
Reddit’s Redesign - jklp
https://www.wired.com/story/reddit-redesign/?mbid=synd_digg
======
onli
I think a big issue with the new design is the trust issue I/people have that
stem from Reddit's other design efforts. Take the mobile website. It looks a
lot nicer than the desktop site, but is completely unuseable on a lower end
(but current) android device - because instead of showing content immediately
it does some javascript client rendering and shows some loading screen, and
that regularly takes 10-20 seconds on bigger comment threads. At the same time
there is still i.reddit.com, an ugly mobile site seemingly from way back when
sites started to make dedicated iPhone-targeting mobile variants, and that one
is as fast as a site can be. Actually usable.

On mobile, if you visit the reddit site, they push a "use the app"-banner in
your face. Every goddamn time.

When they redesigned the profiles recently there was a lot of pushback. I did
not necessarily agree with that, I thought and think the new profile sites are
fine in general. But what definitely was an issue was the performance. Again
some javascript client rendering leading to loading indicators, even on the
desktop. They improved loading times after that, but still.

So one big point of the new design is not actually "how will it look", but
whether they will get the functionality/UX right. HN does, without client side
rendering and redesigns...

~~~
dorkwood
What sort of future do companies like Reddit envision for the internet,
exactly? One where I have an app on my phone for every website I visit?

~~~
crysin
Personally, I prefer apps over websites almost always unless the app is just a
dedicated browser window to the company's website. I feel like the mobile
experience on almost all websites is absolutely terrible when compared to a
dedicated mobile app offering. Unless companies start investing more money
into making their websites feel as good and snappy as their apps do, I know
I'll default to the app over the website, always.

~~~
tomc1985
I would prefer sites as I cannot reliably adblock apps in all network
environments.

~~~
jimpudar
Take a look at pi-hole with a VPN for remote use. It works great.

------
IIAOPSW
Why do we care so much about design? Reddits success in spite of completely
eschewing designers should prove design is over valued. So to does Craigslist.
Japanese websites are proof by example that this is strictly a cultural
phenomena. Why does Western society seem to value form over function so much?

How much is "good design" codeword for dumbing the site down as much as
possible and making it shiny enough for people who get distracted by car keys?
Reddit doesn't exactly have the learning curve of a command line tool or a
rocket plane. Maybe I'm elitist, but if you can't understand reddit as it is
maybe you're an idiot?

Call me an old man waving around my cane, but I say to hell with the redesign.
Give me my plain old links in their plain old default blue underline and my
mod-hacked-together css+bots. The internet need not anymore "progress for the
sake of progress".

~~~
arkh
> design is over valued

I would be more specific. Designing so things look good is over valued.
Designing so things are simple to use the first time but don't restrict the
user later on are under valued.

~~~
tanilama
All the redesigns look Facebook-ish. Which make me wonder... Do the designers
understand what people love about Reddit? The new interface looks void of
information and way too distracting...

~~~
awalton
> All the redesigns look Facebook-ish.

This isn't by chance... Reddit is actively pushing themselves towards being
the next Facebook, down to the whole "deprioritize subreddits/emphasize
profile pages and groups of friends" mechanic. They just hope by boiling the
frog slowly enough, people won't realize what's happening around them.

~~~
vorpalhex
I strongly suspect they are aiming to sell sometime soon. The new rules, the
new redesign, the attempt to facebook-ify the site.

~~~
_rpd
They want to IPO and cash out. They have explicitly stated that this is their
goal.

------
maxxxxx
I am getting more and more respect for Craigslist who resisted doing constant
redesigns for the sake of looking hip. Craigslist is ugly but I don't have to
relearn something every few months because they have moved some function to
another place.

It seems most sites like Reddit have run out of ideas and instead of leaving
things alone they just shuffle things around and sell it as innovation. Same
thing for Windows 10 and office 365. Lots of visual changes but under the hood
it's same old.

~~~
w0m
Two very different user bases though.

Craigslist is more of a, 'Go there to accomplish specific task' end point.

Reddit is more of a, 'hang out here when your bored!' type of thing.

The former just has to work and work cleanly. The latter needs to hold it's
users interest over time while staying 'hip' enough to gain users from
potential competitors to stay relevant overtime.

~~~
Jtsummers
Fark, like Reddit, is a place people go to to "hang out", and its design
doesn't seem to have substantially changed over the years.

~~~
tyleraldrich
Reddit is also the 6th most popular website in the world, and likely gets
thousands of potential new users daily that are turned off by the design and
don't become Reddit addicts.

~~~
TremendousJudge
This puts them just below Google, Youtube, Facebook, Baidu and Wikipedia[1].
That's absolutely huge. If the interface was so bad surely they wouldn't have
been able to get there now, would they?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_popular_websites](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_popular_websites)

~~~
what_ever
How would you know if it's not holding them back?

------
pygy_
I tried the redesign for a couple of hours and bailed out.

I don't care about the looks, but there are two changes that are egregious for
me regarding UX:

1) They took out the subreddit ribbon at the top where you can quickly switch
between the communities you subscribe to. It's been replaced by a hamburger
menu that takes ages to show up, and then you have to scroll (and they are
sorted alphabetically, not by popularity).

2) In the main subreddit view, the titles now link to the comments rather than
the articles, you have to pixel-hunt the actual link, which is much smaller. I
suppose they do this to keep users on site, but I dislike the change.

Edit: also, infinite scroll! As if Reddit wasn't sufficiently addictive as it
is :-(

~~~
bby
when I change back, next time I come back to reddit it shows the new design...
how do I get the old design permanently?

~~~
pygy_
No idea. I opted in through the beta options and disabled it from there as
well (at the bottom of the preference screen). I still have the beta option
enabled though.

------
dawnerd
I think reddit has bigger issues than the look of their site. I stopped using
it once all the hate subreddits started growing. Even the smaller more niche
subreddits I frequented turned into meme filled echo chambers. What really did
it in for me was just how much sponsored content made the homepage that wasn't
labeled as such.

They also banned me from reddit gifts for pointing out their first sponsored
exchange (before they said it was sponsored, they tried acting like it was
"fan service").

~~~
dijit
Funnily enough: Reddit started declining for me around the time they started
banning "hate" subreddits but leaving others in place (r/shitredditsays for
example). It felt like the curators of the site really had some kind of agenda
to push, and it really turned me off of using it as a news aggregator
platform.

(I say this as a person who has never been a member of any of the banned
subreddits)

~~~
andromedaworld
Agree. Censorship beyond a sub's mods is largely uncalled for. Sometimes
(fewer times than is the case now), banning of some subs could be necessary.

I believe that subs are isolated enough that if you don't want to engage with
any particular sub's content you wouldn't have to. Otherwise the whole thing
becomes somewhat skewed towards a certain set of opinions and could even be
deemed to be totalitarian.

~~~
mynameisvlad
> I believe that subs are isolated enough that if you don't want to engage
> with any particular sub's content you wouldn't have to. Otherwise the whole
> thing becomes somewhat skewed towards a certain set of opinions and could
> even be deemed to be totalitarian.

But that's the thing, they are in theory, but in practice, you see subreddits
leaking into others. Even with strict no-brigading rules, it's too easy to
click on a link from /r/subredditdrama, for instance, and then start
participating. And sometimes people with the same opinion just go to other
subreddits to antagonize/troll people; you see this more with the more
extremely-sided subreddits.

~~~
Karunamon
"Brigading" is the single most idiotic concept to come out of the site admins
in Reddit's entire history. It's a value judgment that conveys nothing useful.

Do you know what someone following a link on Reddit and clicking around and
participating where they end up is? _Normal usage of Reddit!_ The idea that
you're not allowed to participate just because you came through an on-site
link reflects a kind of isolationism that has nothing in common with Reddit's
philosophy, nor how real people ever used the site.

~~~
mynameisvlad
Oh I completely agree, I always found that silly for the exact same reason. I
think I got banned on one of those subreddits because I had a comment in both
the topic linked and the subreddit's own.

Okay, so I used the link aggregation and discussion site as designed? Cool,
I'll take that ban.

------
SllX
There's an old and undervalued adage: don't fix what isn't broken.

Reddit is a community of communities. You can be part of more than one or just
one, you can post in all of them, you're not forced to look at any of them,
and each of them has different rules, culture and enforcement policies.
They're on a pretty even playing field as far as site rules and moderation
tools go too. It's crazy, chaotic and lends itself well to surprise.

The primary interface lends itself well to lurking, but what it is really
meant for is talking _to_ people. You can post a new top-level comment on any
post, but the real discussion happens in the threads in-between. The top level
discussions are also ranked, democratically, but if the discussion looks
skewed you can even easily change how you look at a thread to see what you're
missing.

All in all, it's a real gem, the way it is now.

Looking at this design, all I see is a Facebook. A different kind of Facebook
to be sure, but it doesn't look like a real improvement on what I have now,
just different. A change for the sake of making a change because otherwise all
of those engineers in their office downtown would be bored or working
elsewhere if they didn't have a project like this to keep them
interested/entertained. Fine I suppose, and for now I can still use the
classic interface, but for how long? How long till some bored engineer or
annoyed project manager with a vision/dream/overwhelming urge to kick a puppy
manages to convince the rest that they should drop the classic interface in
favor of putting more wood behind their Facebook-shaped arrow.

~~~
ztratar
I'm not seeing Facebook at all, personally. The UX of the entire site is
different, from navigation to media.

Are you saying the visual design is similar?

IMO this is a clear improvement to the site's dated UX that held them back
from going mainstream w/ many demographics.

~~~
Scarblac
Yes, all it seems to be doing is drag the visual design towards Facebook, or
towards what everybody is doing nowadays . You can call that "less dated", but
it's also unoriginal.

Which is a shame, given that there's a decade of ideas here, from third-party
add-ons like RES to all of the custom CSS from subreddits and everything. They
could have taken the best parts and just _improved_ Reddit, going in a unique
direction regardless of what the rest of the Web currently happens to look
like.

Can you even call it "design" if the end result makes it look more like
everybody else?

------
grandpoobah
Remember when Digg failed to address long standing issues and instead
redesigned the site to be more like Twitter?

Prediction: The redesign is the straw that will break the Snoo's back.

~~~
newsbinator
What's the new Reddit? I'd like to get on that.

~~~
winslow
Voat.com has been around for a while. They made a decent push during some
reddit drama ~2 years ago. However, looking through voat 'subverses' aka
subreddits they look pretty dead for the counterparts that I visit on reddit
ex: www.reddit.com/r/homebrewing vs www.voat.com/v/homebrewing and
www.reddit.com/r/unrealengine vs www.voat.com/v/unrealengine

Their 'HOT' ordering makes the site look dead where they should probably take
into account newer stories as everything in the 'HOT' ranking is years old
(except for heavier trafficked subverses)

~~~
newsbinator
I noticed that a surprisingly large number of comments on Voat were anti-
semitic and/or racist.

Totally out of context, I mean.

You might expect hate speech on political subreddits/subverses, but on Voat
these were just out of the blue, and numerous.

~~~
sterlind
Voat's userbase consists of the members and communities who were banned by
Reddit's hate speech policy.

Effectively, Voat is Reddit's "recycle bin." Judging from its content, I think
the admins made the right call..

~~~
whywhywhywhy
> Voat is Reddit's "recycle bin."

I definitely agree, but I also remember how Reddit was considered the dumping
ground for users banned on Digg and content that wasn't good enough for Digg.

Today unpleasant content probably makes up a large percentage of Voat traffic.
But if a few big subreddits moved over that percentage would be dwarfed and
suddenly it's no longer a Recycle Bin.

------
swearwolves
Idk why everyone in here and on r/redesign can't take off their rose-colored
glasses and admit that current (old?) Reddit has some pretty glaring usability
issues.

I know I avoided Reddit for the longest time simply due to the fact that there
was a learning curve _at all_...and I know many, many people that would adore
Reddit actively avoid it because it's a little overwhelming and hard to use at
first. People seem to really underestimate just how important that first
couple of seconds on a new website are.

Granted, a lot of people pushed passed the quirks and the learning curve and
grew to love the site we all know today - that's evident by the massive user
base - but I just don't understand why everyone is so vehemently against a
redesign effort when the site was clearly a hodgepodge.

Now, I'm not arguing that the current redesign is great and a smashing
success, I think they're missing the mark on what made Reddit great in the
first place...but to sit here and yell "If it ain't broke don't fix it" is
laughable. The performance might be superb but the UX is atrocious, everyone
has just learned to get over it.

~~~
wyldfire
> The performance might be superb but the UX is atrocious, everyone has just
> learned to get over it.

I guess I'm one of those. I've been using reddit since before they enabled
comments. I love that it's remained simple and it works really well for me.

The only items I'd imagine improving on would be remembering collapsed threads
(like HN does) and preserving a deeper history of threads I've seen (maybe
opt-in if it bugs people).

What's the "learning curve" that you refer to? Voting and comments are pretty
simple, right?

~~~
TotempaaltJ
I've had to explain Reddit to my mom--she wanted to see what her kids were so
busy with all the time--I can tell you that voting comments aren't nearly as
simple as they might seem.

Neither is the concept of subreddits, the difference between text and link
posts, subreddit discovery, the community and culture... These were all
hurdles that she needed to get through and at the end she gave it up. Too
complicated.

The difference between her and most Reddit users is that she was determined to
get active on Reddit: she kept trying for weeks.

The difference between her and most non-Reddit users is that she's quite tech-
savvy. She worked in tech for 20 years. She fixes her friends' computer
problems.

~~~
wyldfire
Well, if her experience is representative of other folks, then I suppose it is
a problem. But is it one that a new interface could fix? I believe that it's
possible, but it's not obvious to me how it would be improved. I'm not
experienced at all in UI/UX design.

> The difference between her and most Reddit users is that she was determined
> to get active on Reddit: she kept trying for weeks.

I don't understand -- she persisted and others who use reddit don't/didn't?
Meaning they don't need to apply significant effort and she did? Does that
mean that it's somehow intuitive to them and not her? I feel like I am missing
the point you're making.

~~~
swearwolves
> But is it one that a new interface could fix? I believe that it's possible,
> but it's not obvious to me how it would be improved.

A new interface _could_ fix a lot of the issues, but I think the jury is still
out on whether or not the current redesign _is_ fixing those issues.

In my opinion, the higher level concepts of subreddits and subreddit
discoverability are one of the main hurdles that brand new users have to
understand and overcome. Most people that don't know anything about Reddit
just assume it's a massive forum of people posting random shit - and don't
bother going much further than that.

I think the new sidebar and the overhauled search are a great start at making
the browsing experience much more intuitive - but the new profiles and
messenger are all questionable design decisions that feel a lot less "Reddit"
and a lot more "Facebook".

------
cal5k
I'm disappointed to see Hacker News turning into Slashdot - immediate negative
reaction to anything new, lack of empathy with the insanely difficult task the
reddit management team is undertaking, and a general selfish bias of "as a
power user I like obscure feature x, therefore without x they're doomed".

~~~
specialist
Humans hate change. Our minds strive to maintain equilibrium and have an
immune system like response to anything that threatens to disrupt that state.
Even when we intellectually commit to change, our emotions sabotage the
effort.

Cue the bereavement model and the diffusion of innovation. Successful
advocates of change account for the time and effort it takes to drag people
along.

~~~
Whitestrake
Burnie Burns of Rooster Teeth phrased it as, "the internet demands progress,
but hates change." I like that because it succinctly draws attention to the
juxtaposition of ideals and emotional reaction.

------
Illniyar
Me and a lot of smart developers before me have learned on our skins that you
should never make a rewrite.

I think web design has the same problems as web development in regards to
rewrite but the design community has yet to internalize that you should never
remake something from scratch.

That's not to say that you should keep an old design forever - instead make
changes incrementally and gradually. Putting 12 designers to work for a year
with zero feedback and trying not to hurt whatever magic made reddit popular
in the first place is bound to be a disastrous affair.

~~~
ryanmerket
They couldn’t keep the old codebase. It was plagued with tech debt and was
hindering their progress in releasing even the most basic of new features.

~~~
slig
I wonder which new features a site that is basically pictures/videos with
threaded comments needs, since it already does that.

------
Bukhmanizer
Like every redesign, I'm sure that people are going to be angry about it no
matter how it looks.

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned it, but really the make or break of
this new reddit will be speed. The one thing that I remember noticing about
the site is how much faster it was than the comparable time wasting sites
(Facebook, Stumbleupon, etc). More speed, more addictiveness.

------
sgloutnikov
I recently noticed that reddit started to push AI as well for choosing what to
display on my front page. As if everyone else doing it was not enough. The
more I read some subreddit, the more posts I see from it on my front page,
even though they may be scored lower compared to other posts. Just noticed
today that a 30k+ karma post from a subscribed subreddit was all the way on
page 3.

------
ssaew333
Oh goody, more javascript. Infinite scroll. Less room for content, more room
for sidebars and doohickeys.

The internet is a huge pile of garbage.

------
shiado
I like "Dystopian Craigslist", it is nice and fast and simple.

------
zawerf
I hope they kept custom CSS in mind when they did this redesign.

It caused a ton of drama last year when they said they are deprecating custom
CSS just to push through this new look. (see
[https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/66q4is/the_web_red...](https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/66q4is/the_web_redesign_css_and_mod_tools/)
and /r/ProCSS for details).

~~~
romanovcode
I hate custom css of reddit. It is just horrible 100% of the times.

Super glad they have a feature to disable this.

~~~
dredmorbius
There are notable exceptions.

The theme used by /r/geopolitics is genius for its vertical thread collapse
controls. That would be the Minimaluminiumalism Theme.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/geopolitics/comments/897qfo/saudi_c...](https://www.reddit.com/r/geopolitics/comments/897qfo/saudi_crown_prince_recognizes_israels_right_to/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/geopolitics/about/stylesheet](https://www.reddit.com/r/geopolitics/about/stylesheet)

~~~
baud147258
I don't browse reddit anymore, but the thread collapsing in /r/geopolitics is
great!

Perhaps I would have continued to use reddit if more sub used it.

~~~
dredmorbius
AFAIU one RES feature is to specify your own preferred stylesheet for _all_
subreddits.

You can achieve a similar result via a browser CSS manager, say, Stylus.

------
grayrest
I used the redesign for two days and rolled back. The designers went for a
river of news app-like design.

I've always had trouble putting individual items in context in river of news
designs and prefer to switch from one topic (subreddit in this case) to
another and scan each one. The hamburger menu makes this a lot more awkward.

I also really dislike mobile-driven UI designs on a desktop. I know why
they're done. I've implemented them myself. They annoy me.

------
dingo_bat
Ironic that a page that looks like this[0] on a 24" monitor is commenting on
design.

[0] [https://imgur.com/a/nTdxg](https://imgur.com/a/nTdxg)

~~~
1k2ka
Actually looks pretty great to me. What do you consider wrong with it?

~~~
jwilk
The image conveys little to no information, yet it takes the whole screen real
estate.

------
dmitriid
Does that redesign still shoves reddit mobile app down your throat and
degrades mobile experience?

(Judging by the fact that mobile isn't mentioned anywhere in the article, I'd
say yes)

~~~
dingo_bat
Just use one of the various excellent third-party apps:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/collection/search_results...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/collection/search_results_cluster_apps?clp=ggEICgZyZWRkaXQ%3D:S:ANO1ljL4qEo)
(ignore the first result)

~~~
dmitriid
I don't want to use reddit's own app, why would I use a third-party app? I
want a proper unhindered mobile web experience :)

~~~
dingo_bat
> I don't want to use reddit's own app, why would I use a third-party app?

Because the third party apps are much better that the official one, in all
metrics. If you have a specific grievance against the official app, there are
overwhelming chances that you won't face the same issue in a 3rd party app.

~~~
dmitriid
I think you've missed the point completely. Twice. :)

There's exactly zero reason for a text-and-images-and-comments site to have an
"official app", or a plethora of "third-party apps that are better than the
original". A mobile site would be perfectly fine.

However, since there's zero incentive for anyone to use those apps, instead of
improving (or at least keeping) the mobile experience Reddit actively degrades
it. Hence the entirely unnecessary apps.

I currently have next-to-zero incentive to even click on links to Reddit, and
the requirement to have an app just for that will bring that incentive to
exactly zero.

And it looks like their redesign had zero intention to improve mobile
experience.

~~~
dingo_bat
I think if you use a good app like rif or sync, you will realize that they do
add considerable value to "a text-and-images-and-comments site". I find them
easier to navigate than any website. Another big plus is that apps have a lot
of settings. You can customize the layout, colors, basically everything in a
good app.

This is basic stuff. A single website can never provide all the flexibility of
use that an app based on the api can.

~~~
dmitriid
For some reason you assume I want or need any of that.

Reddit is not my go to website. Neither is Hacker news. Or Twitter. Or...
Or...

I browse the web. I may come across links that I click. I really really really
don't appreciate the experience of getting yanked out of my flow into some
app.

Even Facebook has a very decent mobile web experience. However for some reason
Reddit actively degrades its mobile site and tries to make it as unusable as
possible.

------
zeveb
> But up close, the changes have turned Reddit from an esoteric maze into a
> website anyone can use—like a junk drawer that's been gutted, cleaned, and
> reorganized.

> For people who have been on Reddit for years, the obtuseness is part of the
> appeal.

What maze? What obtuseness? Reddit is a plain, usable site (esp. if you turn
off the image previews they added a few years back). There's simply nothing
wrong with it the way it is.

I suspect that this is a submarine article, paid for by Reddit itself.

I also suspect that the new interface will be yet another JS-laden, SPA
atrocity — but perhaps I'm wrong, and I'll be pleasantly surprised by nice,
static, server-rendered HTML instead.

------
Doctor_Fegg
> Before, formatting text posts required the use of Markdown; now, there's a
> WYSIWYG toolbar too.

Ah, that's reassuring to see. So many sites have gone all-in on Markdown in
the last few years, which seems to me to be resurrecting early 80s Wordstar-
style formatting codes and rejecting the UI advances of Xerox Parc and the
Mac.

Markdown has its place - essentially, something that's readable in both raw
and rendered form - but it's not a consumer-friendly way of editing rich text,
and I'm pleased to see Reddit recognise that.

~~~
unethical_ban
WYSIWYG can often take more resources on a webpage, and act unpredictably and
with less control over formatting.

Atlassian's Confluence wiki was one of the most painful tools I've ever had to
use in a professional capacity, largely because their editor several years ago
was so atrocious. I was forced off of it from a nice, Markdown-based wiki our
team had been running.

So I would miss Markdown. BTW, having live preview/having a WYSIWYG toolbar
with Markdown editing is a happy meeting of both worlds; I don't see the issue
with it.

------
taspeotis
I assume there's some irony in this URL ending with ?mbid=synd_digg

~~~
jwilk
Can we get this tracking garbage removed from the URL?

------
asaph
When is the Hacker News site redesign coming?

Things I'd like to see here:

\- TLRD; article summary for each post

\- markdown support

\- image support

\- user profile page enhancements: avatars, pretty URLs, more links to user's
other sites/profiles, etc.

\- user karma listed next to username in comments

\- social logins (1 less password to manage)

~~~
bonoetmalo
Please tell me you meant to add an /s to this

~~~
TremendousJudge
it's obviously satire

~~~
jwilk
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law)

------
throw7
What is up with web redesigners? They always seem to make things worse, less
performant, seem to have egos that shine brighter than the sun. In the end,
just shove their perfect child into your face (looking at you youtube).

------
d6de964
Isn't it possible to "morph" the changes, little by little, so the users don't
get overwhelmed by the changes? I think Facebook has done such progressive
redesigns in the past.

------
keyle
I must be getting old (pun intended), but this instantly reminded me of Digg™.

------
thejerz
"Our site is wildly successful. We'd better change it."

------
Rainymood
personally I hate the new user profile overview. I used to be able to quickly
scroll through someone's post history and now it looks like another facebook
feed ...

~~~
Double_a_92
I can't even properly find my own comments in the new user profile...

Edit: Actually the new new profile is better now. That intermediate version
was terrible.

------
dbg31415
I feel like their redesign didn't go far enough.

The official Reddit mobile website is totally unusable on mobile.

I've been really happy with Shine (now with twice the unofficial goodness),
and Apollo.

* SHINE for reddit (unofficial) - Chrome Web Store || [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/shine-for-reddit-u...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/shine-for-reddit-unoffici/dlbccbcpelghmhkhmpefncahafgigkek)

* Apollo | A beautiful reddit app built for power and speed || [https://apolloapp.io/](https://apolloapp.io/)

------
gpmcadam
Here's the official announcement from reddit itself

[https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/891stx/start...](https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/891stx/starting_today_more_people_will_have_access_to/)

Importantly, for those in here who don't like change, you can still visit
[https://old.reddit.com](https://old.reddit.com) and get the old site.

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bfrog
Looks like they wanted facebook.com with reddit color scheme.

I feel like this will be about as successful as slashdots redesign attempts
over the years.

------
fjcp
For those interested in a different experience, there is a terminal client
called rtv[0]. I use it for most of my Reddit browsing and I consider it even
better than the site for text subs like NoSleep for example.

[0] [https://github.com/michael-lazar/rtv](https://github.com/michael-
lazar/rtv)

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Aoyagi
The redesign is just another example of form over function and "fixing"
something that's not broken.

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ryanmarsh
At this point Reddit's look is authentic. I'd stick with it. Others here have
mentioned craigslist as an example. People aren't leaving Reddit because it
doesn't look flat and bland like so many other sites. Reddit is an old zoo. It
should look like one.

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ggm
The key questions would seem to be how long use of a legacy interface was
maintained and supported. Having more than one ui is a cost burden, but that
aside doesn't have to be a problem

------
raldi
Based on the near-universal disdain for the redesign here in the HN comments,
I'd like to go on record predicting it's going to be a huge success amongst
non-HN types.

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oftenwrong
Reddit is not yet profitable, right? Will this redesign help them actually
make money? Is it meant to allow for more sponsored content between user
submissions?

------
gcb0
paid puff piece. tl;dr: they made reddit look like Facebook/instagram feed
(which every unofficial app already accomplished)

~~~
Theizestooke
Advance Publications is a majority shareholder in reddit, the same company
that owns Conde Nast, who in turn publish Wired.

~~~
zeckalpha
This should be mentioned on the page, but isn’t for some reason. I stopped
reading.

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superkuh
Whew. Looks like a dodged a bullet by finally leaving Reddit due to their
increasing censorship last month. This new design looks terrible and it breaks
reading the site without javascript enabled. Before reddit worked just fine
and you could toggle JS on to vote/comment/submit.

I imagine they feel they can do this kind of thing since new users now
overwhelming outnumber old users and they've pushed most of the original users
off the site. Facebook 2: This time it's Reddit is coming along nicely.

------
kodisha
Any known way to activate via some param or something?

~~~
nailer
Preferences > Beta options

[ ] I would like to beta test features for reddit (by enabling you'll be
subscribed to /r/beta automatically. details on the /r/beta wiki)

Wait for page to reload, scroll down, then click the new option you'll see:

[ ] Use the redesign as my default experience (by enabling this, you will be
redirected to the new site when you go to any supported
[https://reddit.com](https://reddit.com) page)

