Then sometimes you click a link and it takes you out of old and into the hellscape that is modern reddit.
Can't wait until some manager decides old needs to go. They'll end up losing a bunch of long time users and some other site will finally gain traction.
In my discussions with Reddit admins, they've said that old.reddit.com will be around forever. However, it won't get new features (or a very watered down version of new features).
After all, .compact links [0] still work, and those are super old.
This has some serious Eternal September vibes, like when we reached the tipping point of more normies than nerds using the web. It makes me unreasonably angry that average users are being led down this path and are blithely accepting it, with those who object seemingly a shrinking minority.
I was practically shouting at my screen the first couple times I got thrown into the new design (before I figured out how to avoid it). If reddit really does shut down the old interface, I will absolutely be gone.
> This has some serious Eternal September vibes, like when we reached the tipping point of more normies than nerds using the web.
Sure, but there's something positive about this. Usenet's external September happend with maybe a million users, Reddit's with hundreds of millions. Which means that bigger communities are possible without the problems happening :)
On the other hand, Reddit surely changed during its growth, so there were probably multiple similar events. After all, HN was created as PG felt that was not a good place to discuss startup ideas.
There is a plugin for chrome which forces old.reddit.com, can't remember the name but should be easy enough to find. And for mobile I use the Apollo app, which is fantastic. I've actually switched from using reddit mostly on desktop to using it almost exclusively on mobile because Apollo is so good
Even if that’s possible I personally feel that if those who run Reddit don’t want to web experience to be user-focused then I feel that I don’t want to spend my time there. I rather use HN or Lobsters instead.
Edit: As a number of others have mentioned below. I too have reduced reddit intake due to the poor UI amongst a realisation of its not a good use of my time.
If the company decided to make the UI not friendly, they will likely continue to make user hostile decisions in the name of maximising growth and profits.
In this case using addons seems like playing catch up with low chance of a long term win.
On mobile and non-mobile, I use Firefox' Redirector addon to redirect all reddit links to https://ns.reddit.com/* which might be the same as old.reddit.com
They could but seeing how good Reddit's UI is, how good do you think their log scraping is? And do they have the budget for keeping all access logs of anonymous users so they can try to line up all the ChainLinkFence enthusiasts with the people who also frequent r/MarijuanaEnthusiasts and r/WhiteMenGoneWild.
Can't wait until some manager decides old needs to go. They'll end up losing a bunch of long time users and some other site will finally gain traction.