Probably unpopular opinion on HN: but I really prefer the new design. finally something that doesn't scream "we have a sub-culture" but rather welcomes new users.

The new design literally doesn't work!

Trying to follow a link is now all but impossible - clicking a link takes me to the comments page. Not what I want. But on that page, the link that I expect to see at the top of the page doesn't load! So I shrug and go back to the index page, and now the link or image or whatever is attached to the post is gone from _that_ page too. Reloading the page doesn't fix it. So for that particular link or image, it's now impossible to even see it let alone have any hope of ever viewing the image or following the link...

And I've given up trying to write comments or upvote/downvote anything because usually tapping the arrows or whatever just redirects me to a page saying you've signed out, we'll sign you back in... followed by .... a reload where I'm back into the same state where I appear to be logged in but any interaction redirects me back to this page ....

The new design is complete garbage and I cannot understand how it has been allowed to get this bad.

I think you need to differentiate between the "design" and the "experience". The design itself is good e.g. the wireframes of the website. The actual engineering behind the design is not good.

I would disagree there, I think both the design and implementation are bad.

I think you have bigger problems if you can't figure out how to navigate to the article/link/image source of a reddit post.

What is it about the old design that screams "we have a sub-culture" to you? For me, it's just a clean, simple, fast interface.

sticking to a very old design, and refusing to update and adapt to current design patterns and styles while everything about technology/devices and how we use them changes daily: feels like a sub-culture

Well they tried to use "current design patterns and styles" for the redesign, and it led to a bloated, slow, bad user experience. That's either an indictment of modern web patterns or just a bad implementation of them. I think it's a bit of both.

The actual visual design of the new site is better. Its just functionally crap and loaded with spyware/adverts.

> it led to a bloated, slow, bad user experience

are you sure that this isn't mostly true for HN crowd? I have seen more and more people participate in reddit recently.

I'm pretty sure people visit Reddit for the content, not because they particularly enjoy the hoops Reddit makes them jump through before finally getting to said content.

Reddit has a problem: they are a subculture. Or rather, they’re a network of subcultures. The day they try to force everyone to go mainstream is the day they die. Or at best, the day they become yet another Facebook.

The subculture will move on and find a new place to congregate. But it will forever be pursued by the mainstream. This is Eternal September.

Do you get that vibe from Craigslist?

The only reason why I use Craigslist is for the network effect. The site is garbage but I haven't found a sufficient alternative.

Craigslist is utilitarian and ugly like a phone book. Reddit is a social media network, which strikes me as different.

Having said that, I used Reddit more like a phone book than a social media network, so the redesign is lost on me.

somewhat, but cragslist is way too simple and very well-known to keep new users away.

I think the main issues people take with the new design is not so much the aesthetics but more the atrocious performance and weird SPA bugs.

I find the new design horrendous if you're not signed in to an account. There's so many dark-patterns, it makes the site completely unusable. I suppose there's some metrics they optimize for that drove those decisions.

When logged in, the new design is fine I think. There's a couple minor annoyances, but nothing that makes we want to go and use old.

> I suppose there's some metrics they optimize for that drove those decisions

It's just the work of bean counters optimising metrics that are visible to them. We're lucky an API exists and quality third-party clients can still be built but I assume they'll shut this off one day too.

donno dude.

I want to absorb all the comments in least ammount of time.

The new design looks like it focus more on content than people commenting. I mean reddit is about all the juicy comments, no?

> but rather welcomes new users

Yes, from 9gag. And to be fair I think the 9gag interface is better than the newer Reddit one.

Sure, if you want to sell generic ads (even if "personalized" with all the cookies you have) with low conversion that's the way to go.

Yeah kill off the only good part of reddit and turn it into a TikTok clone. Of course I have no doubt most reddit leadership has this as goal #1.

yeah but it doesn't work though.

if you have replied multiple times in one thread, you can't reliably load the paginated history of the thread.

3rd party apps work better

I'm ok with the new design/look. It's the performance I have a problem with. It's so slow.

The world needs more subcultures, though.

I use old.reddit.com on mobile, after turning off automatic font scaling in my browser. My eyesight is good enough to read the small text and it's still a better experience than the mobile site.