By far the most important for me is the absence of notifications. I avoid Reddit most of the time because there's no option to turn off notifications, or even clear notifications without reading them. Your only option is to click the button that takes you to the page with the reply to your comment.

> or even clear notifications without reading them. Your only option is to click the button that takes you to the page with the reply to your comment.

As a "clear" feature, you can always open that page in a new (background) tab, let it load so Reddit thinks you saw it, then close the tab without ever looking at the content. No idea if this works on new.reddit, but it's possible on old.reddit.

If you use Chrome, there's an extension called NoVote that removes a lot of Reddit noise including the notifications button: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/novote/kepihilioco... (Disclaimer: I manage this extension)

Maybe i've missed something, but the only way i've been able to browse replies so far is via the threads?id=myself page. is there another way?

I use hnreplies.com

Also seeing the whole thread started by your reply. Reddit notifications make it feel like a 1:1 conversation, while HN encourages true many:many threads

You can disable that element of the Reddit website using uBlock origin.