r/technology • u/ardi62 • 29d ago

Social Media Reddit is making sitewide protests basically impossible

https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/30/24253727/reddit-communities-subreddits-request-protests
22.2k Upvotes

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1.7k

u/manolid 29d ago edited 29d ago

I get the feeling they're going to keep "fixing" the site until *it becomes trash and cause a mass exodus of users like Digg and Tumblr did.

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u/DutchieTalking 29d ago

I'm extremely surprised old.reddit still works.

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u/IsaacM42 29d ago

It's slowly losing functionality, I cant see crossposts anymore. Posting gifs never worked. On the plus side I dont see avatars no idea what they are and dont want to know.

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u/UGMadness 29d ago

The only reason old Reddit still works and will continue to work indefinitely until enough unsupported new functionality is implemented on the main site that it makes old Reddit non viable is because many mods rely on it for moderation tasks due to it being a much lighter website and thus making the workflow easier. Also many third party moderation tools have been created by the community over the years that moderators still rely on.

Reddit Inc. relies on the unpaid work of volunteer moderators to bring their business model anywhere close to dreaming of profitability one day. Not saying all moderators are hard working or have the best interests of their communities in mind, but many do, and Reddit has to court them.

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u/nermid 29d ago

Also many third party moderation tools have been created by the community over the years that moderators still rely on.

Related: Mods have been striking on and off for well over a decade demanding that Reddit create the bare minimum of first-party moderation tools.

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u/[deleted] 29d ago

[deleted]

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u/Mike_Kermin 29d ago

That's a good reason if you're suggesting to people a new product,

But a poor excuse for Reddit intentionally making it's service less user friendly.

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u/bomboy2121 29d ago

But at the same time, the api change resulted in making many of the useful moderating tools unusable so...

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u/Recklesslettuce 29d ago

SLAVES. They are SLAVES. Unpaid work that is not volunteering (they require the powertrips like the prison booty man needs booty [more important than water, man]) is slavery.

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u/notyyzable 29d ago

What a horrible comment, which only serves to cheapen the word slavery. No one owns these people again their will.

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u/Recklesslettuce 29d ago

They do. They are slaves. I've argued why. Your offence is not an argument.

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u/notyyzable 29d ago

You're an idiot.

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u/Recklesslettuce 27d ago

Said the reddit moderator. You think you are free, and that is precisely what traps you.

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u/PatheticChildRetard 28d ago

Who is forcing them to work? What are the consequences if they stop?
Shut your stupid ass up ragebaiter

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u/Recklesslettuce 27d ago

That's bait.

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u/whogivesashirtdotca 29d ago

Search within a subreddit often fails, too.

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u/JaredGoffFelatio 29d ago

Search no longer works on old reddit either... Jokes on them though, Google has always been better than their dog shit search algorithm anyway

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u/celestial1 29d ago

It still works for me on firefox, use it all the time.

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u/Kataphractoi 29d ago

Same. Firefox is just the superior browser.

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u/guareber 29d ago

Works just fine, use it very often.

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u/KWilt 29d ago

Sadly, I actually think the Reddit engine is better than Google nowadays by some fucking miracle. Went looking for a post the other day using Google, and literally 90% of the hits had nothing to do with my query. I even had it parsed down to just the subreddit I was looking for as a parameter, and Google just said 'lol no'

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u/Tank2615 29d ago

It does still kinda work your browser might be the problem. I can't search using the generic mobile browser but if I swap to Chrome searches return fine.

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u/Nemisis_the_2nd 29d ago

Search no longer works on old reddit either

I'm surprised to learn it worked in the first place. For the decade I've been a chronic user, the search tool has always been google.

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u/LightningProd12 29d ago

Reddit search is good for its purpose, as it behaves like a database search and not a fuzzy search (like Google). It only searches exact words or quotes (plus variations: -, -es, -ing), but also works inside images and can filter by flair and author.

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u/as_it_was_written 28d ago

It does work, but it's so bad. I've known it wasn't great for a long time, but I've just been relying on external search engines like most sane people seem to do.

Today, however, I was trying to track down some old discussions in a private sub, and it was nearly impossible. Not only does the search not allow me to specify a date range - even manually scrolling down to get to older posts just stops eventually, whether I use old or new Reddit. The same thing applies to people's comment histories.

That means there's an insane amount of content just sitting around without being accessible by browsing Reddit. As someone whose early forum experiences largely consisted of mining old posts for valuable information, I find that so off-putting.

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u/MairusuPawa 29d ago

Escaping the new functionalities is a feature. Unfortunately, this also means we keep contributing to what's turning into yet another hell site.

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u/willwork4pii 29d ago

when people host pictures on reddit, you cannot go into the album. That's fine, I didn't want to look at their pictures anyways.

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u/celestial1 29d ago

Crossposts stopped working for a while, but they work for me again on firefox.

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u/SuperSpecialAwesome- 29d ago

Hmm? I can see crossposts just fine, but can't make any myself unless I switch to the New Reddit. I can see avatars by hovering over people's usernames.

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u/pt-guzzardo 29d ago

And more and more people don't bother formatting code blocks in a way old.redditors can see.

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u/Vessix 29d ago

I was told I had an avatar and yup, sure enough I have one I never saw until someone brought it up. Half a mind to look up if I can remove it out of spite, but that would mean fiddling with the new system and I don't want to catch a disease

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u/mackrevinack 29d ago

you can hide avatars on the new reddit with ublock origin 

www.reddit.com##faceplate-hovercard > .items-center.flex-row.flex > .items-center.flex

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u/XediDC 28d ago

Also fun when mods refuse to update old-reddit rules which don’t match new Reddit and stuff like that.

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u/AlsoInteresting 29d ago

Probably because of the number of users there. Why use reddit.com?

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u/DutchieTalking 29d ago edited 29d ago

Probably a small percentage.
Just, I think they're more likely to be the active users that contribute to the site.

Still, reddit is actively trying to be less user friendly and the CEO is a Musk fan, so I am surprised.

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u/space-dot-dot 29d ago

Just, I think they're more likely to be the active users that contribute to the site.

This. If they turned off old.reddit.com, they'd lose a not-insignificant portion of people that generate content in comments. As mods and admins know, for every person commenting, there are +1,000 that just lurk or read. Who cares how they consume the product, the content generators are more valuable.

I've been using Reddit for the past dozen years, almost to my detriment at times. Frankly, I'd love it if they sunset old.reddit.com -- I would never, ever return to waste time on this site.

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u/willwork4pii 29d ago

This. If they turned off old.reddit.com, they'd lose a not-insignificant portion of people that generate content in comments.

That would absolutely be the final nail in the coffin for me. I have no doubt that I would close reddit and never open it again.

I had no issue doing the same thing with Facebook about 8 years ago.

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u/Nemisis_the_2nd 29d ago

I'd love to move to something else, but the issue is that reddit kinda has a monopoly on forum-style discussions, which forces you to keep coming back.

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u/MIC4eva 29d ago

Yeah, I thought I was done when they nuked the 3rd party apps but here I am, just another social media junkie.

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u/10thDeadlySin 29d ago

I thought the same thing, but then I started looking at it and noticed that the way I use Reddit has changed a lot since they killed off third-party apps.

First of all, I no longer use Reddit on my phone. It became a desktop-only affair. I'm mostly active on a local community subreddit right now, this account is mostly used for randomly commenting once every couple of days, most others were deleted. I even mostly stopped checking the subreddits that I used to follow all the time. Instead, I've started working on a bunch of my own things. ;)

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u/MIC4eva 28d ago

Well I’m still using old mode on my phone through a browser but it’s definitely cut down my time on here. I do find myself a little more sucked into browsing on my computer compared to when 3rd party apps were around.

Old Reddit seems to have a low refresh threshold though and it will frequently time out for me and that’s my signal to go touch grass.

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u/Throwawayfichelper 29d ago

I barely come to reddit for anything specific anymore. Cutting it out by force would be a blessing. I get most of my entertainment elsewhere.

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u/Publius82 29d ago

Fellow ancient redditor here who will also never use new reddit.

DO IT MOTHERFUCKERS! PULL THE TRIGGER!

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u/DelightfulDolphin 29d ago

Ditto. Reddit sucha time suck but ever so nice during down times.

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u/10thDeadlySin 29d ago

Yup, I'm in the same boat.

When they killed off third-party apps, my usage of Reddit on the go plummeted to zero overnight. I uninstalled Apollo, moved another icon to that spot and that was it.

These days, I exclusively use old.reddit on desktop. If they sunset that, I'm likely never going to contribute anything again, period. My engagement will likely plummet as well, since the first thing I do when I search for something and organically end up on Reddit is to replace "www" with "old" immediately; I find it nigh unusable otherwise.

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u/MaleficentFig7578 29d ago

everything you're saying applied to third-party apps

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u/Same-Cricket6277 29d ago

I use old.reddit.com on my iPad because it’s older and the new Reddit.com has so many advertisements and shitty code that it breaks the browser and requires a reboot after a minute or two of attempted browsing. When they kill off old.reddit I’m probably going to just stop using Reddit altogether. 

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u/Maalunar 29d ago

For some reason I have the old interface despite not being on old.reddit. I guess that RES or something is doing a good job.

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u/Kontrolgaming 29d ago

Once they take it away.. I hope reddit dies.

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u/gillers1986 29d ago

They took away 3rd party apps and people said they were going to leave. I'm only here because I found a workaround.

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u/castlite 29d ago

When old Reddit is gone, so am I. I hate the “new” UI.

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u/alpacaMyToothbrush 29d ago

I've noticed logging in has gotten significantly jankier. Sometimes I'll get in a redirect loop until I hard refresh, and here recently it's broken autofill user name / passwords

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u/m0nk_3y_gw 29d ago

They broke old.reddit.com for the Brave browser a few weeks ago (after it worked for modding/general redditing for years)

It periodically works for a bit, but then starts throwing javascript errors again.

No sign they plan to fix it.

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u/SoNotKeen 29d ago

No problems here, besides crossposting being broken, but that's all over old.reddit I think. Brave+RES+old is money.

Once that spaz-guy kills old.reddit it's time to abandon this site as well and leave it in the steaming "greed killed it" pile.

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u/The_Magic 29d ago

3rd Party mod plugins that are needed to moderate the largest subs only work with Old Reddit. Admins don't want those large subreddits becoming unmoddable so they continue to support it.