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Ask HN: Why is new Reddit so bad?

47 points by fnfjfk ↗ HN
New Reddit is so bad that it's a meme at this point. Why is it this way?

I'm not asking about why the growth-hacking features exist - recommendations, larger images, looking like TikTok, steering people towards the mobile app. I don't like those, but I can understand why they do them (they want more money).

I'm just asking why the implementation is so terrible:

- The video player is so bad that it itself is a meme.

- Loading more comments often just doesn't work, the loading state disappears and no comments appear.

- The back button is totally broken, the entire page resets when going back.

- On mobile there are multiple "use the app" upsells, and clicking them takes me to the App Store. I already have the app installed! I wouldn't even be mad if these would just properly link me to the matching post in the actual app!

- Really bad memory usage and general performance, and so on.

It's just a genuinely awful website. Do they not notice this? Surely fixing this would improve revenue at least somewhat (people watch more videos on websites with functioning video players!), which they seem to be desperate for?

The weird thing is that old Reddit is a really good website. It works, I use it all the time and have a redirect installed, so that I never see new Reddit. It's performant. New Reddit could have just been a layer of CSS and some relatively minor markup tweaks (for inline images etc.) on top of that. Why build an entire new thing that barely works?

Anyways... it's been around for so long that someone internal has quit and can speak on a throwaway, or maybe someone still employed on a personal computer with Tor :)

24 comments

[ 71.4 ms ] story [ 119 ms ] thread
dredmorbius
Answering the immediate question: KPIs. The company is prepping for an IPO 2H2023,[1] trying to juice engagement, advertising, and revenue stats, and is well down the enshittification track: <https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys> (Doctorow's describing a different site, but the dynamic is identical in cause and consequence.)

VC manage a portfolio of assets. The net risk of an (increasingly unlikely) large liquidity event, vs. a wash, still sees its upside in the big-pop IPO.

Which is to say: it really is rational for investors to pursue a course with a high probability of killing the goose, as the alternative is still little or no return.

I'm starting to reach the view that VC have decided that Reddit must either see a large liquidity event or die trying. Given the present investment environment, it's time to close off taps.

TL;DR: Incentives grossly misaligned with core membership. (A conclusion I'd reached years ago.)

________________________________

Notes:

1. "Reddit aims for IPO in second half of 2023 - The Information" https://neuters.de/technology/reddit-aims-ipo-second-half-20...

Spooky23
Nah. That explains trying to kill third party apps and porn.

New Reddit has been around for a long time. It’s been awful enough that people still use old Reddit. For whatever reason, the people in charge of Reddit are really bad at what they do. It’s bad at making money, bad at providing a good user experience, etc. the whole thing is coasting on a good core design that a decade or more old.

fnfjfk
I think this is more about the increased push towards the growth hacking features, and the recent drama, though?

"Enshittification" definitely explains the product direction, but it doesn't mean that the website shouldn't work.

I'm just asking about the purely technical aspects the implementation of the enshittified product being so shoddy. Surely they'd get more engagement and ad revenue with a video player that works? Or a "use the app" button that properly linked to the app when people already have it installed?

dredmorbius
Circumstances would suggest to me that focus is on hitting IPO feature milestones, at all costs, regardless of whether or not those features actually work.

Though I'd suggest morale issues amongst Reddit's dev / eng / ops teams as well.

syntheweave
They hired a large amount of staff, so afterwards, the software has to reflect the org chart. Otherwise, the career-building line item can't be made - it would be "maintenance". All new gives everyone something to do.

It's basically that simple, when it comes down to it.

bloqs
This idea fascinates me, could you explain the "career building line item cant be made" another way? Thanks
roflyear
Most people working at companies, especially in leadership positions, are entirely focused on their career. I've seen this multiple times.

At my last company tech leadership was dumb enough to "say the quiet thing" and got in trouble for it: they pushed tech choices that were not in the best interest of the company because they figured it would be good for their own career, and they sold it as "good for your future" to their subordinates.

Some of our devs didn't like that and talked to the owners about it and the CTO got in some hot water. Then those devs got fired by the CTO of course, after being ostracized for 1yr and basically given no work to do. Ridiculous behavior.

morkalork
The video player one gets me the most. Seems like it is more effort and cost to roll their own than use a standard implementation? What is the benefit from using their own? And why keep it when it's so buggy? Is it a NIH/pride thing?
brucethemoose2
This is such a common mistake, and IDK what companies are thinking... I guess minimizing external dependencies? And that the html5 video element is not good enough?

Writing a good video player from scratch is hilariously difficult. There is so much to worry about.

brucethemoose2
> It's just a genuinely awful website.

Well thats easy. They want to drive you towards the app.

Turskarama
Except the app manages to be even worse.
DANmode
They're not driving you to the app for you.
Turskarama
They're not driving me to the app at all is the point.
MathMonkeyMan
If they tie you up and throw you in the back of a van, and then drive the van to the app, are they not driving you to the app?
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rcme
They simply don't care about the website anymore, it's as simple as that. Really basic bugs never get fixed. The video player was never fixed. A lot of the perf issues are React rendering issues. If someone cared, they could hook up the debugger and track them down. But no one cares. The website is just a way to funnel people into the app.
MathMonkeyMan
It might have something to do with the new reddit being a web app, while old reddit is a website. I've seldom worked on frontend, but I think that with a website, a lot of the hard parts are handled by the browser, whereas with a web app the hard parts you do yourself, poorly.
Timon3
It's less that you have to do the hard parts yourself - the browser brings solutions for almost any SPA issue. The problem is more that you have the option to work around those nice browser implementations, which many big web apps choose to do. Some do so because the APIs weren't available when they were developed, while others do it for analytics purposes.
foobarbaz33
"Modern" UI designers are running amok. They hide content so you can't see it. They make you click on it, but then you lose the surrounding context. This is done because heaven forbid someone need to drag their finger to scroll right on a phone.

Hacker news with finger drag to view nested comments works way way way better on a phone. Hacker news is one of the few websites I can actually ENJOY on a mobile device.