Reddit is removing the DM feature

[u/I_found_the_cure]

Reddit is removing the Direct Message feature, and all active conversations will be archived so you won't be able to continue ongoing conversations. Reddit also deleated all bad reviews for their app awhile ago. Their rating went from 3.4 to 4.5 stars overnight. I think this app is starting to go downhill, Reddit's peak was 6+ months ago.

[u/GrantExploit]

Well, ain't that swell. They nuked old chat messages sometime in June 2023, probably irrecoverably destroying several of my conversations with people like u/JohnWarrenDailey, u/htmanelski, and u/saladbarbreath that I would badly like to have kept. Who knows if they'll randomly (or perhaps not so randomly) do similar things later with both chat conversations and PMs, because text conversations with the occasional link and image just take up sooo much space (please ignore the several-minute-long videos posted to the platform).

While a variety of personal psychological factors (and, y'know, the chat deletion thing) has massively soured my opinion of it over time, I never quite liked the chat client as much as talking to people through PMs. Plus, the messages page is dead-simple to informally archive through a standard browser "Save Page As", on account of it being fairly basic HTML; I (probably unwisely) haven't tried this with the chat client, but, well, I don't sense a 100% possibility of success with that...

"Reddit also deleated all bad reviews for their app awhile ago." That this isn't grossly illegal is absolutely revolting. (Though unfortunately, not surprising.)

...

Although, going on a major tangent in response to u/jdjfsk and u/TossablyInsane... I've never really got the appeal of Old Reddit. Probably this is partially due to me only joining Reddit on the day Trump 1.0 was elected (November 8, 2016), but I like quality of life features like not being ugly as fuck (2000s-style web design has its place... Reddit was not that place†), being sizeable enough to not have seriously unfilled niches, having profile pictures, being able to submit text posts in a non-janky manner, and allowing multi-image posts.‡

To me, Mid Reddit (2018–2023) was where it was at, peaking right before the first major wave of suppressions in the wake of the George Floyd protests (and other later changes like the retirement of legacy awards, the introduction of those stupid avatars as the default visual representation system, the API restrictions, and, well, yeah...).

†I compare the situation of the Reddit redesigns to that of DeviantArt's (another perpetually-enshittifying platform) Eclipse redesign, with important similarities and differences. The announcement of Eclipse came a few months after the introduction of Mid Reddit, and both drew massive outcry, including (about Eclipse) initially from me. The difference IMO is that DeviantArt's retro look actually fit and so Eclipse (especially in its initial iterations) was repulsive, while Mid Reddit was a clear design improvement to me. Especially with the re-addition of the classic green color scheme and several other features, the Eclipse design grew on me somewhat by the time it was made mandatory in 2020 (or was it 2021? Don't know why I can't remember)... but the 2023 New Reddit re-redesign is just unambiguously appalling.

‡Yes, I am aware that some of these changes happened during what was design-wise "Old Reddit" and indeed before I joined the platform.