New Reddit and the official app are both trash, they make me feel like a grumpy old man yelling at clouds. All I want is a simple interface that doesn't bombard me with ads and videos all day long.
I remember when new Reddit was announced and I was telling people, "let's give it a chance, new doesn't mean bad! The site is a little bit ugly, it could be spruced up." Then new Reddit came out and I had to eat my hat and set my account to default to old Reddit, but it wasn't long before I primarily used Reddit on my phone and stopped paying much attention to the site. Fortunately it wasn't my app that they bought out and wrecked when they decided they needed their own app.
Every now and then people start complaining about some new feature like chat or NFTs or awards and I stay blissfully unaware on RIF is fun because it's just the bare bones posts, no weird extraneous features that nobody asked for. Have I ever received a reddit award? Heck if I know, I'm firmly in the old and curmudgeonly camp at this point and don't care. I do wish old Reddit wasn't fixed width so it would be easier to read on mobile, but at least I have teddit if I'm going to look at a link outside of the app.
I was an alpha tester for new reddit before it was publicly pushed. There was a private sub for it and plenty of ppl saying everything that was bad and needed changing. Admins were very receptive to any suggestions, but slowly everyone realized they didn't want to change anything, despite saying otherwise. The "finished" new reddit was nearly identical, and still garbage to use. I switched to old.reddit within a few days.
Incidentally I just checked and noticed that defaulting to new reddit is still listed as a "beta" option in preferences, and is checked by default. I can only assume this is to hide the option.
I used new reddit briefly, hated it (of course), and went back to old reddit. Much later, I tried to force myself to get used to new reddit, because I figured they’d shut down the old version eventually.
Couldn’t do it. New reddit is that terrible. Instead, I figured I’d just leave when new reddit became mandatory… and here I am!
What do you mean by saying "even"?! Reddit.com/.compact was my interface on mobile for Reddit for years, and I still miss it.
I found a decent app in Boost, but no app I know supports how I liked browsing Reddit, by opening a bunch of threads in tabs, often leaving them open for days to be able to quickly check back on them. All apps (also Jerboa for Lemmy) only allow you to sequentially view posts one by one.
I was keeping an eye on it, hoping it would be my backup for mobile browsing, considering it was going strong despite not being touched for nearly 9 or 10 years. It was sad to see they took it offline without even a formal announcement.
It's actually wild how little content they fit onto full desktop screen. Two comments, really? And if you're not logged in, it opens only 2 or 3 comments, and then you have to click 'see rest of thread' or whatever to read more.
I'm sorry but this design is so bad that it has to be malicious. Are we meant to get an ad every two comments or something? They're out of their minds.
They don't want you to read, they want you to scroll.
It's like they don't understand what Reddit fundamentally is: a forum. It isn't Instagram or Facebook. But they really want it to be because you can fit a lot of ads in that format.
That’s a very good point. Website design made space for ads. I was just browsing yahoo.com on the Wayback machine and it’s amazing how much content you could fit in a 800x600 screen. Now my 4k feels not enough.
It's alright I only posted the screenshot from my rif app. I currently don't have the official reddit app installed. I think most people already know how it looks.
Third party apps, and old.reddit/RES is all that makes the site even usable. I'd prefer to stop using it entirely than being forced into their own app and "new" site.
I use it cause new reddit slows down my computers. Even my m1 mac with ublock can't run new reddit. I think that shows a lot how much crud they cram into it. It's probably going to get way worse within this year.
I only really use it for gallery uploads and occasionally gifs in chat.
I think that even if they don't close old reddit now, it will be on the horizon, so I might as well build a new home here. This message-board-look-a-like is jus what I was looking for and not wanting to sound elitist, I find it a good deterrent for the tik-tok crowd and other "follow the person not the subject" networks.
Was thinking reflecting yesterday, and this is exactly why I can’t get on board with Twitter, Tumblr, or even really Mastodon. Feels like I’m hunting for personalities rather than interests.
The other extreme is people adding 20-odd tags to a post. If I could filter out posts with more than a given number of tags (5 or 6 would be about right), I would.
I've gotten this suggestion too but honestly it made mastodon a horrible experience for me. I'd get personal emotional comments from every random John about a subject, often barely relevant too because they'd just tag literally dozen(s) of hashtags in their every post. I had to start ignoring people one by one but it's just not feasible when its one of the more popular tags, they kept coming and coming.
If I may be so bold, I think what you might be bristled by (because I share these feelings) is the notion of "parasocial relationships." I learned that term pretty recently and it helped me put a label on some of the things I observe and feel in and about the social networking world.
I have had really nice "personal" interactions on Reddit, but I don't know those individuals, who they are, what they like, or even their names. On Twitter and Instagram and TikTok it's all about creating a personal "brand" and people following that identity. That's parasocial. You still don't know them, but you kind of think you do.
Relay for Reddit has been my jam for so many years.
It's a shame to see this happen, but it's also inevitable and almost surprising that it has taken this long. Just needed the right new CEO, an IPO strategy, and a total disregard for user sentiment.
@LimitedBrain@millionsofplayers commenting on masto just to test that out, from what I hear reddit is going public soon, and removing third party apps is a product of that. somewhere around 5% of people use old reddit so they may axe that off when they go public. That's when I just fully leave reddit
New Reddit has a lot more tracing and BI, tracking user behavior in order to suggest ads/content. It's part of why the New site is so much slower to scroll through, but it does mean a lot more data for Reddit to work with regarding their users.
Not to mention the dark UX patterns like hiding comments behind a More button, which itself is tracked and may serve an ad alongside the comments fetched.
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