> If Anyone reading this thinking of joining reddit

Just don't

> there are hundreds of niche subreddits which are frankly quite awesome

They are condoning reddit by continuing to use it

----

There's another comment that points out that reddit screws up search engines results in order to get more front page hits.

Just how long will it need to be pointed out that platforms are evil, and anti-Web, and you should be shunned for using them ?

(I had some hope for reddit myself - that it would not fall to the same issues somehow, but that hope is long gone now...)

It's sad, but few people these days put in the minimal effort to set up a forum. Or sign up for one.

Reddit is the easiest free way, but you pay the price in the end, and it's very high.

Related is how both storage and processing is very cheap these days, and yet you don't see many ISPs providing an out of the box experience featuring a mini-NAS, Nextcloud server, e-mail server, website server (including a personal blog and a phpBB forum ?)... on their modem/router boxes !

An important thing is also that reddit still doesn't require a mail address. Just click continue on the signup form without filling in the mail and bypass the dark pattern.

You can't comment or even view some subreddits without verifying your email, though. But creating an email address takes 5 minutes at most.

What are some examples of subreddits you can't view without verifying email? I haven't run across any.

The quarantined ones.

Requiring an email is a dark pattern?

Not requiring an email but making the UI look like you do is a dark pattern.

I think a worthy addendum to (1.) is to review the 'default' subreddits that your new account is auto-subscribed to (unsure what the current list is, but probably stuff like /r/news, /r/funny, /r/videos...) and unsubscribe from the ones you don't/won't like.

Reddit of course has its issues but by working through and around them it's still an amazing site - not because of its features or politics but because of the discussions and communities i.e. users of the site. The default subreddits are generally awful though.

I use the RES extension on my PC and the Reddit Sync app on my phone and would recommend both.

review the 'default' subreddits that your new account is auto-subscribed to and unsubscribe from all of them

And you can install the "old reddit redirect" extension in chrome to make this automatic.

If you're logged in to reddit you don't need an extension, just set it in the options.

For (1), a userscript like this does wonders. There's also a way to replace new-reddit links with the old-version, but it takes a bit of tinkering to get it to work on google.

  // ==UserScript==
  // @name     old_reddit
  // @description replaces www.reddit with old.reddit
  // @match    *://www.reddit.com/*
  // ==/UserScript==

  const url = new URL(window.location.href);
  window.location.replace(`https://old.reddit.com${url.pathname}`)

Or just log in and tick the box that says "always use old reddit" and then it will always use old reddit.

> Or just log in and tick the box that says "always use old reddit" and then it will always use old reddit.

Not sure if it's just me, but that setting seems to frequently get reset, as I tick that box maybe once a week/two weeks or something, but I keep getting sent to the new reddit at one point. Maybe I accidentally access new.reddit.com which forces the new layout and then reset the setting?

In any case, I'm giving one of the new -> old redirection extensions a try now instead.

It's never got reset for me. I've set it once and it's stayed applied across all my desktop browsers. I'm also pretty sure I've visited new.reddit.com and it didn't reset the setting.

It doesn't apply to mobile but IMHO the new site is slightly less terrible on mobile than the old one anyways so that's my preference.

if you love constant popups to install their (crappy) app, including not letting you use parts of the site at random, I guess.

That doesn't work for certain cases - e.g, if you're browsing Reddit in an icognito window.

e.g, you want to browse for a gift for your SO and you're review-hunting, but you don't want it showing up in your sidebar as a recently viewed thread, or being in your history, or whatever - so you don't sign in. Userscripts/extensions force old.reddit.com regardless.

Until you accidentally click the "Get new reddit" in the top right corner. You can hide it with your adblocker though.

I like seeing the popular posts, so I browse r/all but use the 'filter subreddits' option in the right-hand sidebar to remove all the dross.

The default subs are great if you have low blood pressure but there are good niche communities on reddit.

In particular the posts from /r/politics which hit the front page are often Q-anon tier; absurd misinformation and extremist rhetoric. But yes the smaller sub-reddits can be good.