So Reddit has a new shitty UI
And I don't mean the old new UI that the people who use old.reddit like to complain about. I mean, a proper, new, twitterfied, shitty UI.
I haven't heard anyone talking about it, which might mean it's being slowrolled out, but it's possible I just missed the announcement and discourse. Or saw it and forgot. It's funny actually: I saw the logo and rebranding on a graphic design blog the day before it went live, but missed the UI redesign entirely.
Here it is:
I've boxed out the subreddits that would narrow down my location, but otherwise this is what it is. Oh, and I suppose the "recent" widget would be open by default as well. The thing about that is, if you drop into any sub, the name goes in the recent list. You drop into a weird sub you don't want people in your house knowing about? Well, you better go visit 4 other subs. There's no way to permanently keep the drawer closed or turn it off.
Below that, you can see all my subreddits and learn a great deal about my interests. It was certainly enlightening for me, having them all thrust into the light of day like that. I had a visceral reaction of disgust seeing some of the old subs I don't really follow anymore. A locus of old interests that seemed important at the time, but trite now. And of course, visiting them puts the sub name in the recents list. Right where you don't want to see it.
The feed defaults to "cards" mode, and seems to revert itself occasionally if you turn it back to "classic". Gone are the days of skimming the post headlines to find the content you want, the endless boredomscroll is here instead, just like every other site. This might be the worst part of it.
You'll also notice the recent posts feed on the right has a few subreddits I don't subscribe to in it. This used to be where you could easily access posts you had visited earlier to check the comments again. Now it exclusively has posts I have not clicked on, meaning it's likely driven by an algorithm trying to determine what I want to look at. Spoilers: I don't want to look at any of those posts, and I'm genuinely embarrassed r/SipsTea is up there. Again, there's no way to turn this off.
The feed itself seems more algorithm sorted than it used to as well. Sorting by best no longer delivers the top post from all your subs, but shuffles around posts at random, weighting subreddits you visit more more heavily. If you click forward and want to come back to a post you saw before, good luck finding it.
I... look, I know we were supposed to jump ship from Reddit. I tried, but some of the communities I'm a part of have been irreplaceable. It's been hard to let go. And yet, I feel like I'm being punished for trying to continue to be a part of them.
I really really hate it.
