11mo ago

Reddit redesign is getting forced onto users without an opt-out option

Happened to me a few days ago, and I just can't believe how bad this redesign is!!

It's hard to comprehend what goes into the heads of that dev team, but they basically ruined everything nice about the platform. The API changes were pretty much a fatal shot already, but this new redesign seems to be what tipped the scales for me, and hopefully many more.

It's a great time to switch to Lemmy, and I think I'm going to make the effort to stick around and abandon the habit of opening reddit multiple times per day.

Do you think forcing this re-design will bring more people here? I'm hoping for that. Reddit betrayed us and I can't find it me to keep forgiving them for every horrible, anti-user decision.

I noticed in some moderator subreddit, that it is planned to kill new.reddit.com as well. Old will likely stay for longer, but new is what I got used to, and if they take it down I won't bother getting used to the newer, garbage UX.

151 comments

As an ex-redditor, my only reaction is

Lemmy users talking to Reddit users.
- The hurdle is content. Lemmy has an overflow of politics and mindless memes, but it needs to have more content beyond that to attract people in.
  Everyone who wants Lemmy to succeed should give redditors a reason to stay by posting in some of the smaller and more niche communities.
  
  The Gaming Comunitys on lemmy are also alright.
  
  Yet without an audience, it's just people posting into the void.
  I think we need to accept that we aren't going to become Reddit pt. 2 anytime soon. Smaller steps might be a good way to go - e.g. if a small sub dedicated to a single game is too small, then post in a medium level one like its genre.
  But also, the main reason I stopped recommending the Fediverse to people - well aside from the fact that nobody was listening:-P - wasn't just lack of content, and instead mainly bc there are so very many technical glitches. I eventually left Kbin entirely bc it never seemed to progress anywhere, but everywhere I've gone on Lemmy, while it has been better, is still far from perfect. For instance, I have to re-login every single time I come here - even on the same day, and sometimes also just randomly while browsing, both mobile browser and also desktop.
  We who are here are okay that it is alpha version software, but the kind of people on Reddit who have remained are not. Consent matters: we haven't enticed them here, and we need to be okay with that, or else do a LOT better job trying - which will take time and effort, which is underway - and either way it would help to accept the situation as it is not just how we might dream that it could be otherwise.
  
  How about not attacking people who express a liking for Windows?
  
  Yeah! Like rimworld.gallery
  
  Reddit has zero content. Lemmy has zero content. Only people.
  
  It’s worse than that. The politics is a far left echo chamber which appeals to a small number of chronically online but repels everyone else.

The redesign was garbage ux from the start and they ignored absolutely all feedback for years. It was fundamentally flawed from the very beginning and they buried their heads in the sand because they knew most people would still use it.
Most people seemed to use the official app anyway, which is even worse, so I don't see many people changing over this. I was one of the people who said when old Reddit was gone so was I, I just didn't expect them to do something worse before that time came.
- Won’t change much. Look at OP, complaining about the betrayal and going back several times a day. Old habits are hard to break.
  
  When RiF broke I never went back, i need lemmy to prosper or I will be out of doomscrolling app
  
  It's not habit, it's that there are many things on Reddit that are not on Lemmy in any meaningful sense yet. I use reddit for those communities that don't exist here and I don't feel like quitting, but Lemmy gets my full attention for everything else.
  Using both platforms at once is more about necessity and patience. Lemmy will grow, I'm certain of that, but I'm not going to pretend it's anywhere near active enough yet to fully replace every aspect of reddit. It will, but it isn't there yet.
- Their motto seems to consistently be: "Drive out the old users who remember what we used to be. Rein in the new users who embrace the enshitification and change from content aggregation to social media"

So now there's a NewNew Reddit? That IPO is getting ever closer, guess they'll be thrashing around all the harder in the lead up to that to try to show some kind of path to profitability.
- Yeh try opening reddit in incognito w/o logging in. It's basically a mobile design, but now for desktop as well. They haven't even implemented Compact mode. It's unreal. Half of it is wasted space, and it looks so green. Baby vomit vibes.
  
  Can't even view it because I'm using a VPN.
  Which should tell you enough, tbh.
  
  Huh. Kinda looks like the front page of twitter. I hate it. I mean, I don't go to reddit anymore unless I'm forced to Google something and even then I gotta turn off my VPN first, but still. Yuck.
  
  Wait even if you go to old.reddit.com?
  Edit: old still seems to be fine
- You can see it by going to sh.reddit.com. A lot of people are getting forced to this if they try to use new.reddit.
  old.reddit supposedly remains unaffected, so if you use that domain specifically you should be fine. Assuming the Admins aren't lying.
  
  Soon old.old.reddit

old reddit the only way to use reddit for me. When it's gone I will have to waste my time exclusively here.
- I have a community for a project on Reddit which is the only reason I use it anymore, I've tried using new Reddit so many times but it's so painful that I really think I'm just let the community die if they force me off old
  
  There is one community over there which I miss here, but only so long there is old reddit.

The redesign would be bad if considerably improved. Because as it is now, it's simply awful.
Things that they did not get:
People might not like a crammed interface, but they certainly don't like to unnecessarily roll stuff.
Desktops typically have a horizontal screen. Vertical space is at premium, but horizontal space is cheap. That leads to "stripes" of content, not to square blocks.
"Muh consisrency! Mobile n desktop inrurrfaces must look teh same!" leads to either a shitty mobile interface, a shitty desktop interface, or both. Never neither.
If you can guess that a user is using a desktop interface (YES YOU CAN, you spam the shit out of the users if they dare to use the mobile interface), then you can also guess that desktop users won't "download your appz XD".
Everything else.

Reddit is a dogshow but Lenny has issues too.
Maybe it’s my instance or some other config but when I open lennmy it’s just wall to wall communist/anti capitalist, open source wanking and musk hate.
Look, people, musk is a cunt, capitalism is ruining not only the planet but yes also the hearts and minds of people and proprietary software probably should be a little less pervasive than what it is but can we, just for one fucking nano second discuss literally anythingbg else?
In my experience (and again perhaps just with whatever I’ve been able to set up) lemmy is tiresome, parochial and very much a one-dimensional experience.
Can any of us remember when Reddit was actually fun? A little of the silliness that made it endearing? Dumb stories about Kevin, incessant nonsense about bacon, when AMA was a fucking legendary little nook of the internet? Surely some of those are the things this community would want to foster, a little light heartedness? Look at the popularity of the Trekkie stuff, nothing to learn there?
It’s cool though, I don’t have to come here and this has all helped me realise that. I’m literally only on here typing this because I’m taking a dump rn.
- :)
- Dude, yesterday was the Superbowl and there was no thread for it (other than one hating on it) on the front page of Lemmy. That was a depressing realization to me.
  It's not mainstream, not even close. It literally is what you said and some memes. Maybe one day it'll have a better breadth of content. Reddit content right now is much better to the general user.
  Also taking a dump rn.
- I would truly like Lemmy if there were social communities like in reddit instead of what you just described. 2something4you, fantasy, hfy, roleplaying, cats, yurop, etc etc. We need all of that fun stuff
  
  All of those things exist here. I feel like you guys haven’t explored other instances maybe because while the parent commenter is right, there is a lot of the topics they’re tired of, there’s plenty of other stuff. And there’s plenty of fantasy, role playing, cats, there are a few 2[blank]4you spots.
  
  Nope. Sorry. Best I can do is 700 Linux communities
  
  There is !cat@lemmy.world and a good number of DND and TTRPG communities.
  !rpgmemes@ttrpg.network
  !dnd@lemmy.world
  
  !yurop@lemm.ee ?
- Honestly you don't have to mute a lot of communities to get a feed with less of those.
  And you'd be surprised how better it is to engage with people you disagree with here as long as you're civil, with the exception of a few trolls or extremely online people.
  It's definitely a big step up from Reddit and the quality of the content is great when curated and if you don't open it more than 2 or 3 times a day for less than 10min.
  
  It's not civil though. You get banned at the drop of a hat for gently questioning the commie dogma even as a leftist.
  The frustrating part is that these communities are extremely far outside of the academic mainstream but they simply refuse to hear it. I am far from a troll, you can check my comment history if you want. But I keep catching bans for merely being a voice for a different kind of leftist thought. It's exhausting.
- At first, I registered on Lemmy.world but, after a while, it was unbearable. Sometimes I couldn't log in because the servers were overloaded, sometimes because they were updating. When they decided to defederate certain instances, I went to eslemmy...until it disappeared without warning. I had the same luck with firefish.social. I signed up to try it out, it looked promising, but it was very slow. Now it's dead too.
  For me, Lemmy was not yet ready for the amount of users coming from Reddit.
- I like being able to hear all the different narratives, but if you have sync for lemmy as your client app you can block instances now
  I do hope another reddit influx will drown out the circle jerking

Why is anyone here still using reddit? What's the point of not using reddit anymore if you still use reddit? Whats the point in saying fuck u/spez if you keep using reddit?
I've been exclusively on lemmy since the reddit blackout, and it's been great.
Just give reddit up my dudes. Its shit
- Momentum, there are active niche subreddits that don't really exist on lemmy yet.
  
  It's a fair point, but i think it would be better to encourage those niche subreddits to jump ship to lemmy. Or create the community here yourself.
  If reddit has a reason for people to stay then reddit will remain relevant and continue to make money for spez.
  
  Recipe for instant good Lemmy community
  Effort required from you: 1 hour
  Sign up two or three Lemmy accounts. 5 minutes
  Go to a niche reddit community and grab half a dozen good submissions in the last year or so. Post them to your Lemmy with different accounts. 10 minutes
  Now for the hard part. Go and create some good quality original submissions. Work hard on 2-3 good pieces of content that don’t exist on reddit. 35 minutes.
  Post links to those submissions on reddit. 5 minutes
  Spend a few seconds voting up and engaging with any commenters in your new community. 5 minutes
  Even simple upvotes from your few accounts can catalyse engagement and make the community start to come together.
- Because lemmy isn't useful. Open the app and all I see is anti capitalism, Linux, Elon musk, and a bunch of unfunny memes
  I had a specific question about Iceland yesterday I had to go to reddit for because lemmy has no Iceland community
  
  And when reddit started it wasnt useful. I dont want to repeat what i already said in another reply but essentially it boiled down to: the only way that lemmy replaces reddit is if people create the communities here and encourage people to move here.
  Reddit is great for info but its gotten quite alot worse since the blackout when alot of people deleted their comments in protest. I have had a number of situations where a comment with a bunch of replies saying "thanks that solved it" has beem deleted and my problem goes unsolved.
  We all need lemmy to become more popular so it can replace reddit as a massive repository of useful information about everything.
  Reddit wont be useful at all in a few more years.
- Just give reddit up my dudes.
  Aren't you subscribed to this community? ,,,, 🤔
  
  Oh! I am. If i recall, i moved to lemmy and subbed to this community when reddit went dark to keep in the loop on how the protests were going and if there had been any real impact on reddit overall. I guess i never unsubbed.
  Either way, it doesn't change anything i said.
  If anything it juat raises the question of what the purpose of this community is. Is it reddit recon, is it a space to point and laugh at rhe choices reddit makes, or is it a place for those who can't let go to cling to the past?

Any time Reddit makes a stumble is likely to generate at least a small exodus looking for alternatives. This is an example of such a moment.
In order to keep those users on Lemmy it needs to have activity. A community with no posts or only ancient posts is not attractive. Yes, Lemmy has politics and memes, but it needs more activity in other types of communities. People say as much constantly and it is obvious.
If you want Lemmy to thrive then I highly suggest you post in communities relevant to your interests.
- It would also be nice if some of the largest instances didn't ban people for not thinking Mao Zedong was a good dude.

"Forced" is a really weird way to describe it. Companies redesign their physical and virtual spaces all the time and people [edit: usually] don't react like it's an act of violence.
- Funny thing is, they do. Our company's app is in the middle of redesign. Previously the "design" was made by programmers just making it work and not really caring that much about visuals. Now there's actual vision and concept behind the new design and yet we've already got some complaints. People always treat redesigns like a personal insult.
  
  In most situations, ‘vision and concept’ just add bloat and additional clicks required to complete the same tasks as the previous, spartan/utilitarian design did.
  A good example of what I’m referring to is the Metro UI of Windows 8; yes it arguably looked ‘prettier’ - but that’s largely subjective and made actually using the device worse, without 3rd party applications to restore the Windows 7 Start Menu functionality.
  Sometimes, albeit not always - programmers do end up making pretty efficient UIs.
  
  It's fair in a way though, if someone has invested time and effort into developing a workflow using a tool then the hammer company come and say 'we're talking away the solid handle and replacing it with a soft one then of course you'll be angry.
  The worst is when they make things look like bad science fiction by moving everything into awkward places and wasting 90% of my screen with dumb looking polish that does nothing but slow performance and add bugs.
  
  Because you take away their safe space. I went through this with every major Firefox redesign. Then i spend several hours trying to reverse the changes through css.
- When its bad enough they do... hell a redesign is what killed Digg (arguments that it was already falling off aside) and new reddit is pretty dogshit.
- Facebook helped establish the smaller more frequent changes as the norm vs the "redesign" from the older days.
- Yes they definitely do, I remember when Facebook moved to timeline and everyone went ape shit.

Wait, there's a newer redisgn than new?
- You should be able to see it if you open reddit in incognito without logging in: https://reddit.com/
  
  Looking more and more like the current version of digg.com.
  This is why we teach history, kids.
  
  it ain't worth disabling my old redirect (which still works) to look.

I don't know if I'm the only one who feels this way, but the new design makes it look more like a social media site than a forum.
- I'm sure we'll start seeing stories/reels/shorts making a comeback as well, they just want to make it a copy of other social platforms indeed. Their brainrot knows only one thing - copy trends that make money. They had no clue what to do with reddit, and it's apparent in every decision they've made. RIP Aaron Swartz. He had such a different vision. Reddit team needs to be disbanded. It looks like that's the plan anyhow. Sell reddit and fuck everything off to whoever comes next.
- Pretty sure that's the point

The Old Reddit Redirect addon for Firefox still works.
The day that breaks, is the day when I finally come to the realization that I will have to find someplace else for niche content that isn't available here. I'm not so sure that such a website exists. Reddit killed off all the competition.

Wow what a horrible day to have eyes

They redesigned the site again? old.reddit.com was literally the only usable design. No avatars, no ridiculous amounts of padding, no broken search results, no forced sign-in for NSFW-marked content.

Many won't leave no matter what happens.
Some have left already.
Everyone else is somewhere in-between.

..: there’s a redesign? I’m still using old Reddit. New Reddit was always shit.
- If they somehow made something worse than new reddit that's actually pretty impressive. There was literally nothing to like about that update.

What was keeping you there?

I actually like the new new Reddit more than the new Reddit that preceded it. Maybe an unpopular opinion. Although I haven't had time to use it that much yet.

The first week or two of ditching the habit of opening reddit is the hardest, but speaking from experience, it gets easier with time.

I don't see /r/windows10 and/r/windows11 doing that well here.
- Oh no.

I kind of like it more than the current new redesign. It seems to make better use of horizontal space, it doesn't leave black bars. However, I haven't tried it on 16:9 screen, but a 20:9.
What I don't like is lack of Markdown editor. That new(2) editor is even wose than FancyPants editor of new(1). There's just three options: GIF (works), Image (worked after spamming it like 100 times) and "T" which is probably for text editing (doesn't work at all).
Anyway, am I the only or does it feel like X?
Disclaimer: I haven't tried using it, I just checked it for 3 minutes now.
- I like it too. I wish I could compare it to current reddit, but I can only access it through old interface. And the current reddit is is too addicting to me to justify working around it.
  I kinda hate that I like the sh version cause it will tempt me to sink time there.

Who cares. I'm over here now.

https://new.reddit.com/
whaat? They changed like nothing at all. Where is the redesign? The current UI is garbage, but the new one is equally as bad
- On Firefox mobile when I click in to a post now the comment dialog has like 10 characters width max.
  
  If I scroll down at all in a nested chain it quickly goes to 1 character lol
  
  If I refresh then it somewhat goes back to normal.
- I believe new.reddit is the design they've had for a while, and sh.reddit is the redesign. I'm not at my computer though, so I can't verify

Just checked for you lazy bastards.
Old.reddit.com still working (for me anyways)

Welcome and please stay on Lemmy. It’s what reddit used to be and only improves every month the more people come here.

Unless a larger portion of the userbase migrates, Reddit will get to do what they want to. Unfortunately the landed gentry/toxic mods are going to do what they can to keep them there too, including modding out any info posts about alternatives.

Yeah sh.reddit.com is a good name for the new new design. I couldn't fucking believe how bad it is and now opt out! There is an reddit-redirect browser addon to redirect to new.reddit. Reddit-enhancer is also working on improving the new "tik-tokified" UI. My guess we'll see more expansive and transformative browser addons instead of clients.

So is old reddit dead? Like old.reddit.com?
- No it's still there. Not sure what they're on about unless it's some A/B testing.
  The opt-out is also still there in the user settings page. (Though phrased.... poorly. Probably on purpose.)

I saw the writing on the wall over the summer of 2023. Reddit won't die, nothing will. I had tinkered with mastodon before but that realisation above is really what pushed me to migrate everything I use to the fediverse. Most people are too stubborn to give up the very things that keep abusing them because they are already established, instead of putting in the effort of engaging with something new. Even yesterday a friend of mine was nonstop complaining about twitter and when I mentioned bluesky and mastodon "oh it's okay, X is more popular so I'm just gonna stay on it". I have Lemmy and bluesky for now. I have ecosia for my search and waterfox for my browser. the only thing it's really hard to get rid of is YouTube, even invidious is just a front-end for it. kinda got off topic but the point is, Reddit hasn't lost momentum. nothing has or will for a long while. bad changes will keep enshittifying everything.

I like the redesign

I wish they would just understand that all they need is a simple lightweight layout with ways to sort post and threads.
No "more" buttons and no fancy scripts. Just load the page and maybe have people make some comments without reloading the page, but that's it. We need less internet traffic and less resource usage. I should be able to visit a forum board like reddit with the same pentium 1 pc I used to visit invision forums on dialup back in the day.

I would not care, if the new UI wasn't that buggy and laggy.

It's awful. I actually didn't mind new Reddit. But they switched my account to new new Reddit and I changed my bookmarks to go to old Reddit. I'll try to stay for as long as there are good discussions but this cursed design is bursting with "know-nothing middle manager" energy.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-reddit-redirect/

Even old.reddit.com is broken now, where clicking links takes you to the ugly-ass new reddit design instead of just opening up the post so you see the full image/link with the comments.

Is that what caused the sidebar to disappear, then. I spent hours optimizing it

Agree even reddit is killing the new.reddit.com ui

Call me when you all want to fix the very clearly worse problems Lemmy has.
- Lemmy GitHub Issue Tracker
  See, the fun part is there is a place to track those issues and you are welcome to lend a hand fixing them instead of just complaining.
  
  Or we can continue speaking out instead of allowing oversensitive idiots like you to get defensive at the mere mention that Lemmy is less than perfect.
  This is your platform, not mine, after all.

151 comments

Recipe for instant good Lemmy community