[TameAntelope]

You call it degradation, Reddit calls it "explosive growth".

The UX redesign was hugely successful in attracting new users, users who could then be monetized.

The "useless answers" are wildly popular responses because people generally prefer to meme, not solve problems.

Your complaint essentially boils down to, "Why do people not behave how I want them to?" and that, my friend, is a question as old as time itself.

From the HN guidelines, but it also applies to Reddit:

> Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob[0] illusion[1], as[2] old[3] as[4] the[5] hills[6].

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=926703

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=633099

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=582513

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=289254

[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=253657

[5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=66057

[6] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13852

[kelseyfrog]

The UX redesign is also clearly part of a mobile-first strategy. The mobile site funnels users into the mobile app, and the desktop site clearly echos the mobile design principles.

Mobile users fundamentally engage with the platform in different ways. For one, they form a different demographic segment than older users, and secondly the mobile app frames and filters content in uniquely mobile ways. High-signal content is much more difficult to craft on a mobile device so more mobile use represents a greater proportion of content noise.

Early adopters seek high-signal over content quantity and will move platforms if the opportunity arises. Such a migration will play into future case studies critiquing Reddits MAU-chasing at the expense of hollowing out their long-time user base.

[GekkePrutser]

> The mobile site funnels users into the mobile app, and the desktop site clearly echos the mobile design principles.

More like hoards them into the app with a cattle prod. You can't use the mobile site without constantly confirming that no, I really really really don't want to use the app like I said 20 seconds ago.

This is beyond dark patterns. It's pure user hostility.

[marssaxman]

Better to ignore their current mobile site and use the old layout, which is inexplicably still available at https://i.reddit.com/ with a much better experience.

[solveit]

> inexplicably

There's a small but significant group of users who would probably quit reddit if old reddit went away. Keeping them around for (what I assume is) minimal cost is just good business.

[yakytaky]

And here I have been using https://old.reddit.com on a mobile device like a barbarian. Thank you for posting this!

[april_22]

Same here! Thank you!

[atrain101]

Agreed, the UX for the mobile web app is very hostile.

I use it anyways in Brave to limit how much tracking Reddit can do on me, but I feel like that's probably a fools errand at this point.

[chefkoch]

Go to settings -> ask to open in app to disable this

[hyperbovine]

I must be using Reddit differently than the typical user. It's almost hilarious how much worse the new UX is compared to browsing the exact same content on old.reddit.com. Like, I literally cannot believe that serious money, time, and effort were invested in designing this product, though presumably that is true. The same applies particularly to their video player, it is just amazingly bad compared to similar offerings from other large social media sites.

[kortheo]

Using old.reddit.com + Reddit Enhancement Suite extension, and subscribing to subreddits focused on high quality discussion (usually signalled by "Discussion" or "True" in the subreddit name) gives the best experience of the site IMO. But even so I feel that version reddit is slowly fading over time. I'm half expecting to wakeup one day to find that old.reddit.com is no longer available.

[dieselgate]

Yeah me as well. It’s not really “supported” right?

[colinmhayes]

More importantly, it's very difficult to block ads on a mobile app. Reddit's problem is that the vast majority of their "power users" use adblockers and therefore provide zero revenue. Mobile also makes it much easier to doom scroll for hours a day, key to facebook's success.

As far as I can tell reddit's website provides minimal income and is just an ad for their app.

[ad404b8a372f2b9]

Go to any popular subreddit and click the "gilded" tab at the top. At the top of this page it tells you how many months of server time "gold"s purchased in the subreddit paid for, you will be shocked.

I've seen subreddits with less than 50000 subscribers who had enough purchases to cover 3 years of server cost. /r/aww alone paid for 772 years of server time according to their calculations.

Reddit could go on indefinitely as is with no advertising.

[colinmhayes]

> Reddit could go on indefinitely as is with no advertising.

I don't think the goal of tech companies is to just "go on indefinitely." Their investors need them to make billions of dollars.

[ad404b8a372f2b9]

Well of course, I was only responding to the point about whether the website made any money without advertising.

Given that the technology is solved, and the financing is solved, I wish there were a way to build such a website with such a community without the cycle always ending in its destruction for the sake of profit.

[purerandomness]

They did, once, and called it IRC. It's still good.

[spoils19]

I'd be careful with that - it's widely known that Reddit admins use "fake" gold to artificially bring content that they want to the frontpage.

[josephcsible]

To be clear, it costs real money for regular people to give Reddit gold, but Reddit admins can do it for free. So it's a very strong signal from everyone but them, but just as meaningless as an upvote from them.

[ad404b8a372f2b9]

Good to keep in mind for the large subreddits and to put a grain on salt on those approximations, but even the subreddits hated by the admins show years-worth of purchases, it's also not likely to be prevalent in those like /r/aww where it's exclusively pictures of pets.

[toss1]

IOW, Reddit redesigned the UI towards mobile, devalued high-signal and high-quality, and so recreated the Eternal September [0] on their own platform.

You'd think they'd know better, but maybe to them, replacing high-information-demanding users with a casual audience is a feature and not a bug.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

[TameAntelope]

I don't know how credible this site is [0], but I think something that goes understated in these conversations is just how explosive the growth is that Reddit has experienced even in the last year:

* A doubling of mobile app downloads in the past year

* Valuation increase of 4Bn in 6 months (from ~6Bn to ~10Bn) (Feb 2021 to Aug 2021)

* Revenue growth forecast over 250%

I guess we're all kind of used to the idea that Reddit keeps growing, because it more or less has since it was created (citation needed), but the nature of exponential growth is such that maybe we're a bit numb to just how big the numbers have gotten in the past year or so.

[0] https://backlinko.com/reddit-users

[kelseyfrog]

Absolutely. The business has a huge incentive to grow even if it results in old-timers migrating off platform.

[mmis1000]

Their mobile app is terrible enough that I eventually gave up and find some alternative app. It isn't about UI or UX, it's purely usability issue.

What the heck they removed my subs from the sidebar and add it back from time to time, move the avatar every week, and constantly generate fake notification dot even there isn't any? It's just annoying that you see it says you have notification, you click and there isn't any.

This is the most dumb app I ever seen. And this is also the first time I use an alternative client on a social platform because the vanilla one is so useless.

[parineum]

> Mobile users fundamentally engage with the platform in different ways. For one, they form a different demographic segment than older users, and secondly the mobile app frames and filters content in uniquely mobile ways. High-signal content is much more difficult to craft on a mobile device so more mobile use represents a greater proportion of content noise.

I'd argue the only thing that really matters about mobile users is they are online _way_ more often. Engagement can be higher on mobile because the access is mobile.

[kelseyfrog]

Maybe? I guess I'm speaking from personal experience here when I say writing in-depth sourced and edited comments[higher quality] is more difficult for me on a mobile device. But perhaps, my experience not the norm. Is it different for others?

[Tostino]

The proportion of users on mobile devices could explain some of the sliding quality. I know if I am using a mobile device, it's primarily for content consumption. I can't quickly reply in any depth with a mobile keyboard, so that waits until I am at a full PC, which is a smaller and smaller proportion of the time I am actually using Reddit in recent years.

[GekkePrutser]

Engagement isn't about how much time you spend in the editor writing insightful comments. It's how much you scroll through the feed laced with ads. Sadly.

[kelseyfrog]

For sure. Optimizing for MAUs disincentives quality content.

[pixl97]

Quantity of engagement > quality of engagement

Or "more ads better"

[ImPostingOnHN]

and app means more user info for ads

[usrn]

I think they legitimately thought it was an improvement. The guy responsible for it actually started a thread here to show off. The comments were pretty rough.

[NonNefarious]

Link?

[butterfi]

It also depends on what sub-reddit you're in. Some are really good, some are BS echo-chambers. It can't all be BS considering how many people are using Google Site search to get "better" answers from sub-reddits as opposed to generic google search results.

[NonNefarious]

A lot of subs are useless because they're moderated by infantile admins who delete posts and ban users for no legitimate (or even stated) reason. I received a permanent ban for asking (politely) why a bunch of on-topic comments (most of them not mine) had been deleted in a thread discussing a technical topic.

These asshole admins then followed me to another, related sub where they permanently banned me for answering another user's question about a product; again with no excuse. This reveals the depressing fact that Reddit is an inbred community of inbred moderators who bully users for fun and render the entire platform a waste of effort. You spend a bunch of time helping people, only to have your work deleted and being made to feel like you're the bad guy. Just typing this out, I'm getting pissed-off and tense, for having done nothing offensive at all. Who needs that in his day?

I discovered Reddit after Digg sold out and became a spam aggregator, and everyone abandoned it in favor of Reddit. I see that someone below also referred to this incident, and marked it as the beginning of the decline of Reddit. I find it odd to blame the Digg ex-pats because Digg was (in its heyday) a tech-news site not too different from this one.

But not long after arriving at Reddit, I did notice that the technical content soon diminished and was replaced by an endless stream of cutesy "This little guy followed me home" posts about stray animals or other pleasant but wholly useless content.

Sad.

[robotjosh]

This was my experience too. I got banned from my city’s subreddit for the stated reason “don’t move here” and then harassed across several local subreddits. Paid reddit admins determined that is not in fact harassment. Then later these admins banned me because they said being mean to racists is hate speech. Seems like racist assholes run the place from mods up to the paid admins.

[denimnerd42]

real people are better than seo spam but these days not by much

[mattwilsonn888]

> A lot of people have been saying it for a while.

> Therefore its bogus!

What kind of reasoning is that?

[SilasX]

I’m happy to entertain that thesis, but what is the evidence? How do you known it wasn’t other factors that drove greater usage, like ads on other platforms or word-of-mouth? I notice you didn’t post any such evidence.

Incidentally, if you’re really into HN guidelines, it might be a good idea to avoid inflammatory comments that lack the evidence to back them up.

[nunez]

Agreed. You can't endlessly dumbscroll on old reddit and engage with other Redditors while you can, easily, on new Reddit. Lots of people like dumbscrolling.

[seydor]

> The UX redesign was hugely successful in attracting new users

Is there evidence for that?