Reddit has also recently announced moves in regards to NSFW content[1] by limiting data access to mature content more aggressively than they currently do. It seems like an area a lot of platforms are struggling with and seem to opt for a complete ban.
They stopped that recently i noticed. you get prompted to confirm youre over 18 without logging in required. They also got rid of that annoying "Continue this thread" linking and let you expand replies with a plus/minus icon without going to another page. It also seems like they fixed the way images are resized/shown in a post, because since the redesign i noticed you had to click 2 or 3 separate times to actually get an image without cropping or resizing, which felt so clumsy and annoying. As well as making a thread be overlayed atop with an "X" to close link at the top. That is gone for me also. Now it's actually usable like old.reddit.com is. I have no idea how they actually let that first redesign roll out it was terrible. Feels fixed now.
FWIW, Reddit's new limits are about 3rd party use of their data/APIs. As a regular user, it doesn't really change anything (unless you consume Reddit NSFW content exclusively through a 3rd party app, I guess), so a pretty different case than Imgur's change here, which fundamentally shifts their user-base.
3rd party reddit apps rival reddit's own app in terms of popularity, and will be significantly hamstrung by these changes if NSFW content can only be accessed in the official app. Lots of non-porn content is marked NSFW. It may end up having a much larger impact than reddit corporate anticipates.
I'm trying to take the most charitable interpretation possible instead of assuming malice on the part of reddit, but it's difficult to interpret it any other way than they have decided to kill 3rd party clients and not be upfront about their intentions.
It wouldn't be so difficult to swallow if the official mobile app was high quality, but it isn't. There are major UX issues with the official app that haven't been fixed for years. The 3rd party app ecosystem is vibrant because of this. Instead of competing and being the best on merit, they have decided to play their platform-owner veto card which is very disappointing, compounded with their dishonesty about the true intent of these changes.
They're a huge company, they could easily acquire five of the third party apps, add ads and keep the developers on payroll to maintain the apps. Banning apps that don't show ads of course.
I use Boost because it's far superior to the Reddit app and to Reddit's website (even old.reddit.com), despite Boost having ads and despite me being able to avoid ads on Reddit due to having an ad blocker.
So at least for me, using a third-party app is well worth it despite seeing ads.
I have leared to ignore any promoted content i.e. ads in my reddit timeline, mostly because they are irrelevant. The app is regardless slow as hell. The Dawn app in comprasion, is extremely smooth and a pleasure to use. I'd guess the difference is the amount of tracking and analytics the official app is trying to do, I'd guess it is also not a native app.
I hate when I’m hovering my thumb on a comment for a millisecond when scrolling the comments sections and accidentally collapsing a thread I’m reading, how can they not test their app with users to catch these simple usability issues?
Seriously. Makes
Me feel like my scroll behavior is weird or something. Or like an idiot because I didn’t know a word and wanted to define it by tapping “Look up.” sigh
"reddit corporate"? Like Steve, who was the original founder and is the current CEO, or Alexis, another original founder, who is the executive chairman?
There is absolutely zero way they're unaware of the impact and I guarantee you they have thought this move through thoroughly.
You mention it like they haven't done a ton of user hostile releases, like the constant UX dark patterns to push you to a mobile app, etc. This argument is so strange, should we refute anything against Meta with "but the original founder is there, there's no corporate"?
I think the argument isn't that Reddit isn't corporate but rather that the original founders have thought it through a lot and have still decided to make this decision.
I'm sure Mark Zuckerberg thinks through all his major decisions a lot too. If you think a lot and your result is dark patterns, does that matter so much?
You seem to be assuming that if one says "they know well what they are doing" that's a defense of their actions, but I'd think it is much more often a denigration of them...
Fair enough, in that case this is Digg v4 levels of arrogance. Tons of moderators depend on 3rd party apps to moderate [1]. These people are providing free labor on an industrial scale to reddit and it might be wise not to frustrate their work.
Reddit moderators are, by and large, terrible people. If they quit, as the guy in your link is threatening to do, they can be trivially replaced. It is not a thing that requires much skill.
There is no shortage of people who would volunteer for something like this. The replacements might even be less terrible, both at the job (reddit is stiflingly over-moderated, as documented on r/undelete and r/redditminusmods) and in their dealings with users.
Given in the announcement thread they got wrong about it affecting third party apps at all and then on calls with third party devs do not seem quite sure if it will effect NSFW content or not, that does not seem to be the case.
Indeed, it seems to be a chaotic mess, as most of Reddit's "throw shit at a walk and hope something sticks" development methodology is.
> As a regular user, it doesn't really change anything
It absolutely does. There is tons of normal content that is tagged as NSFW for various non pornogrpahic reasons, and consdering 'regular users' includes the millions of people that use apollo, Rif, etc , thats a huge amount of the user base negatively effected.
Indeed! Just one example in /r/Diablo_2_Resurrected/ screenshots of very good, very rare items are marked NSFW because they're considered "disgustingly good" and because having to do an extra step to reveal the item provides a "rush" similar to gambling.
I often use spoiler formatting for comedic effect, etc.
It's a recurring joke in /r/AoE2 (Age of Empires II) to label screenshots of particularly aesthetic base/farming layouts as NSFW.
For context, normally you are placing 3x3 tile farms either around 2x2 tile mills or 4x4 tile Town Centers, so you end up with a "pinwheel" at best. But the Poles can build a 3x3 Folwark (like a mill but makes your food come in faster if the farms are close enough) leading to some very satisfying ways to use building space efficiently and aesthetically.
It's a problem on mobile, because old-reddit isn't mobile-engineered and there isn't uBlock for iOS. The go-to Reddit app for iOS is Apollo, and they're going to be affected.
At least on desktop the old UI has a bug in narrow browser windows, but besides that I also use it 99% of the time. The new interface simply doesn't bring any noteworthy value in comparison while being more annoying to use.
I also use old.reddit all the time but come on, you seriously can't mean it's a good mobile experience. The text is tiny and you need to zoom in and out all the time just to be able to read anything. It becomes exhausting reading a comment thread by all the zooming. The image posts also don't have the actual image embedded, which makes it a really bad experience on mobile when you have to go to another URL just to look at it.
I'm with the above commenter, I used the old reddit on mobile for a decade+ and always enjoyed it. Also, there used to be i.reddit.com which was great for mobile - but it looks like they've gotten rid of that.
I've stopped using Reddit now. I liked the freedom of speech and the curiosity of the users. Freedom of speech had been eliminated totally. Curuisity can presumably be found in some niche subreddits - but even the niche subreddits I used to frequent have fallen.
I agree, yet old.reddit is still 100x better to use than the main Reddit site, which really illustrates just how awful and user hostile their main website is (especially on mobile).
Definitely. I don't use main reddit at all, but on mobile there are no good alternatives now when i.reddit.com is gone and third party clients being restricted. Saying "just use old reddit" is not sufficient for me at least.
The new reddit is so bad I'm sort of shocked it still exists. I really wonder what goes through people's heads when they build these things that are universally hated.
You generally don't make an ad-supported business if you respect your users as human beings, but the old -> new Reddit redesign is something really special - going through with it, and then sticking to it for so many years now, pretty much requires seeing your users as cattle.
My college professors in economics / business taught me that customers and employees are numbers from which I must extract the maximum amount of value for the minimum amount of input. People are more like cow nipples in capitalism driven societies.
The new UI enforces age gating via sign-in (switch to the old UI, and you can get away with "Continue"), which is better for engagement.
The new UI is mobile friendly, which is WAY better for engagement. (Most users are mobile users, even though mobile devices are worse than desktop PCs in every way except convenience.)
I honestly think you might just be "holding it wrong"... instead of zooming in on the text, can you try just moving your phone closer to your head and see if that helps? I honestly use old.reddit.com on mobile because the font size is better: I am not zooming in and out, and I appreciate being able to see more of the thread at once. The "mobile optimized" version of the site feels like I am being forced to have tunnel vision and it makes it really difficult to read anything.
They've also relatively recently killed off i.reddit.com (the .compact view that looks like really old iOS). That was good for mobile when old-reddit was too wide.
Reddit has been increasingly awful like this. Limiting scroll on mobile before forcing you to log in. Constant nags to install the app. Forced login or redirect to the app on mobile or on 'new' reddit for any nsfw content.
For now old.reddit.com works to get rid of all this guff but when that goes, so do I.
I recently discovered libreddit and nitter and couldn't be happier. Good UI and loads super fast without restrictions.
I recommend to self host though as the public servers can get overwhelmed.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/12qwagm/an_update_r...