Reddit updates look after rough 6 months and ahead of reported IPO (arstechnica.com)
from dvdnet89@lemmy.today to technology@lemmy.ml on 02 Dec 2023 01:20
https://lemmy.today/post/3662473

#technology

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acosmichippo@lemmy.world on 02 Dec 2023 01:23 next collapse

still looks like old reddit to me.

v81@lemmy.world on 02 Dec 2023 01:56 next collapse

On Firefox mobile it barely looks different… But what stood out was more bugs. Missing next page buttons and layout issues. So… Good job Reddit… LoL.

mo_ztt@lemmy.world on 02 Dec 2023 03:35 collapse

I for-real forgot that new reddit existed. I’ve stopped posting there but still read “all” periodically, and “old.reddit.com” is so ingrained that I was a little confused when they started talking about a new look, since I haven’t noticed anything…

autotldr@lemmings.world on 02 Dec 2023 01:25 next collapse

This is the best summary I could come up with:


Reddit also said the font has “large x-height for readability and disambiguated letterforms for rapid identification” and improved accessibility.

On Tuesday, Bloomberg reported that Reddit is “holding talks with potential investors” for a 2024 IPO filing.

The top comment on Acidtwist’s post announcing the branding refresh reads: “My love of old.reddit.com continues to grow.”

Another reply pokes fun at the Reddit marketing video shared that encourages people to “think of something you like or enjoy.”

And after Huffman reportedly warned employees to “be mindful of wearing Reddit gear in public,” due to potential backlash in June, maybe a new look was necessary.

Advance Publications, which owns Ars Technica parent Condé Nast, is the largest shareholder in Reddit.


The original article contains 797 words, the summary contains 117 words. Saved 85%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

small44@lemmy.world on 02 Dec 2023 01:29 next collapse

The new UI is more buggy

CaptObvious@literature.cafe on 02 Dec 2023 01:30 next collapse

Anyway….

sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works on 02 Dec 2023 01:31 next collapse

a refresh could be exactly what Reddit needs to lighten the mood after a tumultuous time

No, what they need is to undo the API change so third party apps can work again. Maybe charge them something, but that something should be low enough that they can be ad supported.

That’s the elephant in the room, and no branding refresh will make it go away.

Flaky@iusearchlinux.fyi on 02 Dec 2023 01:46 next collapse

To be honest, even if they undo that, the damage is done. Trust is lost. And to be honest, after hearing what Spez said about the vulnerable people who post on his site, I wouldn’t want to touch the site even if I liked the official app.

NOT_RICK@lemmy.world on 02 Dec 2023 02:03 next collapse

Yeah that quote is psychopathic

flicker@kbin.social on 02 Dec 2023 02:28 collapse

Sorry I'm OOTL; what quote?

NOT_RICK@lemmy.world on 02 Dec 2023 03:34 collapse

There’s a lot of stuff on the site that you’d only ever say in therapy, or AA, or never at all. But we don’t need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free

flicker@kbin.social on 02 Dec 2023 04:15 collapse

Holy crap. Thank you.

kakes@sh.itjust.works on 02 Dec 2023 02:13 next collapse

Yeah, I’m never going back again. It was fun when it was supported by donations and user-focused, but it’s essentially indistinguishable from Facebook at this point. I’m just glad this alternative exists.

SamXavia@kbin.run on 02 Dec 2023 02:22 collapse

And this alternative will not be able to go away easily as Decentralisation allows anyone to run an instance.

Uranium3006@kbin.social on 02 Dec 2023 08:43 collapse

Spez is a nazi

SamXavia@kbin.run on 02 Dec 2023 02:19 next collapse

It's where I really hope more of the Reddit community will jump ship to Fediverse instances as there seems to be less and less of a future for reddit in my eyes.

dauerstaender@feddit.de on 02 Dec 2023 02:47 next collapse

u/spez is a hurensohn

bloopernova@programming.dev on 02 Dec 2023 03:00 next collapse

They don’t have the talented programmers needed to make API changes happen.

reddit is an old school internet site. In that it was originally hacked together by very motivated people. But once the novelty wore off, and the tech debt started piling up, the motivated people either left or got promoted. It should have been trivial to add things like headline editing, but that never happened because their code and DB is a huge huge mess.

Overshadowed by the API fuckup was something that really spoke to how badly off they are. They deleted old private messages! Their schema or infrastructure is so utterly fucked up that they couldn’t roll back whatever made that happen. People lost years of communication, just gone. No backups, no “go to this new page to download an archive of your messages”, nothing.

It should have been easy to incorporate rate limiting into the API. It should have been easy to serve ads to 3rd party clients. It should have been a no brainer to charge heavy/advanced API users a nominal monthly fee. Mod tools should have been implemented over a motherfucking decade ago!

Utter incompetence. Completely clueless. Fucking useless.

It really angers me because they had it handed to them on a plate. But instead they fucked around and found out.

bobs_monkey@lemm.ee on 02 Dec 2023 05:25 next collapse

Reminds me of their old server donation drives every few months way back in the day. Those were also the days of “Reddit’s down again, imma go mess around on [random flash site] for a bit”

sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works on 02 Dec 2023 05:42 collapse

I don’t think they’re incompetent. They run a platform with millions of users, and a metric ton of data moving back and forth with good reliability.

I really don’t think they’re incompetent, I just think their business types prioritize all the wrong things. Why should they implement mod tools if the community is willing to do it for them? Why implement post title editing if it’s not going to attract new users? Why implement rate limiting if they can funnel people to the official app by essentially forcing other clients to shut down?

It’s not incompetence, it’s business types trying to juice the numbers to get a higher IPO. They did pretty well until they pissed off the moderators, and that’s not something I expect a business type that only cares about quarterly earnings to consider.

Anticorp@lemmy.world on 02 Dec 2023 05:09 collapse

Too late. None of us are going back.

dawnerd@lemm.ee on 02 Dec 2023 05:21 next collapse

A lot of people went back, just as Reddit expected.

sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works on 02 Dec 2023 05:37 next collapse

IDK, I might consider it if there was a decent mobile app. But there isn’t, so I don’t, and the longer it takes them, the less interested I am in bothering to check back.

I’ve been here since they announced the API changes, and I honestly don’t know what’s going on at Reddit anymore. But who knows, they might win me back if they do a complete 180.

K4sum1@lemmy.zip on 02 Dec 2023 10:05 collapse

I only really use Reddit for support these days, but RedReader is a mobile app that still works.

Uranium3006@kbin.social on 02 Dec 2023 08:48 collapse

Now that fediverse link aggragation has hit critical mass for non ghost town atmosphere I.have no reason to go back to a Corpo shopping mall. Sure I'm more likely than not to still.run out of new stuff to look at but that takes a while and I accept it as a growing pain while we grow to greatness. Soon even that won't be an issue and the corpos will be toast

sylver_dragon@lemmy.world on 02 Dec 2023 02:06 next collapse

Is RIF working again? No. Then nothing to here, moving along.

dvdnet89@lemmy.today on 02 Dec 2023 02:08 collapse

yup it comes back with this docs.google.com/document/d/…/edit?pli=1

[deleted] on 02 Dec 2023 02:27 next collapse
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Slinky5737@infosec.pub on 02 Dec 2023 02:39 next collapse

<img alt="" src="https://infosec.pub/pictrs/image/3af78c1c-879b-43a1-8148-a93461eb4df7.jpeg">

01adrianrdgz@lemmy.world on 02 Dec 2023 03:48 next collapse

oh no!! I love Reddit!! Snoo is cute but the company must give a new refreshing start!!! And it’s ok if they don’t want to give the API, but they should be focused on making their apps open source and F-Droid compatible, that would make more users come to the platform.

intrepid@lemmy.ca on 02 Dec 2023 05:19 collapse

Forget making it open source. There’s no other app or platform with so many dark patterns. Their web app is utter crap on mobile in an attempt to push users to the mobile app. The last thing we need is another social media company twisting the hands of its users. People should simply abandon that crapware.

01adrianrdgz@lemmy.world on 02 Dec 2023 05:22 collapse

ok, I respect your opinion but what Reddit needs most right now is a few complaints from a big company that will force them into making the app open source and the web app better.

intrepid@lemmy.ca on 02 Dec 2023 05:23 next collapse

Why would any other company complain?

01adrianrdgz@lemmy.world on 02 Dec 2023 14:29 collapse

I’m not sure but I hope something like that happens soon!!

sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works on 02 Dec 2023 22:51 collapse

How would making it open source help anything? It’s not like they would accept contributions from the community to remove all of the nonsense they’ve put in, and the API is essentially off limits with how much they charge.

What they need is to unshackle the API so third party apps can blossom again. Charge them something to fund their bottom line, but not so much that it makes building those apps infeasible.

01adrianrdgz@lemmy.world on 02 Dec 2023 23:09 collapse

because open source will help them have a better experience, also there are still third party apps!! For example you can use apps that use the RSS feeds instead of the API!! And that’s nice.

sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works on 03 Dec 2023 00:21 collapse

I guess, but that’s true for a number of news websites, so it’s a pretty low bar. One of the things that made Reddit unique was the selection of mobile apps. I even paid to remove ads on one of them. If they offered an API token at something like 5x what they’d make off me from ads (so I’d pay something like $5-10/year), I’d gladly pay it.

But no, they jacked up prices so much that the apps I used had to shut down. And the mobile web experience sucks, so I just bailed.

If they want me back, I need a decent mobile app and an affordable way to eliminate ads at a minimum. They don’t provide that, so I stay here.

toxicbubble420@beehaw.org on 02 Dec 2023 04:46 next collapse

that’s a hell of a title 😅

blindsight@beehaw.org on 02 Dec 2023 05:44 next collapse

ngl, I had to read the article before I could parse it.

This makes more sense to my brain:

“Reddit updates branding 6 months after mass user protests ahead of rumoured IPO”

anothermember@beehaw.org on 02 Dec 2023 09:23 collapse

It’s a Garden-path sentence

muhyb@programming.dev on 02 Dec 2023 11:54 collapse

I started learning things on Lemmy, just like was on Reddit, which says we’re on the right track. Go Lemmy.

Anticorp@lemmy.world on 02 Dec 2023 05:09 next collapse

The red background is a warning.

mp3@lemmy.ca on 02 Dec 2023 06:25 next collapse

Meh, /u/spez can ligma balls, I’ve logged out of my 16yo Reddit account. Lemmy is cozy, the users are mostly chill and there’s no ads except for the occasional spammers that are swiftly dealt with.

Uranium3006@kbin.social on 02 Dec 2023 08:50 collapse

It's kinda insane how much abuse we all tolerated that turned out to be totally unnecessary

ClanOfTheOcho@lemmy.world on 02 Dec 2023 06:38 next collapse

It looks like Snoo’s drunk uncle. What’s with the 5 o’clock shadow?

OurTragicUniverse@kbin.social on 02 Dec 2023 08:56 next collapse

That new font is so ugly.

sibloure@beehaw.org on 03 Dec 2023 17:13 next collapse

I do like the little chat bubbles in the letters d

OurTragicUniverse@kbin.social on 03 Dec 2023 20:41 collapse

Is that what they are? I didn't see it. They look like 'a' (without the little cap) to me.

Also it's struck me again just how hideous that underbite on the 'e' is.

IrritableOcelot@beehaw.org on 09 Dec 2023 06:44 collapse

I can deal with an ugly font, but thats straight-up unreadable.

30p87@feddit.de on 02 Dec 2023 13:01 next collapse

My reddit account got banned anyway. I don’t even know for what, the comment they linked to was removed already. The ban appeal site was down too. So idc.

Madison_rogue@kbin.social on 02 Dec 2023 23:49 collapse

And after Huffman reportedly warned employees to "be mindful of wearing Reddit gear in public," due to potential backlash in June, maybe a new look was necessary.

Oh fuck off already. That was all Huffman.