> If, at any point, she accidentally follows a link, it really pisses her off

is it partially because new reddit is a SPA that just craps itself when going to a external link and loses where you were?

It’s mind boggling - the primary feature of Reddit being a link aggregator - and clicking on a link breaks everything. Literally, Reddit will say “I’ve broken, please reload me” if you try to “go back” from the link you just clicked on.

Oh, no, she, like me, is a dyed-in-the-wool RES user who uses the old style

I have that exact frustration. I now consciously just close reddit.

I have deleted my reddit accounts a few months ago. One of the best decisions.

I still use old reddit and Apollo on mobile.

It has to do more with every other platform being hostile to embedded videos, especially on mobile. Nothing plays inline anymore.

All problems that are instantly solved by opening links(even within the same site) in separate tabs. One of the many reasons I never use Reddit on the phone.

Too bad websites are even making this inconsistent and broken, by using cursed webdesign to a degree that the browser can't figure out if an element is interactive before the user clicks on it.

I disagree

The whole point is having everything

a) in the context of the feed b) stripped of extraneous crap

Opening links in new tabs accomplishes neither of those things

I've never been able to make myself use Reddit, so maybe this is an obvious point, but that sounds like a fairly apocalyptic "whole point" for the exercise of an attention span. Which, I realize, is the goal, but is probably not great for the people thus enmeshed, no?

I doubt it has anything to do with attention span. I have a very short attention span, and the only reason I tend to prefer consistent interfaces is because many websites still don't support dark mode. I'd say the attention span is actually the reason I do not use the reddit redesign, because it just wastes my time at every corner and I hate UIs doing that. If your website doesn't let me consistently middle-click links it's going on my mental blocklist.

My guess is that people prefer having everything on one site because it makes the whole UX consistent. If we're being honest apps, websites etc. are wildly different to navigate and use, and when you're used to one site's behaviour and quirks it makes visiting other sites a bit more cumbersome. Especially if you're not using adblockers.

> because recipes on non-reddit websites always seem to be gated behind multiple auto playing videos and the author's entire life story

Thank SEO for that.

I went down that (thought) rabbit hole and it was a bit sad to realize the cat and mouse game at play, where content creators on sites (such as recipe sites) are optimizing for search results, and intentionally burying the searched for content in a way that the search engine has difficulty optimizing for, so promote their own ads (more scroll -> more ads). Then once people begin obtaining the info they want from said sites, it becomes (presumably) even more difficult for a search engine to automatically filter it out -- or even decide if it should.

I don't know how to solve the problem at scale, but would love a site that preferentially de-ranks content based on the ads it has. That is, rather than me using an ad blocker, I'd like the search engine to do that for me. That probably exists, but then it also has to be as good as Google which isn't easy. I default to duck duck go, but often (say, 10%) I can't find something I am looking for there, go to Google, and its a top 3 result. Tricky set of problems here but I'm optimistic five years from now I may be happier with my search engine of choice.

I recently came across the search engine Marginalia [1], which ranks web sites based on the ratio of text to HTML tags (more text, better score), with a very heavy penalization for JavaScript.

[1] https://search.marginalia.nu/

I blame online advertising, and in particular CPM payouts, which incentivise extraneous content to drive up impressions.

Thank Google for that.

> If, at any point, she accidentally follows a link, it really pisses her off

This is equal parts funny and hurting my soul...