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Reddit @lemmy.world

overdevs @lemmy.world

1w ago

Reddit removed r/random and r/randnsfw citing them as low usage features

This has broken the random functionality on my rdx for Reddit app and possibly other apps. They keep breaking one feature or another and it's getting hard to maintain the app now.

They also removed these other features:

1/ Subdomain subreddit redirect: This is where “

<anything>

.reddit.com” is currently redirected to “reddit.com/r/

<anything>

”, 2. r/random, r/randnsfw, r/myrandom, and reddit.com/random 3. old.reddit.com Snoovatars 4. Saving posts and comments with category or by subreddit.

The don't even announce it on announcements. This is the post https://www.reddit.com/r/help/comments/1fojw02/cleaning_up_some_lowusage_features/

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27 comments

r/random used to be my bookmark to get there back when i used the site.
- I'd think random was probably both cheap to inplement (once you have a database, ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1 is easy) and great for engagement (encourages repeated gacha-pull behaviour looking for an interesting new sub).
  I wonder if it portends a degradation of the subreddit concept as a whole-- why let people navigate to a focused section directly when they should be looking at an algorithmic feed that delivers "almost what you're looking for" in a way that maximizes scrolling.
  
  I think that's absolutely it. I'd bet reddit has a metric that shows that their "front page" algorithm is much more "effective" at retaining eyeballs and clicks than users who view subreddits directly, so disposing a feature that reduces friction on the less "effective" method of engagement will drive more users to the front page and the algorithmic capture that drives up Reddit's metrics. Probably harder to serve ads on individual subreddit too because sponsored posts look more out of place when the content is less heterogeneous
  
  I wonder when they'll drop subreddits
- But the real users are now counted so...

27 comments