Ask HN: Why is Reddit so slow and unreliable?

You’re giving them wayyyy too much credit for being able to pull anything off. The problem with reddit isn’t their employees. It’s the finders keepers moderation system. First one to set up a “community” on a given topic is now able to manage messaging.

There are many frontend issues for sure. But I just don't understand why so many HTTP requests to the site fail. E.g. pages are simply blank about 20% of the time.

Don’t even ask about the app which take 20+ Seconds to load in content.

their website is terrible. even if i stumble across a post in my desktop that i want to read ill try search for it on my phone instead because their site works better on (third party) mobile apps.

The ironic thing is, their app is down more often than the website!

Doesn't the app pull from the same servers that are down? When I have browser issues, I usually have app issues too.

Um i noticed this to. The IOS app runs smooth but the website is barely functional on IOS. It is not uncommon for me to give up and close down Reddit cause i can’t open a post.

I have until now just assumed they want the website to suck so that you are more likely to install the APP. But now as I think about it a bit deeper that seams a bit to crazy.

Same here. I'll click a link to go to the mobile app, and it doesn't load anything. Go back and open in mobile Chrome and it loads just fine.

Share numbers?

And rely on the “community” to moderate. For zero point zero compensation.

> their CEO/head engineer is a buffoon and they have a history of screwing people with regard to equity compensation. It's not a complicated explanation at all.

This is the first time I’ve heard something negative about Huffman. Could you elaborate?

Bring back Ellen Pao!

I don't think this should reasonably be pinned on engineer remuneration. If you were advertising for "top performance tuning experts", it's fair they may not get them. But every criticism regarding root issues with the site (dark patterns pushing the app, AMP pages that don't load any content, loading screens that don't load anything, pages that almost seem deliberately broken) are really not the sort of things you associate with someone who "worked hard on performance but wasn't skilled enough". I would generally expect if they doubled their rates they'd get better ad targeting and investments in a range of places that aren't "faster websites".

Doesn’t help me. I don’t have android.

Usenet became unusable due to spam / people trolling with illegal material of the worst kind. You can kind of filter it or pay for a good Usenet provider to sort most of that out, but the good old days of being a Usenet node and having a manageable amount of traffic disappeared 25-30 years ago.

The moderated platforms looked better (Slashdot for example) but the spammers and chancers ruined that too.

As a link aggregator, Fark or Digg or (threw up in my mouth) 4Chan all either censored themselves stupid or became a cesspit of humanity that no self respecting adult could tolerate.

Reddit looked like it might be able to find a way forward but as others have suggested, if your business model completely relies on your community doing your work for free, it is eventually doomed to fail as soon as it becomes popular because the amount of work becomes overwhelming.

Yet we are stuck because the conclusion all these sites seem to come to (heavy, paid moderation) makes the sites so antiseptic they stop having anything interesting on them.

The real answer seems to be: use it until it can't be used and move to the next thing when that happens. Reddit is not quite unuseable for the specialist subs but it's getting close.

What alternatives do you like? I was looking at Lemmy

Reddit does what it does very well. Any community that gets past a certain size is going to suffer the same problems. A lot of front page subs like /r/funny or whatever are overwhelmed with noise. The specialty communities around a game or hobby or industry are frequently great. Invaluable in some cases.