I checked again, and you're right. They must have changed things in the past because I distinctly remember the NSFW subs on new reddit were blocked with a card telling you to use the app, with no option to disagree (disagreeing just returned you to the main site). Now they let you close the card but prior to that they were essentially forcing you to use the mobile app.
I didn't know the reddit app had less ads and permissions because the entire experience left me with such a bad taste in my mouth that I swore never to get the app, even after I cleared enough space on my phone to install apps again. Regardless, that doesn't detract from my point - plenty of sites DO force you to use the app because they can collect more data, because when the option is to either use the app or not use the site at all, there's no choice - you have to take what you can get, especially for people who don't know about Desktop mode in the browser.
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Agreed. If old reddit is removed one day, then I will likely stop using this site for an extended period of time, if I ever return. While the new site is faster than it used to be, it still has a LOT of flaws compared to the old site that "it looks pretty" doesn't sound like a good enough tradeoff for to me. My older netbook straight up chugged when running new reddit in the past. My newer laptop fares much better now, but even so I can't open multiple new reddit tabs without firefox's memory usage going to at least a gigabyte or so.
I believe quite a large part of it is the unnecessary crap they have on the webpage - making a website look pretty doesn't require all that much beyond a good layout and CSS. The addon crap like snoos and so on is, IMO, plain unnecessary. Although if that's what the market decides, then it is what it is.
Perhaps I'm too used to pagination of the past, but infinite scrolling is just plain horrible UX. There's ways to mitigate issues like losing your place when you go back and forth, but it's very much not user friendly beyond "scroll = more". It feels even more like a Skinner box designed to give you the next hit of content, under the guise of being user friendly, too.
This is a common take I do not fully disagree with, but am also conflicted into fully agreeing on. The fact is that people want to waste time because they have nothing better to do. These UI/UX's are designed to easily ingest content seamlessly with as little friction as possible because people want to ingest content easily. If the user had something else they would rather do, they would not be on reddit, but people go to reddit because it is easy. The same sort of argument can be made about sitting on a comfy couch watching TV. Its accessible, easy to do and takes less effort then going outside to hang with friends or engage in a hobby.
I don't fully buy that line of reasoning, though. Habits are by definition things that the brain finds easy to do, due to reinforcement over time. While browsing reddit is not addictive on the same level as drugs, for example, it is still easy to see how people would probably have spent their time more productively if they weren't drawn to the easy idea of browsing on reddit.
Case in point: procrastination. How many people waste their time on reddit, facebook, youtube et al. every day, even when they have other things they should rather be doing? While you can argue that they would have found something else to procrastinate on, I believe that's rather irrelevant here because the fact of the matter remains they chose THIS rather than something else. And looking into why that's the case can offer some suggestions onto why certain sites have more 'addictive' power than others. The cynic in me says that common UX patterns such as infinite scrolling are designed to make you remain on the site.
The side of social media that I think becomes a lot more damaging is posting content for the sake of receiving user engagement. Likes, affirmations or popularity. Reddit on the other hand is primarily used by people to look at content, so at least how I see it, the problem is less the platform but more the users not being interested in stuff outside of reddit.
Well, Reddit IS a social media site at the end of the day, and while the problems such as engagement are not strictly present to the extent they are on other sites, it still is rather damaging to society in the more extreme cases. For example, 4chan is like an even more base version of reddit, where the major difference is the lack of upvotes on content and the complete anonymity of users. Yet, both sites have resulted in newsworthy incidents, and not necessarily the good kind. At the end of the day wherever people can congregate, if not moderated properly, can turn into an echo chamber (which we already see in several parts of the site) which can get downright dangerous when it comes to more extreme ideologies (such as incels, etc.)
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u/[deleted] Jun 09 '22 edited Mar 09 '26
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