Even if you took away all controversy and politics, I hate Reddit. The search function sucks. They shoved their own harebrained video player down everyone’s throats and it constantly plays by itself without opening. And when you do open it it doesn’t fucking play half the time. They also foisted their eye-bleeding updated user interface upon our innocent souls and forever corrupted us. It can only be described as Fischer price from hell. And also the idea of Reddit sucks on a structural level. There are tons of subs that are cool but too narrow to gain a large following. They can’t fill in the template subreddit community. You see overly specific subreddits like “praise the camera man” or “public freak outs” or “woah dude” and they invariably all cycle through the same videos and pictures, the ones getting the most traction, violating the whole premise of having specific communities. It should have been something like you can tag a post “woah dude” or “videos that end too soon” and just submit it to the universal page. People could still track tags of interest and do everything without the whole mess and insanity of subreddits and also without assholes turning subreddits into little fiefdoms.
I still like some parts of Reddit. I can only do so, though, because I exclusively force old.reddit styling instead of the new repulsive design, and I only visit 4ish subreddits with generally smaller subscriber numbers and more niche interests. All of the main/general subreddits are just endlessly repeating the same thing over and over again. Once the subreddit gets too big or seems to be annoying, jump ship or try and find a smaller new version.
Also, I like subreddits outside of the bubble/echo chamber of the main subs. Even if I don't really align with some of the opinions or positions of some of the other subs, it at least feels more like interacting with actual human beings with differing interests.
I also just don't use reddit that much. It's good for trying to solve a question, and maybe having a laugh for 15 mins, but after that it usually overstays its welcome and you can go somewhere else.
I tried to get of my reddit addiction several times now ... going "cold turkey" or easing it of over time. I did that with 9gag a decade ago and never went back since, but with reddit it's hard because there is actually good content on there. Especially in the niche communities with small subscriber numbers.
(very evident in the /r/battletech subreddit that just got overrun by a recent games workshop exodus. Subscriber counts increased, but /r/battletech turned into a meme channel ...)
The way I quit social media is to change my password to something I have no chance of remembering. Did this for reddit when they got all ban crazy a few weeks ago.
The bottom line is, Reddit has value — and not just a little. Whenever I’m trying to figure something out, I can always find a sub that has the answer, or will help.
Most recent example was California drivers safety course. Googled: “Reddit drivers safety course California” and found a class that was entirely self-paced, $10, and got me through it with a letter off to court in under an hour.
Maybe I would’ve found it anyway, but dammit, I was over the moon.
This has become my trick to try to get some sort of relevant results from google searches and sift through the SEO hell that modern web has become: tack on "reddit" to my query.
> I did that with 9gag a decade ago and never went back since...
Other than HN, 9gag is the only place on the internet that I still regularly visit. Most people posting and commenting have stuck around for a decade and it has been really nice to age together with an online community.
No offense, but 9gag and its comments are by far the very worst, stupidest, most toxic "community" I've ever seen, and yes this includes youtube comments.
You left out the worst thing: the upvote-downvote system, which ensures that an hivemind echo chamber is almost guaranteed to arise. Any slightly controversial post, or in fact anything which does not run with the dominating opinion, is immediately hidden from view.
This is far and away the largest reason I avoid the site beyond niche hobby stuff.
The moment a discussion CAN have dissent, the "game" of the site incentivizes you to only say things people agree with, otherwise you are hidden from conversation, and in many cases limited to respond.
I like to think of reddit as a "glorious" mess - one which will violently offend the sensibilities of people who like order and sensible product design.
If it helps, its worth considering reddit as a template for what can be improved.
I have no idea why the redesign was introduced, especially since there are now apps as well.
However, there is an increasing amount of study on how reddit operates, and how users move through the site. Its the maze which we can learn from - and its moderation is at least hopefully overturned by humans as opposed to the gnomic monoliths of FB and other imperial social networks.
The redesign was quite obviously introduced for the express purpose of monetization. In the old UI, ads can only take up so much space. The 3rd link down from the list (which is typically the link where promoted content is placed) in old.reddit takes up perhaps 7% of total available screen space. In the new UI, users are forced to look at full screen advertisements, which advertisers are willing to pay a lot more $$ for.
> They shoved their own harebrained video player down everyone’s throats and it constantly plays by itself without opening
I can’t even listen to music anymore while browsing Reddit because some goddamn ad or post I scroll past will hijack audio thanks to this stupid auto polar, which I’m pretty sure I disabled in the settings.
Prior to a recent update, I couldn’t even find a pause button to press while viewing comments.
reddit: flag to turn off seo spam, limiting results to earnest musings in the style of usenet posts that feckless old programmers are always pining for
I browse pics at r/WeWantPlates. Reddit is great for that as long as old.reddit.com works, NSFW subreddits are also great link aggregators for specific niches. Other than that I don't know why would anyone want to be there
