"Edit: Obligatory 'F--- Spez' for karma."
  • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
    89·
    1 year ago

    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.fyiEnglish
      70·
      1 year ago

      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.

    • bloopernova@programming.devEnglish
      27·
      1 year ago

      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.

      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
        17·
        1 year ago

        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.

      • bobs_monkey@lemm.ee
        7·
        1 year ago

        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
        11·
        1 year ago

        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.zipEnglish
          3·
          1 year ago

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

      • Uranium3006@kbin.social
        8·
        1 year ago

        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

    • SamXavia@kbin.run
      4·
      1 year ago

      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.

  • m-p{3}@lemmy.ca
    49·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • mo_ztt ✅@lemmy.worldEnglish
      12·
      1 year ago

      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…

    • Virtual Insanity @lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      1 year ago

      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.

  • Madison_rogue@kbin.social
    6·
    1 year ago

    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.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    6·
    1 year ago

    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!

    • intrepid@lemmy.ca
      13·
      1 year ago

      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.

        • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
          2·
          1 year ago

          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.

            • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
              1·
              1 year ago

              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.