alt Hacker NewsSample size of one: this decision has resulted in me accessing Reddit exactly zero times since the implementation. And no I will not use the “new” UI.
This has actually been a time saver, and I haven’t missed it even for research. In fact it’s made me realize just how bad Reddit was as a source for research, these days. It’s all bots and activists with an axe to grind.
Replies
thisislife2 • yesterday at 8:12 PM
Same here. Went cold turkey when they blocked old.reddit. Surprisingly, even though I get my once in a while "fix" now from 9gag (warning: right-wing - racist, antisemite etc.) instead, overall, I too now waste less time on such things. I think they did us all a favour with their stupidity ...
I'm in the same boat. Not using reddit has resulted in time savings, but it comes also at a cost of losing a window into the world of people & their thoughts that I really valued. I have not yet found any place that acts as a front page of the internet, anywhere. I wonder if its even possible to get back to that in today's post-organic internet era, given the widely understood second order effects of using a platform as an instrument for dissemination of ideas/brands vs. organic content, and the suspicions that that awareness entails.
Even now, there are people running SMM account networks that simply take top or trending content on one platform, reformat it with AI, and post it in the same conversation on a separate platform-- effectively recreating the partial utility of a front page of the internet but only at the cost of inserting themselves as middle men who over time accrue gatekeeping power that is completely opaque from the outside. Not a new idea. Arguably an inevitable idea. It still sucks, though.