After all this time I still had one Reddit tab left open to r/Ukraine, to see updates on the war.
Today I noticed that they have removed the option to use new.reddit.com to see the site as it was before the latest update. The current site design is so bad and slow that I immediately closed that tab.
old.reddit.com still exists for those diehards.
When (not if) old.reddit.com is removed, there will be a huge exodus.
I’d like to think so, but part of me suspects that a large amount of the current users are on mobile exclusively. The old layout isn’t mobile-optimized at all, so those users are probably on the current UI.
Fair, but I’d be willing to bet that most of the content producing users use the old layout as they’ve likely been using the site for a while. These users leaving would be a big deal.
I’d take that bet.
I would love to believe the situation is as you believe it is, but I just don’t see it.
As others have said, the usage on old reddit appears to be exceedingly low, around 1-2% if developers are seeing it accurately.
We know that the vast majority of all usage nowadays is mobile, or at least hybrid. And at least half of those mobile users are on iphones, where they have no choice. The only thing that keeps old.reddit working on my phone is Firefox extensions.
The unfortunate truth is the reason reddit and so many other platforms get away with rampant enshitification is that the overwhelming majority of users are either incapable or unwilling to find ways around it if it requires a modicum of effort or results in a slightly less polished experience. They just accept it and become increasingly angry and frustrated with the platform, but refusing to do anything else except continue to use it.
Developers see these numbers and they plan for it. They getting extremely condescending about it, too. Why listen to the “vocal minority” of technically inclined power users when you can pay attention to the majority of silent people who accept literally anything because they have to.
Gone are the days where the majority of your users are going to be tech savvy. When your user base was made up of informed, technical users on desktops, what you did with your software or your site would directly affect your numbers. Those users knew how and were willing to try other things if you fucked around.
Nowadays, with phones in everyone’s pocket, your user base is everyone, and unfortunately for all of us, that everyone includes the majority of people who will drink a shit sundae over and over again before they will even consider going to different restaurant.
It’s not actually a captive customer base, but it effectively is. They’re just held captive by their own tech illiteracy and lack of patience. What those people do determines the future of the industry now.
Agree with you but confused about
And at least half of those mobile users are on iphones, where they have no choice.
I use old.reddit on iPhone on Safari and it works just fine? I even have an extension to make it appear mobile friendly, so I’m really curious as what you mean by this.
May I ask for the name of the extension?
Sink it for Reddit, which someone posted here on Lemmy (ironically). I can’t seem to link it from the app store, but the icon is an anchor with a red-orange background! It’s also completely free.
Probably varies a bit from sub to sub, but old reddit users are a clear minority. The vast majority use the app
That doesn’t feel real.
It’s definitely real, at least for the amateur astronomy subs I (used to) mod. I suspect a lot of the traffic to askastrophotography or telescopes is from people googling stuff and browsing though mobile web, but since /r/astrophotography is just photos, most are just on the app
Yeah it’s wild that a lot of users likely don’t even know reddit is a website. They only know it as an app on their phone.
Same for Facebook, to be honest
Yeah exactly, it’s all mobile nowadays, anyways. By and large “nobody” is here for the desktop experience. Sadly.
Oladlander makes old reddit usable on mobile
I wouldn’t say huge as by most estimations that have been stated over the last 3 or 4 years, old Reddit accounts for only 1 or 2 percent of Reddit users (assuming that’s accurate), but there’ll definitely be an exodus
It’ll be huge in the context of Lemmy, despite only representing a small percentage of Reddit’s total userbase.
True!
Do bots count as users?
Here? I don’t think so. On Reddit, fuckin’ probably lol.
Yeah, R*ddit bots. I’d say the proportions grow if bots don’t count.
Not sure if there is any more exodus left in their user base.
I know quite a lot of people who still use old.reddit, and would look for an alternative should they kill it
Oh there definitely is.
I doubt there will be.
I think those people already left
Spez: Guys, we need to brainstorm so hard here. What else can we do to make the site even worse.
Dev Director: Sir, don’t you mean more profitable?
Spez: No, dipshit. I didn’t stutter. Brain. Storm. Let’s hear your shittiest ideas. Go nuts, guys. Nothing’s off the table. I fucking hate our users. They must suffer.
That episode was so great. It has aged a bit strangely, because now we have 500 streaming platforms and we’re still getting screwed.
Interesting. Wonder if any new reddit refugees will stumble onto us.
Probably not yet.
People will revert to old.reddit or get used to the “new new” version
But the new new version is designed to be less functional. I couldn’t take it.
I don’t mind the difference in functionality, so much as how slow it is, which was already a huge problem with
new.reddit.com. Having gone back toold.reddit.com+RES now, fucking hell reddit used to be such a snappy website. 😑Open in our app!
Login with google!
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Endless list of vaguely related posts.It’s designed to keep you scrolling to the next post to show you more spam instead of making it easier to engage with comments, which to me was the whole point of being there.
Dude you weren’t kidding. “New” was always a pile of ass, and just now I went back to Reddit for a little bit just to poke around and see how “new new” is. It was better for the first two things I clicked on (actually better than both old and new IMO for popping open memes and pictures), and then I clicked on an actual thread, and (1) the thread was clearly a fake story (2) it broke the back button and I couldn’t go anywhere else until it snapped me suddenly back to mbin again.
I decided to take that as a sign
I used to simply click the left side of the page to go Back to the list. Now, i have not even figured out how to actually get back…
They created something that is even worse than New.reddit? How is that even possible?
Is that the shreddit thing spez was gloating about a year ago for being lightning fast?
Still works for me.
It works for me, I am logged in, it doesn’t work when not logged in
They removed it for a couple of days at least. Oh wells, I have closed that tab now.
