markdown in to the old reddit or something, but turns out it's rendering all the Markdown in the browser... which is probably one reason it's so slow.<p>As for why it's so bad ... I don't know. Last time I used it I couldn't even scroll with more than ~2fps; it was truly horrid. I think there's probably an interesting engineering tale here somewhere, but AFAIK it's never been made public by a (former) reddit engineer.<p>Interestingly, Gab is very similar in its technical horridness (and before people get the wrong idea: I just registered to see what's going on there).<p>> Apart from constant connection errors, lots of the time the site "forgets" I'm logged in, then all a sudden remembers, actively bombards users on mobile to install their app<p>I use reddit most days, and I never had any of these kind of issues. I set it to prefer old.reddit.com in a distant past and it has kept working for me ever since without issues.<p>Maybe some anti-tracking thingies can make a difference here? I use uBlock Origin + Cookie autodelete in Firefox, but reddit.com is whitelisted.
The day old.reddit dies is the day I'll stop using the site.<p>...which may actually end up being a positive thing, for my productivity and sanity.
That log out error is infuriating to say the least. The other day I typed out a huge response to an argument I was having only for me to be redirected upon clicking submit to the page that says something like, “logging you in,” which redirected me to the front page where I was logged out. When I’d click on the login button I would then be looped through the same “logging you in page,” until I just gave up and decided the conversation wasn’t worth it. I’ve wanted to ask a similar question and when I google this people only seem to think the content is bad, with very few hits discussing how it is technically an atrocious mess that would never pass a QA at where I work, let alone a company on the cusp of going public. I’ve wanted to stop using Reddit for over a year now (and I don’t mind the redesign, I just want it to be stable and work) but there simply isn’t a single alternative that fills the same niche.
They stopped being open source, added far more telemetry, changed the gold system to incentivize purchases, changed the design to the new one (slower, far more js), etc.<p>Personally I stopped browsing reddit a few years ago. It used to be amazing.
For what it's worth, I only use oldreddit too. I used to be a big user, but now I only ~~subscribe to~~ have browser bookmarks for half a dozen subreddits, most of which are more or less inactive like Z80, CPM, etc.
I believe the UI is being managed to death. I noticed the same with Slack recently.<p>The old UI was probably built by engineers for performance and ease of use.<p>The new one is pretty, does all the stuff marketing wants, has loads of features, uses shiny new tech. Or, all the original engineers that knew how to build a good site left. Maybe both.<p>It's a dumpster fire. I haven't found anyone that disagrees and I have all the same bugs you do.
"Interested to find out what others feel."<p>I used to spend hours daily on Reddit while commuting. The "absolute garbage" website you mentioned pisses me off so much that I often just close the browser after browsing 2-3 pages.<p>I am actually quite thankful they keep paying people to mess up their website for years, I read more books :)