[paradoxyl]

As long as old.reddit.com still exists for desktop, the site is semi-usable, although the insane moderation policies and narrow ideology makes the site basically useless except for niche reddits. Though I have gone from a daily user years back to maybe once a month. It's that bad.

On mobile, I can still read direct links to reddit posts that crop up on HN using Firefox for Android. Can't say same for the Twitter, which just says, "You need to enable javascript." Well, I won't.

[rchaud]

On the contrary, Reddit is one of the most useful sites out there. With Google search nearing total uselessness for local information, using "site:reddit.com" is almost obligatory.

None of the real value of Reddit is coming from the parts of it that resemble Twitter or 4Chan.

[jghn]

Count me as another person who frequently adds site:reddit.com to my google searches. I realize there's a lot of astroturfing that goes on there, but it's still useful when I want to get a pulse from real people.

Also count me as another person who abhors the "new" UI. Every once in a while I get bounced out of the old UI and I don't know how people do it. The old UI isn't my perfect UI but it's darn near close to it.

[NotYourLawyer]

Redditors are full of shit. So often, I’ll see a question where I actually know the answer, and the most popular responses are dead wrong.

[waboremo]

Astroturfing is the least of the problems; most threads are filled with fake experts (of a very specific demographic - usually very young, american, male, etc) projecting.

This is fine if you consciously remember this while browsing, but when you start to believe that you can get a pulse from "real people" on Reddit, you've already lost the game. Remember: to even post a comment on Reddit already puts you in a niche group of people who use Reddit.

This becomes self-reinforcing as well, everyone else will feel alienated even if they do get over the hurdle of commenting, while those who fit the aforementioned mold will feel at home. Can't get much of a pulse, unless you specifically want to know what a very certain demographic feels once you filter out all the fanboyism and astroturfing.

[rchaud]

It's a good thing we don't have any of this foolishness on Hacker News! /s

[waboremo]

Yes, HN also shares those problems. The upside is I don't see many people proclaiming to add HN to their google searches to find the pulse or whatever it may be, on the contrary it seems many come here just to debate.

Which is the bigger problem, someone coming to a niche place to debate, or someone who believes adding reddit to their google searches is going to provide them with better insight? I'd say the latter: they aren't conscious of the BS being pushed onto them.

Also kind of funny your comment is an exact demonstration of what I mean, that self-reinforcing style of "comedy" coupled with a nonsensical assumption.

[spacemadness]

We have plenty of diversity here. We have young, American, and male folks for instance. Even web developers if you need more diversity than that.

[thx-2718]

I would posit 'was' one of the most useful sites.

Like OP said there's certainly niche subreddits.

What grew Reddit for me was the informed comments that were generally related to the discussion and often brought more light to a topic than the posted article.

With voices leaving Reddit the point or appeal of it is gone. For me at least.

[rchaud]

I've been on Reddit for over 10 years. It's a search engine for me now, I've simply aged out of most of the discussions on there. I'm fine with that, because it's still useful for search queries like "Things to do in [city_name]".

[josephg]

On mobile you can’t read reddit comment threads unless you install their official app. I hate that Google surfaces reddit threads since the site itself often doesn’t contain the information indexed by the search.

[rchaud]

Check the settings of your Reddit client app. I set mine to open links from reddit.com and old.reddit.com. So when I click on a search result, it pulls up the page in the app.

[josephg]

Oh great - I didn't realise Apollo could open reddit links on mobile! Fantastic - for the remaining days while apollo works at all. Sigh.

[generalspecific]

That's not true, for me at least. I use mobile browser reddit and can see comment threads just fine.

[ghusto]

Firefox > Menu > Desktop Site

[freediver]

> With Google search nearing total uselessness for local information, using "site:reddit.com" is almost obligatory.

Only if you use Google to search! ;)

[MSFT_Edging]

Its sorta funny, when I'm looking for opinions on a new tech stack or a language comparison, I add the "hackernews" at the end of my query.

[atyppo]

Reddit conveniently unchecks the “redirect me to old Reddit” button every ~6 months. Quite annoying. I’ve been using Reddit for ~8-9 years and it’s gotten palpably worse. I knew it was dying the first time I saw an emoji on there. Seems they want to go the way Digg did.

[kfoley]

There are extensions that will automatically redirect you. I use this one [0] for Firefox and haven't had any issues.

[0]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-reddit-re...

[atyppo]

Interesting. I don’t think it’s a big enough annoyance for me to install yet another extension. Moreover, since I use old Reddit on my phone, I’d still have to change it back.

[vehemenz]

For things like this a userscript is better solution than a full-on extension. It is definitely worth it though, especially for mobile.

[chapium]

This might be your browser settings because this never happens for me.

[lelanthran]

I notice it only do that when I browse on the phone sometimes.

[dom96]

Strange. I never had that happen. Are you logged in to Reddit?

[atyppo]

Yes. It’s in the preferences section only when you’re logged in. I notice it as I use multiple accounts somewhat sporadically and it seems like when I log into one after a while it’s almost always back on new Reddit. I’m not alone in complaining about this - plenty of threads on Reddit mentioning this.

[rhdunn]

My biggest gripe with the Reddit UI is having to continually click expand to see nested/additional comments. It makes it difficult to read comments on a topic. I much prefer the HN approach of open by default with a collapse/expand button.

It used to be that clicking outside the central border of comments would navigate you back to the subreddit, but it looks like they have fixed that.

[ransom1538]

This post seriously changed my life. I had no idea old was working. Thanks.

[pixelpoet]

Be warned, either new reddit or the mobile apps (not sure which) deliberately insert extraneous slashes or underscores into links, so many links are broken when viewing on old reddit / need manual editing.

I'm pretty sure they're going to kill off old reddit, which will 100% certainly mark the end of my 15 years there.

[Vuska]

New and old reddit use different markdown rendering engines. New reddit is able to handle the slashes introduced by the new reddit WYSIWYG editor, it also supports fenced code blocks.

Old reddit supports neither resulting in broken links and broken code blocks.

[jonatron]

The Old Reddit Redirect browser extension is good because old links to new a lot.

[RGamma]

For now. They disabled i.reddit some months ago (was better on mobile)

[executive]

Wait till you discover teddit.

[kevviiinn]

Its always slow loafing for me, old loads way faster

[astronads]

Try https://teddit.adminforge.de/

[kevviiinn]

Nice and quick, thank you! I was using teddit.net

[esperent]

There's also teddit.net

[reddtastic]

And https://reddtastic.com (NSFW!). You can browse any subreddit with it (use the search) and Reddit’s front page https://reddtastic.com/r/

[wfh]

Remains one of my proudest contributions to Chromium https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/c/chromium/src/+/25...

[Pxtl]

> insane moderation policies and narrow ideology

What, did you prefer the site in the days of the Chimpire? Jailbait? Reddit's history has been the perfect case-study in the downsides of a libertarian approach to moderation. They've come to where they are now because every other approach resulted in horrifying racism, sexual exploitation, disinformation, and abuse.

[justaman]

The moderators of major subreddits are extremely authoritarian. There must be a middle ground between free-for-all and thought police.

[dageshi]

I imagine that requires a level of effort that volunteer mods just don't have the time or inclination for.

[ghusto]

Then why are they mods? They literally volunteered to do that exact thing.

[dageshi]

No, they didn't? How stuff is moderated is more or less down to the top mod of the subreddit.

[namelessoracle]

Many of the moderators get paid. Just not by reddit.

[tapoxi]

They're arguably popular because of the moderation, not in spite of it. You're free to follow whatever subreddit you'd like or create your own, which is the benefit of Reddit as a platform.

I do wish there was much more transparency around "power-moderators" though.

[peruvian]

This sounds like mods in any forum, except maybe HN. It's not a reddit problem.

[Pxtl]

HN has very opinionated mods, it's just that what they're opinionated about is primarily a matter of tone rather than a matter of content. I mean it's their site, I might disagree but it's their site.

[giraffe_lady]

Just some racism as long as you don't say the bad words, and light thought policing? It sounds like you want the HN mod policy, which makes sense bc that's where we are. Other sites can have different approaches though.

[scrollaway]

This isn’t the GP’s point; you’re being unfair to them and not reading their comment in good faith (which ironically is against the HN rules here).

I had a topic about the speed of light on askscience get deleted because the mods weren’t in the right mood that day. There is indeed a middle ground and we aren’t there.

Reddit’s model doesn’t work with what they want to do with the site. And things that worked when it had 1M, 10M users no longer do.

[waboremo]

Their current libertarian approach to moderation is exactly the reason why I would label it as insane moderation policies.