It helps to realize that you’re not really their target audience. The goal is to keep reddit users on reddit for as long as possible. Counterintuitively, one way to do that is to stuff the screen full of seemingly unrelated stuff, because most people are there to see unrelated stuff. They’re not there to read a comment thread in full. In fact, it wouldn’t be surprising to learn that 90% of traffic doesn’t read comments at all, most of the time.

I don't think so. Askreddit is one of the most popular subreddits.

Not sure how long they will keep old.reddit.com around though...

Why would you need a plugin? You just set it in your preferences and it will switch to that as soon as you log on, isn't it...? At least that's what happens to me.

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/multi-account...

I'm pretty sure I saw in an AMA that Reddit has an Accounts database (maybe split further by sharding) which I'd assume holds your settings as well.

But I rescind my point; it could very well be attributed to database infrastructure issues, whether that's hitting a shard with stale data, or splitting account settings to its own DB that it can't access when you log in.

I guess it's supposed to increase engagement/addiction, but it does the complete opposite for me. Having to click through 5+ links just to try to read 15 short comments is extremely aggravating. I know about old.reddit but its days are probably numbered so why keep fighting with a site that hates me and my time? I just avoid Reddit whenever possible these days.

i also just open every sub conversation in new tab, on occasions when i can't login to reddit. (since they conveniently forget that you were on old.reddid.com if you are not logged in )