
Ask HN: Is “new” Reddit completely unusable for anyone else? - aosaigh
I notice that when browsing Reddit day-to-day I am <i>constantly</i> getting either &quot;Sorry, we couldn&#x27;t load posts for this page&quot; on a subreddit page or &quot;Cannot load comments&quot; on a thread page. This isn&#x27;t just happening occasionally, it&#x27;s been happening daily over the course of weeks.<p>There&#x27;s been a lot of hate for the &quot;new&quot; Reddit design but outside of the actual usability of the site, there seems to be some huge problems from a technical perspective.<p>I&#x27;ve tried multiple browsers, internet connections,VPN enabled&#x2F;disabled and it&#x27;s always the same. I now just use https:&#x2F;&#x2F;old.reddit.com, but I&#x27;d be interested to hear if other people have the same experience?<p>It boggles my mind that a redesign could be implemented so poorly on such a popular site.
======
Retroity
It is the worst redesign I've ever seen on a major website like this for a
number of reasons. It's needlessly heavy on resources, it's slow, it's
difficult to navigate, it's filled to the brim with ads, it's uninspired and
takes away all of the charm of the old design in favor of making Reddit look
like a more generic social media, it doesn't work with the wayback machine,
and that's just scratching the surface.

It's such a awful design. I've explicitly opted out of the new design on my
account, and I use old.reddit.com whenever I'm not signed in.

~~~
jedmeyers
Why aren’t you using old.reddit when you are signed in?

~~~
regecks
You can, but the problem with using old.reddit.com is that clicking on
reddit.com links (e.g. from reddit comments) will take you back to the new
design. With the opt-out, you get the old design no matter what.

~~~
Quekid5
I think people have even go so far as to make browser extensions to
automatically rewrite "reddit.com" to "old.reddit.com".

The redesign looks... well, I don't even know where to start, but it's pretty
clear that users aren't the focus and they've sold out _completely_ to
corporate interests.

I'd actually be OK with some of this if they were forthright and honest about
this shift in focus, but they're trying to say that the new design is
'better', etc. That's nonsense and lies.

EDIT: Oh, yeah, just remembered: IIRC the failure to link properly to
'old.reddit.com' on links that Reddit have _full_ control over was registered
as a 'bug' instead of an obvious way to drive traffic to the redesign.

EDIT#2: This is also what drove people to write browser extensions. The value
of reddit has always been in the communities, not the design (or whatever).

------
hlandau
The new design is godawful and unusable, especially without JavaScript.
Switching to old.reddit.com is a breath of fresh air. The juxtaposition seems
like an ideal case study in how bad modern web design is. I swear it's almost
like web designers are _trying_ to make things worse.

~~~
robin_reala
It’s not the designers’ fault, it’s developers seeing everything as a
technology problem rather than a user needs problem (and I’m speaking as a
developer). The best solution for any given problem is usually the simplest,
at least until you find that you specifically need extra complexity to solve a
user need. Unfortunately modern client-side development is fixed in a mindset
of developer efficiency above all, which doesn’t naturally lead to simple
solutions.

~~~
imustbeevil
Even as a tech problem, the new UI puts less information on the screen and
makes it harder to interact with. It's worse by every observable metric, and I
can't imagine they have successful A/B testing, because every other site on
the internet that does a redesign (Facebook, Twitter, Youtube) commits to it,
and Reddit has allowed users to stay on old reddit for like a year now.

The weirdest thing is that successful alternative reddit UIs exist, so all
they would have to do is incorporate the features people are using alternative
UIs for. They did virtually the opposite of that. This is _exactly_ what Digg
did, and the solution for Digg wasn't "allow people to use old Digg", it was
"Everyone left and went to reddit".

~~~
zzzcpan
> A/B testing

Despite popular belief, A/B testing doesn't actually work for usability
testing. So successful A/B testing usually means bad usability practices.

~~~
acoard
Can you provide some evidence or reading on this? I understand A/B typically
measures _conversions_, but couldn't you have quantifiable proxies for
usability? For example, things like form abandonment and time-to-complete a
task.

To be clear, I'm not contesting the value of usability tests involving
watching actual users. Our UX team does this with every release and it's
invaluable. But I would think data from A/B testing would only help inform our
decisions.

------
pjc50
Yes, but I eventually realised what it's optimised for: image posts. For some
insane reason they're competing with Instagram and Reddit's co-evolved site
Imgur, on which people read comments much less often.

They also really, really want you to use the mobile app, which presumably
means it does something privacy-violating.

~~~
CamelCaseName
I think the push to mobile is to increase lock in and engagement, not to
gather sensitive data. From my in person discussion with some of the admins,
they seemed to genuinely care about privacy.

With regard to the layout, the head of the redesign really emphasized that
user choice was important, and that they will never deprecate old.reddit (in
fact, they still have .compact from their very early days!). In a way, it
makes sense. "Hardcore" users will use RES / old.reddit, while casuals will be
pushed to new.reddit, which may be a better fit for them.

My takeaway from talking to them was that, even if I don't believe in their
product vision (I hate the app and redesign passionately), I do believe in
their team to do the right thing. I hope my trust is well placed.

~~~
Crinus
> casuals will be pushed to new.reddit, which may be a better fit for them.

Why would new.reddit be a better fit for "casuals" when it is worse is pretty
much every way?

~~~
laken
Before the redesign, in my circles of non-tech friends, Reddit on desktop
would scare them off. They thought it looked really old and ugly. The new
design is really to capture those people.

That said, I hate new Reddit with a passion and still use the old design.

------
notadev
>It boggles my mind that a redesign could be implemented so poorly on such a
popular site.

The irony of this statement is that Reddit _really_ became popular when Digg,
who was the top link sharing site at the time, rolled out a new clunky ad-
friendly redesign that caused a mass exodus of users to Reddit.

~~~
nexuist
...which makes me wonder if this could ever happen again today, given that all
of our data is being pushed into tighter and tighter silos with less
integration than ever before (I'll admit Reddit has been better in this regard
with its API and abundance of 3rd party clients). It seems like a lot of
social networks rely on the network effect more than their actual features,
and in the worst case they can just e.g. implement features from other
platforms gaining traction (Facebook is infamous for this, stealing circles
from G+ and stories from Snapchat).

Reddit usurped Digg because it was technically superior. Could another
technically superior website overtake Reddit?

~~~
president
I don't think it could happen today. Reddit has too much critical mass and the
community is too diverse. Back then Digg was a smaller and more close-knit
community of mostly techies that mostly agreed on the same things. There was a
movement a few years ago where some Redditors tried to create a Reddit
alternative called Voat, which ultimately failed.

------
wazoox
The new design is slow as mollasses. It's ugly. It doesn't provide direct
access to both the shared link and comments. Managing text formatting is slow
and painful. The _only_ positive point is the Ctrl+enter shortcut to post
comments. I always use old.reddit.com.

~~~
hrunt
This is the first HN comment I have seen that actually describes what about
the new design makes it unusable. Most that I have seen are "The new design is
unusable! Everyone agrees with me! I use old.reddit.com and do not use the new
design!" A few comments point out that nothing loads without errors, but
that's not a design problem -- that's an implementation problem.

With that said, I am throwing my hat into the "I disagree" camp. I do not find
the new design unusable. It is not slow for me (American cable ISP, Firefox
browser, uBlock Origin enabled, JavaScript enabled). My experience is just as
fast as the old design. I have direct access to both the shared link and
comments (the title now goes to the comments and the shared link is the orange
link to the right of the title). I admit I did have to retrain my brain to the
new design's conversation-focused design vs. remote-link-focused design, but
that took all of a week. I do not have any slowness managing text formatting,
but then, I do not comment a lot and I do not write long comments. I
appreciate that the new design, on most subreddits, appears cleaner and the
information, for me, is more clearly laid out. To me, the site appears
"prettier." With the ad-blocker on, some of the sidebar ads get blocked. I do
not know how that impacts my experience.

I have also not experienced any of the page loading errors that people have
described. Not once, unless it was a known outage causing the Internet to
collectively scream.

I am mostly a reader on reddit. I visit my subreddits twice a day, during what
are probably peak usage times in North America.

~~~
wazoox
I just checked, opened
[https://old.reddit.com/r/france](https://old.reddit.com/r/france) : less than
2 seconds, the page is fully loaded.

Tried [https://www.reddit.com/r/france/](https://www.reddit.com/r/france/):
more than 4 seconds before the page is loaded.

Loading :
[https://old.reddit.com/r/france/comments/ccs5tx/emmanuel_mac...](https://old.reddit.com/r/france/comments/ccs5tx/emmanuel_macron_annonce_la_cr%C3%A9ation_dun/)

is about 2 seconds. Loading:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/france/comments/ccs5tx/emmanuel_mac...](https://www.reddit.com/r/france/comments/ccs5tx/emmanuel_macron_annonce_la_cr%C3%A9ation_dun/)

about 6 seconds.

The new reddit looks therefore 2 to 3 times slower.

~~~
dorchadas
Not to mention, with RES on old reddit you can turn the Javascript for
specific subs off. Not sure if that's even possible on New, which I hate. The
JS is often just overcrowded and too much, so I'd prefer it off.

~~~
Phillipharryt
Subs only have control over CSS, no JS. But yes it can get overcrowded.

~~~
dorchadas
Complete brainfart moment. I totally knew that! Thanks!

------
CriticalCathed
I moderate one of the "default" subreddits so I have a rarer perspective than
most. I can see the traffic of a subreddit that most users see daily.

There are almost 3 times more people using the redesign and the official
reddit app together than the old site. However, engagement (number of page
views per unique IP) is half or less of the old desktop or third party app.

So the new styles (cards, content focused) have more unique users overall, but
those users engage less with the content.

There may be other reasons for this -- but to me it makes sense. The redesigns
are harder to use and make reddit less addictive. You simply see a smaller
volume of content and can't interact with it as well. But hey, it's a modern
looking website I guess.

~~~
bonniemuffin
This finding seems confounded by biased populations: "engagement (number of
page views per unique IP) is half or less of the old desktop or third party
app".

I would expect that only the most engaged users would be using old desktop or
third party app, since those are much harder to find and require much more
effort (such as digging through settings, or investigating other app options).
The less engaged, casual users would be using the default options (new web or
default mobile app) because they're much easier to find.

Therefore I propose the causation goes the opposite direction of what you're
suggesting: it's not that old web/3rd party app cause users to be more
engaged, but rather that being highly engaged causes users to use old web/3rd
party app.

------
hardmaru
I can't stand the new reddit. I always browse the site with
[https://old.reddit.com/](https://old.reddit.com/)

Just replace www with old.

~~~
jimhefferon
Me too, but you must know that they will turn it off at some point.

~~~
myhf
Why? thesixtyone.com never turned off their "old" subdomain

~~~
hombre_fatal
Well, thesixtyone turned off their entire service.

------
cylinder714
If you're on a mobile device, try appending ".compact" to the URL to get the
old mobile version. For example,
"[https://www.reddit.com/r/cooking/.compact"](https://www.reddit.com/r/cooking/.compact")

~~~
zokier
[https://i.reddit.com](https://i.reddit.com) works too

~~~
cylinder714
Even better!

------
pyeu
It is poorly designed in terms of loading. I cannot wait for so longgggggggg.

I always prefer to switch to [http://old.reddit.com/](http://old.reddit.com/)

------
sramsay
Honestly, the new design might be better, but I'll never know, because like
you, every single page throws an error.

How can one of the most heavily trafficked sites in the world be so completely
broken? I'm not sure. I can certainly summon lots of examples of terrible
design that didn't hinder a site's success in the slightest. But I can't think
of many sites that succeed despite throwing constant errors.

------
outime
Unless I missed someone, every single comment (including myself) agrees: the
new site is just unusable. It’s awful.

IMHO it’s been broken since they released it and so it makes me think that
they won’t fix it so people will switch to the app (or that’s what they might
be thinking).

Like many others I use the old design and if they get rid of it then I’ll just
skip Reddit entirely.

~~~
hombre_fatal
A peek outside the echo chamber: my roommates and girlfriend use Reddit. They
don't have anything bad to say about the UI nor are aware HNers hate it. They
didn't even know it changed, they just don't seem to care.

I use old.reddit.com out of habit, but don't really care when I land on the
new UI. I just use it. People blow it way out of proportion.

I like some of its features, like how it's now a modal over the infinite
scroll. I don't have to open everything in a new tab anymore in fear of losing
my place in the scroll or having that "sorry, no more pages, start over"
message.

I really don't see much worth fuming over. The Digg redesign basically turned
it into a weird news site e-zine. Meanwhile the Reddit redesign has the exact
same spirit as the old one.

~~~
wetpaws
By the nature of the normal distribution there would be some people who would
love new design. That's fine but it doesn't mean it is good.

~~~
wingerlang
And just because a bunch of HNers (and redditors) despise it doesn’t mean it
is bad. I am sure the vast vast majority is totally indifferent to the design.

I’ve used reddit for around a decade at this point and the new design is much
better imo. I tried using old reddit a week or so after it changed and no
thanks to that..

I also don’t have issues with speed and errors like others say.

------
unixsheikh
I absolutely hate the new design, not because it is slow (it's not on my end),
but because it is such a pain to use.

User friendliness has gone out the window and I cannot fathom how such a poor
redesign could ever be implemented on such a high traffic site.

If the old design gets removed, I will stop using Reddit permanently.

------
elpocko
It's unbearable. Reddit's dev and design staff is not very competent. They
probably have lots of virtues, being good at their job is not one of them.

~~~
buboard
What surprises me is that their ads manager is also amateurish (it got a
redesign too!) and i mean real amateur stuff like broken images. And that is
their money maker!

~~~
isugimpy
Would be very curious to hear more specific examples of this one, haven't seen
it firsthand.

------
jumbopapa
Yeah, it's pretty awful. I use Old Reddit Redirect [1] to always get to the
old site. If they ever remove old reddit I will likely quit using the service.

[1] - [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-reddit-
re...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-reddit-redirect/)

------
michaelbuckbee
Due to RSI issues, I make extensive use of the Vimium Chrome extension
(keyboard navigation of websites) and the new Reddit design works
substantially worse than the older design.

This appears to be due to the new design loading "pages" as "layers" on the
browser viewport - so you have overlapping layers all with intermixed links
shortcuts.

~~~
PsylentKnight
Reddit enhancement suite has vim-like keybindings. I use that, and then
disable some of the Vimium keys on Reddit.

I also use a plugin that automatically redirects Reddit to old.reddit.com. I
don't know how well RES works with the redesign.

------
jccalhoun
The thing I hate the most about the redesign is that now everything takes an
extra click. On old reddit the subreddits were right there on the left. Now
they are in a drop down menu. If I wanted to switch between new and top
stories it used to be right there at the top. Now it is hidden behind a drop
down menu.

~~~
aitchnyu
I'm feeling gaslit into a world where PCs which can show everything on a
single screen abuse whitespace, hide info and require lots of extra taps.

~~~
jccalhoun
I have joked that maybe Reddit is a shill for Big Mouse because they are
making us click so much we will wear out our mice and have to buy new ones
more quickly.

------
hprotagonist
Yep.

i use [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-reddit-
re...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-reddit-redirect/)
for firefox

and apollo on iOS.

------
vbezhenar
Never had those problems. I'm not a very dedicated redditor, though, just
checking few forums once a few days and reading some topics. The only thing
that I hate about reddit is that they want me to install their application on
my mobile phone and that application is inferior to browser, so I don't even
want to install it and I can't opt out of that warning which appears on every
single page.

------
arduinomancer
I think they're trying to capture new people to the site, outside of the
original tech nerd demographic. To do this they made reddit look at lot more
like YouTube.

Personally I just hate the lack of information density. It just feels bloated,
slow, and too much whitespace.

New users probably don't care though. I remember the original interface would
scare off some people originally because they thought it was ugly.

------
OtterEcho
Has anybody else noticed the complete conversion from generalized subreddits
on r/all to oddly specific ones focused around calling people out from a
placae of "moral high ground"? I really hate it now.

~~~
ehonda
Yes I have noticed. Perhaps they are catering to the tastes of the majority of
their user base (whatever generates a flurry of clicks). And this is the...
result.

------
faissaloo
I have carpal tunnel syndrome, so I like to use a plugin called SurfingKeys to
reduce my use of pointing devices. It was completely unusable however when
given the new Reddit so I switched back.

------
parliament32
old.reddit.com is the only way I browse reddit. That original simplistic
design was the whole reason I started with Reddit in the first place -- the
new design is just really bad, for many reasons. If they ever enforce the new
design I'll probably end up staying away from the site alltogether.

Some stats, testing from pingdom's site analyzer:

old reddit homepage: 80 assets, 1.1mb

new reddit homepage: 283 assets, 5.1mb

That's a serious regression. I'm not interested in tiled youtube-style
presentation -- information density was always the nice thing about Reddit,
and it seems like they're moving away from objective.

If you're on Firefox use Old Reddit Redirect to auto-redirect all Reddit links
to old: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-reddit-
re...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-reddit-redirect/)

------
Waterluvian
I love that there's three locations eating up 1/3 of the screen telling me to
use the mobile app instead.

~~~
non-entity
The mobile app is worse than the redesign! Can't copy text via the OS
interface, no sort of spell check whatsoever in the textboxes and constantly
failing to load posts that the website does just fine.

------
gilrain
I also constantly get errors while browsing new Reddit. It's astounding.

------
thomasfl
Reddit was best when it had almost the excact user interface as this site,
hacker news.

~~~
brokenmachine
All sites are best with simple interfaces. So sick of web 2.0 bullshit. I just
want simple paginated interfaces.

------
HiroshiSan
Yeah, this happens to me as well, I'll want to scroll when I have 5 minutes
here or there and I'll run into the same problems. The reddit I knew and loved
is gone, and it's filled with usability issues and politics all over.

As soon as the new redesign happened, I knew it was the first nail in a very
large coffin. Reddit is going the way of the dodo and I'm not sure there could
be anything to replace it with the way the internet seems to be going.

(I apologize for some very vague opinions as I haven't really dug deeper into
these thoughts and so they're merely just feelings I have)

------
m-p-3
It's mostly fine for what I do but I really hate the infinite scrolling, add
if I scroll down for a while it will eat so much RAM that it starts to slow
down.

On mobile I just use Sync for Reddit, the UI is sane, fast and pretty.

------
nkristoffersen
I started really using Reddit when the new UI came out, plus I am 99.999%
browsing on mobile.

So with that said, I don't have any problem with the new Reddit since it is
what "Reddit" has always been to me.

------
HNLurker2
Yes and very slow to load. And also very unusable because it alternates
between old and new ui. Https://i.reddit.com is the only thing that works but
I think I'll stop using alltogethe

------
mcintyre1994
It's recently started triggering the 'a webpage is slowing down your computer'
message on Firefox for me, which is a pretty good sign they're doing something
crazy.

------
Spoom
I literally cannot log out of the new Reddit design on mobile. The log out
link simply does not work from Chrome. Clearing my cookies for reddit.com does
not solve the problem. It baffles my mind both how this is possible and how
the system could be designed so poorly that the situation exists at all.

I get around it by using an alternative client, "reddit is fun", when I want
to use an alt.

------
stevebz
Reddit UI became impossible to use. Only using old.reddit.com if at all, but I
generally block the site as it's to much distraction.

------
segmondy
I didn't think about it till now, but I went from checking reddit once a day
before the design to never now. I don't go to reddit anymore, unless I see a
link from another site. The only thing that did change was the new site. I had
my own custom list of subreddits that I frequented and that's not even enough
to get me to keep using it.

------
buboard
> It boggles my mind that a redesign could be implemented so poorly on such a
> popular site.

It's not the first one really. I can count many products that i use daily and
have gone down the drain. There is obviously some "change for the sake of
change" or just to get a promotion here. Reddit, Skype, adsense off top of my
head

~~~
brokenmachine
Also countless google examples, but they like to get rid of entire popular
products.

------
B_Throwaway
Not to mention the horrendous CPU usage.

------
lasagnaphil
I think the UI design isn't that bad; I actually like the large thumbnails in
the new UI better because I like to view a lot of art. But it's the
performance that makes it disgustingly horrible - I wonder if someone made a
sane desktop UI replacement for Reddit.

~~~
jumbopapa
They're are so many extensions that made old reddit far superior. Namely
Reddit Enhancement Suit and Imagus (which is good for the large thumbnails you
like)

~~~
lasagnaphil
It seems that Imagus is not maintained anymore... but at least Reddit
Enhancement Suite gives you a button to view images inline. Thanks for the
suggestion!

~~~
jumbopapa
I think Imagus is maintained still... Last update says 5 hours ago.

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/imagus/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/imagus/)

------
beagle3
Also, resource lists, wikis and a lot of other features are only available in
the old design - and there isn’t even a mention of them when browsing the new
one. Lots and lots of easily accessible and well referenced and summarized
knowledge essentially invisible.

------
el_dev_hell
The new desktop design is unusable.

BUT the mobile experience of reddit (to scroll mindlessly) is super polished.

------
CDSlice
I actually really like the redesign. However I can't really use it because it
keeps not loading posts and having other glitches. The Sync app for Android
doesn't have these problems and is what I use to browse Reddit almost all of
the time.

------
Endy
I hate New Reddit, frankly. I always use old on desktop. And on Android, I use
a program called RedReader, from F-Droid. It's a (mostly) text-only reader - I
can open pics and video of I tap it, but by default only text gets downloaded.

------
sunstone
Personally I've kept with the old style by using
[https://old.reddit.com/r/topic1+topic2+topic3](https://old.reddit.com/r/topic1+topic2+topic3)

------
Jazgot
Paradoxically the old reddit on mobile is way more usable than the new one.
The other sin is AMP. Every time I visit reddit from Google, I need to go
through additional steps, to be able to vote, comment etc.

------
typenil
Definitely experience the constant loading problems. Honestly good to hear I'm
not the only one. I assumed it was something they didn't like about my setup.

Since the redesign, my Reddit use has dropped off a cliff.

------
CogitoCogito
One of the lines in my /etc/hosts file is the following:

127.0.0.1 reddit.com www.reddit.com

I put it in so that it would force me to use old.reddit.com instead. After a
couple weeks old.reddit.com has became entirely automatic.

------
lousken
I've given up on new reddit as soon as they implemented lazy loading for
comments, at this point i'm just using old reddit with _?limit=500 &sort=top_
added

------
quickthrower2
No I honestly don’t mind it. Although I heat the old reddit vs new reddit
thing come up every now and then. I don’t think it’s better but it’s no harder
to use.

------
axilmar
I have setup my reddit account to use the old reddit, because for the desktop,
the old one is much better than the new one.

However, on my phone, the new one is better.

------
leke
It's fine because I just opt out of the redesign.

------
moltar
I think this redesign will go the way Digg did.

~~~
arduinomancer
I doubt it. There isn't really any competitor right now and Reddit has a lot
of credibility from stuff like AMA's with celebrities.

------
znpy
Since they deployed the new user interface it became unusable. The old UI was
lighter, faster and more intuitive/usable.

------
strikelaserclaw
YES, theres an extension on chrome and firefox which esentially redirects all
reddit links to old reddit, its a godsend.

------
rurban
It's completely unusable, but it's barely usable and outright annoying.

From to time I forget to switch to old.reddit.com

------
bipinvk9
Am quite new to the New Reddit. I love it! By the way, I can understand the
pain of all the older users.

------
Japhy_Ryder
It's absolute garbage. Slow and insanely buggy. old.reddit.com is the only way
to use it now.

------
qserasera
New design is getting faster every day. That said I have little reason to use
the new design.

------
nullwasamistake
It's basically unusable, as is Twitter. It's to get you to download the app.

------
whenchamenia
Reddit has made it clear they dont want me as a user. I avoid that cesspool.

------
sdinsn
Yes. I only use old reddit

~~~
proc0
Same, will stop occasionally visiting entirely once they dare take it down.
Many new options popping up.

------
ausbah
I like the new style, but the execution seems less than ideal.

------
arianvanp
YES. and 90% of the videos do not load on mobile either

------
edgarvm
I use i.reddit.com it's faster and usable

------
draw_down
I get the “sorry” message a lot too. The mobile version of the site is
unfortunately riddled with bugs big and small, to where you can tell they
don’t use it themselves. But I’m not downloading their app, sorry.

