old.reddit.com is clearly beginning to rot:

1. The new Reddit seems to have a different markdown parser which allows surrounding unindented code with ``` lines. This doesn't render on old Reddit.

2. New Reddit seems to be saving links with escaped underscores and correcting for it at render time? I've started to see people posting broken links like https://example.com/some\_path\_with\_underscores when it should be https://example.com/some_path_with_underscores

3. Posts with multiple images sometimes don't work? I haven't been inconvenienced enough by this yet to investigate.

I've started having weird redirects on any v.reddit.com posts too - they redirect back to main page instead of taking me to the video.

I haven't fully tested what combinations don't work, but it feels like the beginning of the end of old.reddit.com.

The report dialogue has also been broken for awhile now, and the new support for image+text posts was backported in a pretty ugly way too.

It doesn't... but the nature of Reddit has been clearly driven by the "new" interface. There's a lot less text-based technical content, and a lot more image/gif meme-based content because that's what the new interface is optimized for - and it goes out of its way to make it very, very hard to see the deep text nested comments that are the dominant feature of the old interface (and HN).

So, while you can browse the place with the old interface, the nature and trends of Reddit are mostly driven by the new interface.

Which is fine, if they want to go that way, it's just a shame that what used to make it any good is dead or dying.

And you just KNOW it's going to disappear. Not immediately of course, some slight visual breakages here and there. Then some hotshot manager is going to point out how it doesn't bring any "value" to the company and how in fact it actually hurts reddit's image. Then it will be gone.

And then somebody makes a substitute UI that calls the api, then reddit tries to take it down, then someone builds an open source version, then github gets a C&D letter and the creator makes blog post about it that reaches the front page of HN. I'm looking forward to the journey.

The first part happened: https://teddit.net ;-)

> then someone builds an open source version

Damn, I went to dig up the URL for reddit's source and it seems it is no longer open :-(

https://github.com/reddit-archive/reddit

Saidit is an old reddit fork with small changes (the biggest one is no downvotes):

https://github.com/libertysoft3/saidit

From my time at Reddit I can say the reason it has lasted this long is there are no hotshot managers.

Chris Slowe is the hand guiding the ship day to day, with a bunch of really passionate hackers underneath him. They are maintaining like 4 different code bases and keeping feature parity as best they can with a team that could still comfortably go on a ski trip together (compare that to the 60k+ at Facebook). The users hate change while also demanding new features. The business makes no sense. Steve is off doing... something, to ads or something and make investors happy so they keep the ship afloat. UI is going to hell to drive DAU metrics for investors. Banning shitweasels brings down the wrath of the conservatives. Yet they are still working their assess off to keep a mound of spaghetti from bursting into flames with 1/10th the staff they need to do so.

Good to know that a major social media platform is built on the same shit and bailing wire that most of us have to deal with every day. Sort of makes me feel like the SV companies really aren't any different than anyone else, they just (typically) have a lot more money.

It'll eventually be removed with the reasoning that its hardly used and most traffic uses the new Reddit and now they can focus on improvements without having to support this legacy code.

Yeah, it's really infuriating.. Reddit consumed most of the cool niche forums on the internet, and now it's slowly mashing them all up into a bland Facebook clone

Embrace, extand, extinguish.

Never, ever trust an incorporated company.

Does that include the Mozilla Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation?

A lot of those niche forums were already being killed by VerticalScope and InternetBrands.

It’s a lot of what lead to Reddit’s popularity in the first place.

I don't think I've hear of heard of VerticalScope but I aware of Internet Brands. What niche forums did they kill?

VS bought out a lot of the automotive forums. Also now owners of RedFlagDeals if you're a Canadian.

Surprisingly difficult to find a complete list.

There's 100% an opportunity for someone to bring on a bunch of subreddit admins into starting a new automotive forum network. Reddit and Facebook don't work well for car stuff.

https://old.reddit.com/r/4x4/comments/hw1p3a/vertical_scope_...

Also a bunch of tech and gun forums. Supposedly over 1000 properties, but it's not like I'm going to recognize that they own "mothering.com"

And then something else will replace it. They'll digg themselves their own grave.

"digg themselves their own grave" ;)

Ha, thanks for picking up on that! I was hoping that someone would notice. :-)

Maybe Ycombinator will incubate a rival that uses the HN model.

I thought they already did, this little company called Reddit that went on to benefit from the banality of digg.

I wonder what their relative market share is. Lots of the people that have been on Reddit for years may user old.reddit. I certainly do.

I really can't stand their hostility to no using their app on mobile though. The UX seems purposely difficult to drive users towards the app, for the obvious reason of greater access to user data most likely.

One of their biggest hurdles to overcome is, I gather, that a lot of the super large subreddits' moderator teams are exclusively on old.reddit.com for moderation. If they break old.reddit.com completely right now, a lot of the biggest subs would implode with bots, spam, and angry human word-vomit.

If they fix the moderation story for new reddit, I'd imagine they have a pretty quick path towards obsoleting old reddit by just not caring about anyone else still on old reddit.

They've already 'fixed' modmail for new reddit. So I think they're actively working on that problem.

> They've already 'fixed' modmail for new reddit. So I think they're actively working on that problem.

Though that has had some funny issues. One thing I noticed was the enrollment for the new modmail. It is on the settings page on old reddit for a sub, but I couldn't find it anywhere for the new reddit UI. Wacky.

For sure, it's not a perfect solution. Hence 'fixed' instead of fixed haha.

For Android at least, there are multiple free-as-in-freedom reddit client apps available. Two I know of are Infinity and Slide. Both are way better than the mobile website, and I'm sure better than the official app.

And then I will stop using Reddit for the most part (although it's still the best resource for finding authentic reviews of things / services.. I Google "<thoughts on something> reddit" more often than not these days). Which is probably for the best for my productivity / sanity tbh

The redesign is still a slower, worse experience, especially on mobile.

If they do (and it wouldn't surprise me), people will start making third party desktop clients (or rather, they'll start getting popular).

If they ban those, then we'll see some major migrations methinks.

I'm starting to find that title links to posts with multiple images just link back to the page you're on. It feels like it's just going to slowly disintegrate. Which I think on balance I'd be happy about because I spend too much time on there anyway.

old.reddit is ok, but it's rarely used for links. I know there's a plugin, but I can't stand the idea of adding plugins for things like that. The only reason I have a reddit account is because you can change preferences to be even better than old.reddit (e.g. turn off custom themes, disable outbound click tracking, no thumbnails, compact list, etc.). It basically looks like HN after what I do to it. I know it's all arranging deck chairs on a sinking ship but I hope a decent rescue ship gets here before it's all gone.