If you try to look at reddit.com/r/nsfw and you’re not logged, you‘ll see now a log in button to see the content of the page. Until yesterday it was just a simple button with I’m over 18 text.
On another note, I tried to make a throwaway on `old.reddit.com`. I couldn't find a way to make an account without using an email. I had to manually type in `old.reddit.com/register` to get to a form that would let me not type in an email and even then it wasn't obvious that the email wasn't required.
If you pay close attention, you might notice that the email address field isn't required on the old.reddit.com signup popup. Press next without filling it in and you get the username/password part of registration.
> This completely unintuitive trick also works on reddit.com.
Honestly, it's not so much of a trick, but that the form is a dark pattern.
IMHO, they probably really, really want to require email addresses to register, but are trying to avoid the backlash from power users (aka their content source) that would happen if there wasn't a workaround. Every time someone gets ticked off about this, there's probably a comment within 5 minutes with instructions, and all outrage energy drains away.
Agreed (in fact I referred to it as a dark pattern in another comment).
@grumple pointed out that throwaway accounts that can't be easily linked to the poster are essential to some reddit communities, which may play a part in why this feature is still available.
They appear to be A/B testing the email requirement. I tried reddit.com on desktop again just now, and in some sessions it lets me skip the email but in others it says the email is required.
> I would've never guessed it's still possible to create an account without using an email or a phone on any site in 2022 ... why do they keep the functionality?
Is this a joke? Participation is assumed to be only on the basis of anonymity. If the baker requested your name, there would be something very wrong around your parts.
Intrusive requests would mean refusal of participation.
It's not intrusive to ask for an email. It's a slight barrier against spam (trivially bypassed but still) and of course it's mandatory for resetting accounts, informing users about stuff (like Terms of Service changes). I honestly cannot remember the last time a website let me register without an email.
I can read one possible such «time» one click away (on your username).
It is not intrusive only if you can give a random address. It would be intrusive if all you had available was an address already used for other services. It is intrusive to ask you for, or coming to know, your name.
That must be a recent change. Because at least as recently as early this year, you could just click "continue" while leaving the email field blank and create an account.
It's still possible for me, I think @NowhereMan just didn't realise the email field could be left blank. Dark pattern working as intended, most likely.
I also have a very strong hunch that the day is coming where this gets deprecated. There will be some kind of big database migration or service refactor, and reddit devs will not want to be messing with that "gross, old legacy codebase" to make it continue working and so the entire thing will be taken offline.
The day they shut down "old" Reddit is probably the day a large number of people leave Reddit altogether because the main Reddit site is a dark patterns hell. I think they'll still do it though because most web sites only want the kind of users who don't know how to install ad blockers.
the vast vast VAST majority of people using reddit are using the official mobile apps. The number of people using the web, and even alternative clients is like a drop of rain in a monsoon.
> the vast vast VAST majority of people using reddit are using the official mobile apps. The number of people using the web, and even alternative clients is like a drop of rain in a monsoon.
Users aren't equivalent though. IIRC, "the vast vast VAST majority of people" don't comment or post, either.
large number? Reddit has seen by far the most growth after switching to the new UI. The old reddit has already not been maintained to support new features such as polls.
Subreddit moderators get per-platform (old/new reddit.com, official mobile app, third-party mobile app) stats and all that I've seen share those numbers indicate new reddit.com is minority, old.reddit.com is basically invisible, vast majority is mobile apps. Of course it will be highly subreddit dependent.
I highly doubt that. Every single time Reddit comes up here, people complain and complain, but also share old.reddit.com as a work-around instead of actually leaving Reddit. It's a perfect way of keeping the hardcore users addicted while having a modern, instant-gratification interface for the majority. They know what happened to Digg, so far I don't see any indication that they're going to repeat this mistake.
My guess is that a large number of younger people use the "new" reddit, and basically pay to keep everything running with the ads they view. Many older Reddit users just go to old.reddit.com, and would sooner leave the site than use the current design.
It's absolutely fascinating that they have both versions. To me it illustrates so perfectly what the Internet was vs. what is has become. There's probably more money to be made from the infinite scrolling and dark patterns, but it's also completely unusable and comments and discussions seems to be of less concern. Just keep scrolling.
I'd like to see some numbers on this, but from my gut feeling it's not a then vs now thing. Much rather, the old farts that practically live on that website are the ones providing the rest with free content.
Basically the 90% / 9% / 1% split between people reading, people interacting and people creating. I would be very surprised if the 1% contributing and creating on reddit wouldn't be using old reddit for the most part.
Yeah I guess the issue is that the share of users on old.reddit.com is diminishing to the point of being irrelevant. The number of users still on the old site is less than 5%.
It's also sad because even though the old reddit is available, it's not the same. Since all the users are using the new UI, you get a totally different type of user engagement than you used to get I feel. Nowadays it's rare to have any sense of community or long discussion and every subreddit has moved along the spectrum to shallower interactions, image posts, and less distinctive character.
> Yeah I guess the issue is that the share of users on old.reddit.com is diminishing to the point of being irrelevant. The number of users still on the old site is less than 5%.
They still run i.reddit.com, which probably only has a tiny fraction even old.reddit.coms users. Also, I'm pretty sure that quite a few power users still use the old site and they probably want to keep them in. Someone has to buy gold and repost all the content, after all ;-)
> Unfortunately it's not compatible with newer Firefox android .
I'm using it on Firefox Android... Mozilla just made it hard to use most addons. You have to create an addon collection, add the extensions that you want to it, and then use that collection on Firefox Android: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-use-collections-add...
Well, most extensions seem to work great already. But that requires using either Nightly Firefox (and some hacks) or using a fork (like Iceraven) that loads a different extension list.
So, it's easier to switch to browsers like Kiwi Browser (privacy concerns aside so be cautious!) if you want a better extension support experience. Bromite and Vivaldi also have great built-in adblockers but sadly no full extension support.
So, I dropped Firefox on all my devices and moved to Vivaldi + Kiwi Browser and that works like a charm.
PrivacyRedirect [1] is a nice multi-purpose addon for this in my opinion. Most of the redirects can be easily customized and all of them can individually be enabled/disabled. It also has multiple nitter/teddit proxies defined for the times they get overloaded.
Redirects Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, & Google Maps requests to privacy friendly alternatives - Nitter, Invidious, Bibliogram, & OpenStreetMap.
When the time comes that addons do not get around such things, then I would suggest BlockSite [2]
LibRedirect[1] is a currently maintained fork of PrivacyRedirect, with additional features (PrivacyRedirect is no longer maintained since late 2021) [2]
Yes, true, I was bummed when I saw that Privacy Redirect is unmaintained but then a few users on Github mentioned LibRedirect and now that I'm using it, I'm really happy, it works great
Desktop mode on mobile still works fine for me. That said, I really don’t feel like having to login when in incognito mode when I want a cheeky wank in the loo.
For me this morning on ios it was forcing me to use the app to view nsfw content otherwise return to the homepage was the only other option. They're probably a/b testing, but either way, it's an immediate exit for me.
I think you missed the part about using desktop mode. On Safari it’s the option “Request Desktop Website” on the menu that comes up when you tap the “aA” icon on the site.
Yes, they're A/B testing multiple things with NSFW content. Up until recently I was in the "you must use the mobile app instead of mobile site to see nsfw content" group. I'm not sure exactly when that changed for me, maybe a week or so ago, but I no longer have that requirement anyway.
It's really annoying because people often use the tag in a jokey way. I see it a lot on the bread/sourdough reddits. It's funny, but the new redirect to login really breaks the assumption there.
On a related note, on mobile if they try to make you install the app to view some content, you can just "request desktop site" and that will bypass the block. It's annoying and breaks a lot of the formatting for mobile, but if you're just trying to read something or watch a video, it works in a pinch.
I know but it literally happens all the time. I feel like any app update breaks them, not just RIF updates or at minimum updates to Reddit app (which I have installed) and/or RIF.
You could also view the old version of reddit "old.reddit.com", however editing URLs like that is a pain to do on mobile. Very frustrating if I am looking for information on my phone and what I am looking for is on Reddit.
The reddit app used to but they are pushing everything into the new media player (including photos) and it takes you into algorithm content hell. Not even restricted to your subs.. just whatever they want to throw at you. It is enough that I cannot use the reddit app anymore (or hardly use it).
On iOS you can make a shortcut to find/replace www with old in the url. I imagine there's a similar tool for Android, but someone else will have to make that recommendation.
The Firefox addon is called Old Reddit Redirect ... but there is also Redirector which is a more generic redirector, for any websites and patterns. But to be able to use them on Firefox Android, you have to use an addon collection.
I use Teddit a lot but found the original "teddit.net" performance to be quite poor, especially during peak US hours. It takes a lot of time to load more niche subs that aren't cached and video playback is stuttery.
I generally prefer teddit.adminforge.de, which uses the same Teddit code but runs on a much less loaded server and thus performs much better.
Can they IPO already so we can short this dying corpse of a company and have new anonymous but social way of sharing news and content?
What I want: a federated, self-hosted/pay-to-play, anonymous, active community.
I've tried mastodon. I never liked twitter and I prefer long form, threaded discussions. Do you want to make the next social media company? Figure out a way to do reddit without needing adds. If you can, FOSS/ federated. Remember when reddit users covered the cost of reddit server time with donations? It can be done.
Is this in web? It’s been terrible on mobile for a while. I think you have to login and be on the app. Reddit has added nothing but user hostile features over the past few years. It sucks because all things considered Reddit used to feel like a pretty bottom-up non corporate “for the people” type product, that’s almost all gone now.
In Safari/iOS you can just hit Request Desktop Website in the aA menu to bypass the app-pushing messages and Mature or divisive or NSFW thread blocking.
I wish I hadn’t discovered this because it was a great way for me to realise I was time-wasting and should just read a different site.
After all of Digg's toxic users migrated to reddit en masse, Digg became a much nicer and more enjoyable place, IMHO.
It's nice not to have to wade through the people who identify with a website on a personal and intimate level -- when all i really want to do is scroll a news aggregator, and potentially have light-weight conversations.
unless you’re new to reddit, you’d know there’s heavy censorship on plebbit
r/undelete has some things and there were other sites created to catch the stuff that was pruned outright, especially comments. If you don’t support the ‘hivemind’ echo chamber, and talk about forbidden things (+govts) you get censored.
For me this morning I noticed for the first time on iOS Safari it was trying to force me to use the Reddit app to view nsfw content otherwise return to the homepage was the only other option. They're probably a/b testing, but either way, it's an immediate page close for me. As soon as a website starts trying to force me to view their content a certain way, I become 99% less interested. I will just Google whatever it is and find it somewhere else if I want to see it bad enough.
This has been happening for awhile. I'm not sure why sometimes one is able to continue and other times one must logged in. I've chalked it up to Reddit insisting on tracking you (along with their ridiculous "use our app!" BS on mobile browsers).
Reddit's corporate masters have basically figured out a user's LTV is way higher on their native app / logged in. Therefore they've degraded public access as much as possible without being called out on it to push people to native.
I can’t tell if Reddit was actually better when I started using it ~10 years ago, or if I was just more entertained by the novelty of it.
It still does have the important distinction from true “social media” sites that are based around who you add/follow, but they have made some incredibly poor decisions with the platform trying to be less of what made it great and instead trying to blend in with the trendy influencer platforms du jour
It feels like it was better, but I think the redesign and to push towards the mobile apps have changed the content. 10 years ago you came for the comments and discussions. The doom scrolling they're currently focused on seems to detract from that interaction. It hard to even be allowed to view all comments, most seems to be hidden away.
Facebook went in much the same direction. Rather than focusing on interactions between people the focus shifted to just keep people scrolling and reducing interactions to easier "Like", "Hate", "Love", share, anything that could be conveyed using a screen tab, rather than a full keyboard.
My theory: Interaction and the quality of the content on a site goes down, way down, when the primary users switch from desktops to phones.
I agree with your theory. I watched it happen on a number of forums for my car and motorcycle that I had followed for 10 years. The forums got rolled up by VerticalScope and soon after they "upgraded" the software for a better mobile experience and the content/quality is now garbage. It really destroyed the forums as a community and VS is just harvesting eyeballs now. Posts are repetitive questions or drive-by posts that go nowhere and do not ellicit any discussions. Nobody is posting intelligent or interesting content while on the can or waiting in line at the DMV, etc.
Working your way around Reddits problems and dark patterns while still feeding the content machine and contributing to its network effect isn't really a superior solution, either.
Also, this is just a personal anecdote, but ditching Reddit was one of the best ideas I've ever had. There's good stuff in there, but also a lot of obvious and hidden advertisement and it's very easy to get lost and spend hours just scrolling.
Not really. I use either Apollo or Relay (depending on what device I have in my hand) and only subscribe to the subs I want to view. I do not have to work my way through anything.
Here are a few because I know someone will ask:
/r/personalfinance
/r/TropicalWeather
/r/homelab
/r/homeserver
/r/datahoarder
/r/Bogleheads
/r/pizza
Edit: Now, will someone post some BS on one of those subs? yes, sometimes. But the mods tamp it down pretty quick.
The sad thing is that there are genuinely decent subreddits, even, and I hate to admit it, Facebook groups for that matter.
Careful self-moderation on Reddit, Facebook, and Youtube can provide a lot of positive influence and information in your life, but it takes some work, and a lot of awareness.
The defaults are bloody awful. Yet for myself, I read awesome spooky fiction on r/nosleep, I get great and almost instant advice on my truck on Facebook, and YouTube is teaching me how to make shelters with tarps and how to tie bowline and trucker hitches.
I think, well I know, there is high quality content on social media out there. That it is being used to manipulate people and misinform people is a problem that will have to be solved. Or maybe it collapses and decentralizes like how it was before 2004. I'm sure we'll manage.
They also give idiotic prompts in their UI. Half the time I end up on their mobile site I get a pop up talking about cats and dogs, which I assume is supposed to be a metaphor for the mobile site and app somehow.
If you're on android, honestly relay for reddit pro is the best thing I've bought. So glad it was a one time purchase and not a subscription. It's actually a good experience to use too.
