Reddit updates look after rough 6 months and ahead of reported IPO

dvdnet89@lemmy.today to Technology@lemmy.ml – 62 points –
Reddit updates look after rough 6 months and ahead of reported IPO
arstechnica.com
47

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.

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.

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.

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

Yeah that quote is psychopathic

Sorry I'm OOTL; what quote?

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

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.

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.

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"

Too late. None of us are going back.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

That new font is so ugly.

I do like the little chat bubbles in the letters d

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.

that's a hell of a title 😅

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"

still looks like old reddit to me.

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...

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.

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!

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.

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.