[mskslal]

The redesign was a massive success. The goal was to turn reddit into a typical social media property, and it worked. Real conversation was pushed aside into niche subreddits, and was replaced by typical social media filler crap, like r/funny and pics and wholesomememes, etc. It was bad before, but I just feel like the redesign made it 100x worse. Try opening the reddit homepage, new design, no account, and tell me with a straight face that that is a place where serious, well-thought discussion happens. The content on the front page is exactly what I would expect to see on my Facebook timeline or on the Instagram explore page, which I see now was Reddit's goal from the start.

[madeofpalk]

> Try opening the reddit homepage, new design, no account, and tell me with a straight face that that is a place where serious, well-thought discussion happens.

This has nothing to do with the new design. If Reddit was ever a place for “serious, well thought discussion”, it hasn’t been that way for the past 10 years.

[rchaud]

Perhaps for you. I joined in 2013, and wouldn't know half of what I do if it weren't for conversations on r/webdev and r/web_design. Such topics would have been shut down on StackOverflow because it broke some cardinal rule that nobody except people that spend all day on SO would know about.

That's just for work related things. In terms of having conversations about relationships, or sports, or new phones and tablets, I wouldn't even think of having these anywhere but Reddit.

Granted, I don't spend time on r/pics, or r/teenagers or whatever is on the front page. But I don't click the "Trending" tab on Youtube either.

[intotheabyss]

It really depends on the subreddits. The smaller and more engaged the community, the better the discussions. As subreddits scale in size, the discussions get proportionally worse.

[mjklin]

I learned Swedish by browsing r/sweden for about two years

[borepop]

>tell me with a straight face that that is a place where serious, well-thought discussion happens.

I only recently started reading HN after many years on Reddit, and even though a portion of what gets posted here is too technical and techy for me, I truly appreciate the thoughtful nature of the comments. It's quite a relief just to communicate with people who seem basically sane, mature, and intelligent.

[bobthepanda]

This has always been a thing; way before all of this, default subs had the same effect, to the point where subs that were getting big would actively jockey to not become default and get ruined by popularity.

[snarfy]

It would be interesting to sort the highest rated comments and group them based on if they originated from old reddit or new.

I suspect all of the high quality content comes from old.reddit.com.