> To quit Reddit, I wanted the Pavlok to deliver a painful shock every time I visited Reddit
That's a bit...extreme.
Fortunately Reddit is doing a great job diminishing its own usability. When Reddit enables their paid API and locks out 3rd party clients in the process, there will be greater friction to browse. When they eventually kill old.reddit.com that'll be the nail in the coffin.
It looks like they'll be no more free access so every third party app will have to charge a subscription that goes to Reddit (monthly and with no costing provided yet)
I hope there is at least some centrality to the next "cool place". All the new projects are decentralized (as in the communities are isolated from each other, not in infrastructure) to the point of being like a giant ant farm, it makes it impossible to find things and also makes whatever genuine information they give out really tenuous because you never know how long the particular instance of a platform or chat server or whatever you are looking at will remain up.
Really I just hope all the shit you begrudgingly need to add "site:reddit.com" to in order to get actual search results for is still usable. Watching the site genuinely burn would make me actively worse at troubleshooting tech.
21h since you commented and I'm amazed nobody has come along to tell you how ChatGPT is going to kill both Reddit and Google and mean you won't even need to troubleshoot anything anymore. So yeah, that, apparently.
Reddit has one of the worst frontends I have ever seen. Not even from a "SPAs are evil"-standpoint. It's just awful. That has deconditioned me very effectively.
On mobile, every single page load asks if I want to use the app instead. I really don’t, but I probably should start using one of the third party apps. I would never use their own app.
Twitter is equally awful. I wish I understood the commercial reasons for having such bad UIs, especially when the UI has been better in the past. Is it just bad statistics, or are these terrible UIs actually increasing revenue/profit?
They already killed the lightweight mobile version at i.reddit.com last month or so. I wouldn't be surprised if old.reddit.com is on the chopping block within the next few years.
I think the new design at https://sh.reddit.com/ (for desktop PC) is aimed at this. It's supposed to be better performant than the current design and dealing with criticized decisions like the heavy layered design, but I think another way to view it is that it's supposed to finally kill old.reddit.com once released, probably in a year or so.
That's unfortunate. This design still lacks information density. I use old.reddit because I don't need my front page covered in preloaded photos, videos, etc., and I like to be able to see things in a dense format, no scrolling required.
I agree that Reddit is doing a good job of harming its usability (and the overall experience with mods that wield the ban hammer for the slightest disagreements, for example) I do not understand this sentiment for old reddit. I've been on the site for over 15 years and while I do pine for the old days (when comments and content were of much higher quality) the old UI holds no such sway over me.
Well, for starters, old.reddit.com on mobile safari doesn't put an overlay telling you to use the app instead when you get a deep link.
Also it loads much faster. Imagine if HN were re-done with a lot more glitz and current HN was turned into old.news.ycombinator.com? I bet a lot of HNers would prefer the old interface especially if there were some annoying UI patterns in the new one.
Have you used the “new” ui directly? For me the gallery links somehow manage to crash Firefox on mobile more often than not. Links to comment threads also load only 2 threads deep and I have to constantly click on load more buttons to continue the conversation. On top of all that there’s a ton of space wasted on the sides to just have the thread be in the center?
If I was using Reddit solely to view images it might be an improvement but it’s nearly unusable if you are using it primarily to read comments
Yep. It's mostly a information to screen usage ratio thing. There's so much useless "noise" on modern reddit, even if your customize it. Res + old reddit is much better at letting you see what you want to see and move on.
That said, I'm at the point where i'm just converting everything to rss feed readers. I'm sure that's going to be blown up eventually as well, but in the meantime it's probably the best way to just get whatever information you want, quickly, and not be stuck navigating websites.
Reddit's suicide happened way before the redesign. It's the silo communities, the rampant excessive moderation, the brigading, the drama, the immaturity all over.
If you're struggling with social media addiction, I would recommend deleting the native apps off your phone. The better, smoother UX and faster response time reduces any and all friction. I find that when I have to use the mobile sites, I can't stand them so I naturally want to leave. Reddit's mobile site is a dumpster fire so it's perfect for wanting to keep your sessions short. Instagram's is similar. Sadly, Twitter's is pretty good so that won't work there. Another thing is to turn off all notifications (for the apps that do remain).
This has been massively effective for me for weaning off Reddit and Instagram. My phone usage (basically perfectly correlated with all non-productive screen time) has dropped by a solid 50% and has remained that way for 2+ years now.
Crazy thing I find is how even with apps off, how quickly you will subconsciously type in “Reddit” or something into google.
I haven’t used social media in years, but I remember when I quit it how I would sometimes be on my laptop doing something and almost out of habit hit “Ctrl + T” for a new tab and type the first few letters of Reddit or instagram.
HN is still social media. Not as heavy as others on the one hand but It’s also not free from all issues other forms of social media have. I just engaged with you and you might feel compelled to engage back. You might see yourself get downvoted for odd reasons and spend time wondering why or being emotionally effected by it. Rinse, repeat, etc.
The nice thing is the votes/points are much less prominent on this site, to the point I rarely even notice them. It also helps that whatever feature progression system there is... it's not highly advertised, nor are there fancy badges like "ten year club" that attach even more status to pointless internet points.
Used to happen to me with some sites, what I did was 1) remove all the history of that domain so typing re<enter> would google "re" instead of autocompleting to reddit.com and 2) adding reddit.com to my ad blocker so I couldn't visit it at all.
If you keep your phone's browser on private mode, this becomes a lot easier! (Long as you don't have any old bookmarks for that site.)
Combined with DuckDuckGo's !bang notation—since you no longer have autocomplete for visited sites—you can still get to useful places like wikipedia quickly.
Unfortunate side-effect is that by staying logged out everywhere, with no cookies, means you'll see every single "log in with gmail!", "use the app for a better experience" dark pattern popup, unless your adblocker covers annoyances.
I did that (removed the app) but I got used to the browser. So I added a block on NextDNS that I can turn on if I need to (eg: to ask a stupid question and get low-grade semi-official support for some thing - though I actually find that I'm the one answering questions)
I do occasionally forget to block it after using it, and within a week I'm doom-scrolling again. But I eventually have a moment of clarity and block it, and I'm back to normal again.
I don't think people ever completely give things up unless they have one of those addictive personalities and find themselves tipsy on Monday morning, or completely plastered every night at 9pm. I don't have an addictive personality because I have this voice that tells me "you're doing this again,stop!" And that tends to work. So I treat Reddit like beer or chocolate. I self-moderate my intake. A blocker is enough. It's the equivalent of NEVER having a stash of beer or chocolate in the house. I actually need to plan my intake by explicitly adding them to a shopping list, and even then I just buy 2 small cans of some weird hazy IPA or a small-but-ridiculously-expensive chocolate. That way I can occasionally treat myself without falling off the wagon.
Turning off infinite scroll dramatically reduced my reddit usage (on RIF). Infinite scroll is a nice feature for keeping you locked in for the next dopamine hit but if you want to just learn a few things and keep abreast of news and then get on with your life you're better off without it.
Also after deleting Reddit the battery on my new iPhone lasts the whole day even while I still watch unhealthy amounts of Russian tanks burning on Telegram and sometimes visit reddit web interface too.
There, I said and admitted it: it is unhealthy. Now off to write down and delete more Telegram channels. (I already quit Twitter cold turkey back in February, Telegram is a bit more complicated since all my friends use it and only it so I need to wean myself off just the addictive parts of it.)
I disagree. Apollo on iOS is the most potent drug I've ever consumed. It's a wonderful app (kudos to Christian, it's rare for a one-man show to take the throne in the days of companies giving themselves preferential treatment) but I can't have it installed because I'll go back to binging Reddit.
I agree. I actually deleted Apollo just an hour ago for this reason, quite a coincidence.
I love it because it’s such a well made app which is too rare these days, and I hate it for the same reason.
Ironically, I actually also use HN's mobile site not because I'm trying to break my usage of it but because I like opening multiple stories/comments sections in new tabs throughout the day and slowly reading through them when I have time.
twitter removing third-party client access sure did kill it on mobile for me though. i can't be arsed to load the mobile web UI, it lacks the features i liked in my chosen third-party client, and it was easy enough to just wait around for when im back at a desktop
Meh, Reddit is a boring platform outside of your personal interests. I myself follow only one subreddit and check maybe other 4-5 for news/updates, but none of these are in the top 1000, maybe not even top 10,000 subreddits. I find Reddit culture to be bland and uninspiring.
Even technical/niche subreddits get absolutely run over by "noobs" and people who have too many questions but too little patience to do research for themselves. And comments on Reddit are beyond bland - they might as well adopt a slogan of "The Parrot Club" at this point.
My point being, Reddit is likely the easiest platform to give up because it never provided any value/intrigue in the first place.
> Reddit is a boring platform outside of your personal interests
To me, the fact that there's an active subreddit specifically for every personal interest is exactly what makes it so addictive. It's a very concentrated dose of the drug. Like I'm in the US Army, and there's r/army where basically every thread hits very close to home, so I have a strong opinion or a story or insight to share. Then I'm also into personal finance, and there's even r/MilitaryFinance because a lot of personal finance issues are unique to our situation.
Before Reddit, there were some old-school forums for these niches, but they were short-lived and not nearly as active. On bigger, more active old-school forums about something like personal finance, most of the threads just don't pertain to me so it's easier to use them in moderation. Like a thread about military stuff will end up here on Hacker News once every couple of weeks, and I'll get excited to make a comment, but that's it.
Anyway, I decided that I needed to logout from Reddit, delete my browsing history so that old.reddit.com didn't autofill in my address bar anymore (I wasn't even using the mobile app), and delete my Reddit password from my password manager.
Small subreddits can be very nice. A community forms, norms as established, everyone gets along. But these are very rare and not often long-lived. I browse Reddit out of boredom mostly anymore, all of the subs I used to enjoy and participate in are filled with one or more of the following: meme shitposts, requests for musical instrument appraisals from "pickers" (which can't be done via pictures on the internet anyway), the same questions being asked over and over again every single day which have answers in the sidebar or FAQ, etc.
> My point being, Reddit is likely the easiest platform to give up because it never provided any value/intrigue in the first place.
Not for me. I really like reddit but I feel the same way as you in some regards such as the "The parrot club".
I mean, at some point the discussions in r/GilmoreGirls ran stale and repetitive but I can't say I didn't enjoy the ride in that subreddit, and if not for reddit I wouldn't have read so many different and equal opinions to mine regarding the show.
Even the subreddit dedicated to my country. Years ago it was this place to share opinions about what is good or what needs to be improved, interesting places to visit and really funny anecdotes(Keeping in mind they can be false). Now it's just a place to complain about the current government.
Reddit got really popular in the last years and it shows that quantity increased at the cost of quality.
Reddit's comments are extremely predictable because the popular subreddits have such a homogenous personality. But they've really perfected the outrage machine where once you get hooked on reading through /r/all, it's hard to break.
Where do you go instead? The ones I follow are r/baking, r/cooking, r/woodworking, r/gardening, and r/boardgames. I haven’t found another single site that has communities for all of my interests.
Similar to how building a new Wal-mart kills off many small local businesses (pharmacies, markets, shoes stores...) in the area, I lament how reddit has nearly monopolized the topic-based conversation and discovery platform space.
I'm old, so my route there is roughly: Dial-up BBS's -> usenet -> various web forums -> slashdot -> fark -> digg -> reddit. So I've experience the best and the worst of it all, and I'm not sure that reddit represents the best. I do not believe that they wield their [immense] power in a responsible or trustworthy manner.
A few months back, I had my account of ten years banned for something I never bothered looking into. I've used the site probably a dozen times since then, using site:reddit.com.
Reddit was as close as I got to social media, and it sucked. The longer I spend apart from it, the more alien and irrational the ideas seem. People repeating themselves over and over in every thread, all it takes is one prompt for the conversations to derail - it's like a poorly tuned 7B LLM.
I knew it was "awful", but I guess I'd developed an immunity to it. They're doing future models a great service by limiting their API.
> I came across the Pavlok in 2018. The Pavlok is a wrist-watch that delivers a shock. The device had the right cyberpunk and biohacking vibes to catch my attention. It was primarily marketed for smoking cessation: every time you felt the impulse to smoke, you’d press the device and it would deliver a shock.
I block all time sinks during working hours with an exception of 2 minutes every 4 hours to quickly check whether the world is ending. My productivity has skyrocketed.
I was using it for a while, but unfortunately my muscle memory has gotten too good at disabling it.
Maybe I should do smaller increments like you do though. I was previously setting a limited amount of time per 24 hours, but maybe a few minutes every 4 hours would be better.
I found the best solution for myself was the delaying page feature, set to 15 seconds. This added enough friction to prevent mindless checking, but still allowed for purposeful checking without training muscle memory to disable it.
Is that really true? My experience is that bad habits tend to fill voids and if you don't have a replacement in mind, another bad habit will replace it. For example, I had a distant friend who was food addicted. He got a gastric bypass and couldn't eat much food so he turned to gambling. Then he ran out of money and turned to drugs.
Might be a rare anecdote but I've got similar experience myself when blocking apps. Suddenly the next best thing tend to replace it unless I schedule something to fill the void.
It's a bit nuanced because addiction in this context is a lay word running a spectrum from essentially "bad habit" to "mental illness causing life ruining dysfunction of executive faculties" and it's hard to speak broadly about both at the same time. But behaviors can easily straddle both, with for example buying a lottery ticket every time you get gas being "bad habit" gambling and what happened to your friend being on the other end.
Addiction almost always has its origins in a useful adaptive behavior. For example cigarettes, esp when not dependent on nicotine, are calming, and taking a little break to think your thoughts at points in the day can be effective at managing stress during intense work. Or social media on your phone can be a way to avoid moments of boredom, which often our minds find distressing. On the other end serious drug addicts are very often unknowingly self-medicating severe mental illness like anxiety, ptsd, depression, BPD.
Without addressing the underlying reason for the original use, a relapse or displacement addiction is much more likely. In the case of "lighter" ones like smoking or social media often no intentional change is necessary. In the intervening years you got better at your job and it's not experienced as so stressful anymore, or you're older now and just able to tolerate the boredom of the toilet better, etc. But yeah you're still gonna be bored waiting in line at the store or whatever, and you either figure out another way to handle that, or your mind will insist you handle it the way it is used to, with scrolling an app.
In your friend's case it seems likely he was using food to cope with something else, and when he removed food he didn't have the support and skills to address the underlying problem.
Wow! I just blocked Reddit at the router and that did the trick. HN is probably next, but every now and then there is a neat article about APL or Forth that I’m happy to have seen. I suppose I could just block the comments.
The problem for me is that subreddits have taken over from traditional forums. I have a handful of topics/interests I browse a subreddit for because it's the biggest community for that topic.
I hate it and I hate reddit- it's a fucking cringy place full of arrogant twerps that post know it all comments that leave no room for any conversation, or just people trying to be witty. (normally the top 5 comments are these)
I quit reddit in a day without the threat of electric shocks. I just deleted my 15+ year old account. I occasionally go manually in and read some comments... not missing it at all. It turned out it was just a bad habit.
i don't think the author is the source of this post, but i am amused at posting this article on what is, in effect, a niche subreddit. codebase may not be the same, but the UX is, well, rather similar
I’d buy a Pavlok for sure if I could easily configure it to buzz me when I exceed a certain number of phone pickups or just phone screen time in a given period. I see some people have made this work with shortcuts and zapier but I’d want it to work out of the box
Reddit is better than FB and most other forums WRT readings posts that interest me about my hobbies: music & guitar playing, photography, and motorcycling.
There are hobby-specific online communities, but frankly, those don't appear as healthy and having as much interest.
I find this true as well so I just subscribe to those specific subreddits via RSS and Newsblur. I also create a new Reddit account once a month so that I don't fall into a habit of letting my account share too much personal data or letting myself fall into the trap of caring about upvotes. It's worked very well for me. I read the posts that interest me and I don't just "scroll Reddit" out of boredom.
That's a bit...extreme.
Fortunately Reddit is doing a great job diminishing its own usability. When Reddit enables their paid API and locks out 3rd party clients in the process, there will be greater friction to browse. When they eventually kill old.reddit.com that'll be the nail in the coffin.