TL;DR To make messaging on Reddit faster and more reliable, we’re replacing Private Messages (PMs) with Reddit Chat and inbox notifications. This transition is necessary to maintain and improve Reddit’s messaging infrastructure. We aim to make these changes with minimal disruption while improving the user experience.
Timeline: Starting at the end of March, we’ll roll out these changes in phases over the next three months to ensure everything goes smoothly
Funny because I disabled chat and prefer DMs due to spam (for whatever reason, everything toxic and malicious prefers chat over DMs)
Is this the year they completely disable old.reddit, I wonder?
enshittification, its how youtube went, they removed DM/PM and encourage community chats, and video comments, because they cant mine or sell data easily on PMs.
If you’re on old reddit you don’t even see notifications for chat
I used to. I turned it off. There’s an option somewhere to completely turn off Reddit chat.
im surprised they keep the legacy frontend around for this long. im sure its a matter of time before they kill it.
they probably know the legacy users/og users like us would bounce from reddit the moment they remove it? they havnt figure a way to introduce the shittier new UI in such a way that people will stay?
They are changing this as part of getting rid of PMs:
- Old Reddit will receive small UI updates to allow users to access all information previously provided via PMs
- New button to access the notifications inbox, which will badge if notifications are received
- Chat button will badge if new chats are received
- The PM UI on Old Reddit will be discontinued within the same timeframe from other platforms once the migration has been completed.
Another set of features is being taken away. The dismantling of old reddit continues.
Why & When Is This Happening?
To make Reddit faster, simpler, and easier to use, we needed to unify our messaging platforms. This consolidation helps us focus on improving one system instead of maintaining multiple. Plus, Reddit Chat’s infrastructure is built for the future, unlike the PM system which is about as old as Reddit itself.
We’re sharing this change early because we want your feedback! We’ve spent months talking to mods, developers, and users to ensure this migration works for everyone (shoutout to u/RemindMeBot fans). But there might be scenarios we’ve missed, and we need your input to address them. You can share feedback directly with the team working on this project in the comments below.
My sides went into orbit. They aren’t even trying to come up with believable lies any more, right?
- If the concern was to make Reddit “faster, simpler, and easier to use”, they’d ditch chat and keep DMs
- “muh futchure” fallacy (appeal to novelty)
- pretending that they want/care for user feedback
…I think that the reason is twofold: 1) it’s easier to plug advertisement into the new chat system, and 2) chat only works in new.reddit so they can use it as an excuse to deprecate yet another old.reddit system.
pratically what youtube did, got rid of thier DM/pm and forced everyone to comment on videos, so it can be astroturfed and artificially boosts engagement.
Yup, pretty much.
And, as usual, advertisers are to be blamed: they’re the ones interested on “engagement”, and indirectly siccing platforms to artificially inflate their engagement numbers.
They aren’t even trying to come up with believable lies any more, right?
Yeah I’m wondering that too.
I looked at the thread on Reddit and I can’t find one single user who says this is a good idea.
fuck u/spez
Oh yeah, chat is such a popular feature. I love how it is constantly full of spam and death threats. Lets elevate that great content to my lock screen.
Never use chat. Anytime I get a chat message, it’s spam or somebody trying to scam me.
Private messages, by the way. Never had that issue.
i never get spam only people trying to suck my dick constantly
Same, but in the real world.
yea
That’s fucking weird
PR if it was honest:
Why & When Is This Happening?
To better monetize your attention and data, we’ve decided to streamline all communication into a single, ad-optimized, engagement-maximized system. Maintaining multiple messaging systems was cutting into our profit margins, so we’re sunsetting the old one — which, let’s be honest, wasn’t generating nearly enough revenue anyway.
Reddit Chat is engineered for the future (read: future monetization opportunities), unlike PMs, which were quaint relics from a time when this site wasn’t a corporate data-mining operation.
We’re announcing this change now so we can say we “listened” when it inevitably breaks the way you use Reddit. We’ve talked to a hand-picked selection of mods and power users (mostly the ones who didn’t complain too much), but there’s still time for you to provide feedback we can pretend to consider. Drop your thoughts in the comments below, where they’ll be skimmed for marketing insights.
the 2nd part is exactly it, they cant really datamine your PMs, and the AIs cant scrape the messaging.
Just a heads up some programs like Redact (for deleting social media posts including Reddit) on iOS require a subscription if you want to delete chat history vs free for dm. I recommend using shreddit anyway, and I would seriously consider you do so asap.
Chat is so laggy
What is Reddit?
