You may have just heard it from me first: I know a guy that knows a guy that says that the next upcoming self-inflicted injury on the Reddit site is an imminent removal of the “old.” prefix that has been used to un-fuck the interface and make it more bearably usable. They’re already bleeding out users, especially active content-creating users, so this will only accelerate evacuations of the carnival tents as the circus fire spreads.

dumpster-fire reddit-logo dumpster-fire farquaad-point

  • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    If they kill old.reddit I suspect they also kill the .rss feeds, which will have a rather massive unintentional effect.

    On reddit you can add /.rss/ to the end of literally any url on the site to convert the page to an rss feed. This then allows you to use it in an rss reader, or with certain other sites you can convert it to a webhook that will then enable you to do thinks like receive updates from that page instantly in a discord channel. For example old.reddit.com/r/greenandpleasant/comments/ gives me a stream of all comments made to the subreddit in real time right? If I make that URL inro old.reddit.com/r/greenandpleasant/comments/.rss then use Zapier to convert that into a webhook, I can plug that webhook into any discord channel and I will receive instant updates in that channel for each comment in realtime.

    This works for /new/ /hot/ /top/ the homepage /all/ /popular/ it doesn’t matter. You can do it anywhere on the site to get that feed in realtime.

    It’s an extremely useful and beneficial tool. One that is extensively used by powerusers and moderators. But also by other sites around the web that use it for keeping up with content. And community managers from various game companies rely on it for keeping up with things relevant to their brand. Several twitter feeds use this via IFTTT and Zapier. Huge amounts of systems rely on it.

    All of this will disappear. And I suspect that newer employees at the company are completely unaware of the scale of the ecosystem that is built off of using this hidden feature of reddit’s design. The effect of this change will be larger than they anticipate.

    This is a feature I’ve wondered about implementation into Lemmy @dessalines@lemmy.ml by the way and have just never really remembered to raise it with you. Regardless of what anyone thinks of reddit it was always a rather genius feature of the site.

    • Evilphd666 [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Arron Schwartz was the RSS guy. They nuke RSS they nuke what is left of him on the site, but it’s for the better. They sold their soul. He wouldn’t want part of that. Reddit is in a death spiral now. Let it rot. Back up what you want to remember. Even if that means copy pasting it in a doc or a catalog of archive links.

      • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Arron was a smart one and for however much he was a techbro lib, probably libertarian type, he actually did real praxis that landed him in the sights of the feds which as a starting point for his politics would have placed him as our eventual ally over the years if he hadn’t been driven to kill himself.

  • Venus [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    I’d literally never use the site again. Right now I still have an account for some niche stuff without equivalents elsewhere, but I can’t use new reddit. It just isn’t going to happen.

    • webdoodle@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      I contributed 15+ years of content and moderation to Reddit, which they made private (not available to the public), because I promoted a peaceful protest of the Billionaire’s Summer Camp. It’s where the billionaires give the media there marching orders, AKA Operation Mockingbird.

      Of course they didn’t delete it, they just made it not public, so they can continue to use my data to sell to dystopic tech companies to train there A.I. I didn’t make a complete backup of my data before I was suspended, and now it’s lost to me. I was able to recover a lot using the Way Back Machine, but it’s slowly being erased too. The only copy I reliably have is completely offline.

    • KarlBarqs [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Some of the best fixes or solutions I’ve found have been in niche or dedicated subreddits.

      The site as a whole is fucking cursed but more narrow, dedicated hobby subs tended to be far better.

      Gonna miss it, forums are fun but always too broad imo, I liked having everything aggregated.

  • kristina [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    i just use it because im an old chomsky-yes-honey

    though ive always been a lurker there, i only look at weird fanfiction stuff to laugh at and the occasional news or trans thing. i tried having an account at one point but it was so grating to deal with redditors

  • happybadger [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    It’s the only thing I like about the site because it reminds me of the Myspace days of web design. /r/DPRS needs to be over the top and I can’t make it so in the new stylesheet. The new one looks terrible, performs terribly, and includes so much bloat shit that hexbear immediately felt refreshing in its simplicity. I just wish I could have a Lemmy thing with custom CSS to transition that subreddit and maybe my content fortress.

  • macabrett@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    Currently, I only use reddit to browse a few specific subreddits without an account. If they kill old.reddit.com and my extension to convert to old.reddit.com stops working, I’ll simply stop browsing any subreddits. The new website design feels aggressively unreadable to me. Feels like it’s supposed to be a barrage of information that leaves me confused and susceptible to ads that I’ll never see because I use an ad blocker.

  • heiferlips [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    already bleeding out users ….

    Im honestly not trying to be snide or anything, by this question as i havent used reddit since CTH got the boot: where are people alternating to? Im genuinely curious because i always figured reddit wouldnt go anywhere because it doesnt really have a replacement yet.

    • GaveUp [love/loves]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Tiktok, youtube, instagram, snap, twitter

      It’s not just about how unique the product is. They also need to compete for time from the user

      If reddit becomes shitty enough then something else will become more attractive

    • spectre [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Also, I’m not sure that they’re bleeding out the lurking masses quite yet, but the comment activity generated by power users (who prefer 3p mobile apps primarily) has been down all summer from what I understand.

      I speculate that that lump of people doesn’t need to migrate, but I think a chunk (not a huge one) ended up on the Lemmyverse, and another chunk probably took a break from posting. Others just end up on TikTok or whatever, but I feel like that’s a different category since they don’t have the same level of written information density.

  • TrudeauCastroson [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    You can’t even properly search for stuff within subreddits on mobile Reddit, so my workaround is to use oldreddit for searches, but mobile Reddit for other stuff.

    When they kill oldreddit I’ll probably use it even less. Right now I still use it but for apolitical stuff because libs are annoying, unsubscribed from all defaults.