I had to find a browser plugin that automatically converts reddit links to old.reddit, for times when I'm researching something at work and land on a reddit link. The new system seems aggressively designed to keep you from reading the content.

You’ve already got your solution but just wanted to mention that Kagi search gives this option, if that’s useful for someone.

There is also https://libredirect.github.io/

Same, I've tried to get used to the 'new' format multiple times, but it's incredibly frustrating

Please don't remind them that it still works.

I know you're joking, but I'd love to know their take on it. I assume they're viewing the logs and cursing all of us forcing them to keep maintaining old.

I always assumed that the new reddit UI was more for app based usage than browser. And there is/was a hope to steer more people towards using the app.

I also assume they are smart enough to realize that some people will simply never use the app. In which case they're not realizing as much benefit from forcing the new UI on them. Sure, there's a cost to maintain the old one. But as long as things aren't breaking it's easier to keep it.

I've always assumed there's some PM sitting there at Reddit, watching the usage metrics every month, and as soon as it dips below his threshold, he'll order it shut down. "Should we tell 1 out of 1000 users to fuck off, or 1 out of 100 users?"

I think they have stats showing that the most prolific contributors all use the old reddit interface and so they don't yet want to risk their more engaging content.

Sort of. Reddit killed the old mobile site, which I built to run over 3G on a 533MHz CPU with 512Mb of RAM

The new mobile website is at least an order of magnitude heavier than the old one

There are some old screenshots of it, I've got one of them in my blog here: https://pdx.su/blog/2023-04-06-rip-reddit-compact/

I loved i.reddit, and really miss sites that were actually optimized for performance and low-end devices. It being removed kind of felt like a final nail in the coffin for that whole era. I think HTML Gmail was killed around that time too.