My guess is Reddit is doing this to temporarily raise traffic. It's like rage bait. They know they're pissing people off and protestors will flood the site, but traffic is traffic. If they can demonstrate engagement it must be good enough for the upcoming IPO.
Right? I don't understand why people on the fediverse are getting excited about this. At best, Reddit will have admins to insta-wipe anything objectionable. At worst, Reddit will point to the increased engagement as a sign that the protesters gave up and came back.
The best protest would be a blank canvas.
It's really apparent that Spez and the rest of the admin team don't actually use Reddit on a day to day basis. Their decisions are like some consultant coming in and recommending ideas.
r/place being filled with API protest signs would be really hilarious
But isn't that just giving Reddit more traffic and doing exactly what spez wants us to do? 
Oh I wouldn't give spez the satisfaction of me giving him traffic. I'm more talking about the redditors who are still there for some reason.
Me right now:
You know admins can easily remove anything drawn there. They are trying to bring traffic back, because of the upcoming IPO.
They also did remove stuff last time. Was a shitshow
I've been working with some other people on discord. The plan is to spam the entire canvas with tiny API's like amogus was last time. We've got it down to 4x7 pixels
Anyone over there using the service and still trying to protest are just lost.
They already went through the hard part PR wise
Wouldn't be surprised at all at this point if Reddit manipulates this version of r/Place to make it look like the protests are smaller than they are.
I would not be surprised if this is an experiment to see the effect of killing API on the event. I mean, really, not many accounts have left reddit (a lot have showed up on lemmy/kbin, but a small fraction of reddit), and I remember a lot of complaints of bots in the last place. It's just 3 months since the last one, so they should get great data on the effect of API charges on their bot access.
I recently listened to a delightful pair of Behind the Bastards episodes (a podcast I can't possibly recommend enough) about Jack Welch, the darling of the modern C-suite and those aspiring to such.
The way he shaped modern capitalism to the detriment of all is terrifying. But the hilarious aside is much he was like Trump, Musk, Zuckbot, spez and all the rest. A raging little boy who has been dealt some insignificant slight, generally imagined, who wants to burn down the world as a result.
But, since this was entirely in the pre-Internet era, and he was mostly a darling of the press when interviewed for his pithy anecdotes about how to business, it mostly flew under the radar. The modern hyper toxic tech bro CEO or his presumptively dumber and louder counterparts who have still stumbled into social media is nothing new. They are just airing their dirty laundry in the public square with a much bigger megaphone.
I recall listening to an interview with a psychologist who made a special study of psychopaths, but it was a long while back so I don't recall the details, except that he noted that most rich corporate types definitely fit the mold.
One of the jobs that I worked for awhile had a bunch of old timers waiting for their pensions to be ready and newer people who only lasted a few years, with basically nobody in between. The old timers seemed weirdly surprised that everyone who didn't have the same heritage/grandfathered in incentives and benefits didn't want to stick around. I got to watch the tail end of the transition from the old engineer-run company that all the old guys talked about, to one run by beancounters who stiffed people on raises, bonuses, and promotions when times were good, and had plenty of layoffs when times dropped to ok. Thanks Jack Welch. I left pretty much right after my 401k match was fully vested.
I can’t even view it on mobile without logging in or getting an app.
He seems desperate to make Reddit work. It seems that he can’t take the ego hit to back pedal his decision and is trying to figure out a way forward.
My gut says this is an effort to make employees feel good after layoffs and protests, but also this looks to be someone to juice the monthly active users metric before an IPO roadshow or fundraising or something.
Ironically /r/place would be a good opportunity to win users to the official app, they probably should have done that before the API price changes to shake the tree of third party apps, so to speak.
Anyways, this is going to be 80% "fuck /u/spez" memes, a German flag, the Apollo logo, and a perfect OSU game logo.
I almost decided to make an account just to participate in the new /r/place, but then I would be supporting Reddit.
I'm so lost right now. I was Redditor for 13 years. The last 8 I tried every app until I settled on Joey for politics and news and RIF for sports and entertainment. It was perfect. I could open RIF for college football, basketball and baseball, cricket, music, and various other hobbies. Then, I could find out what horrible shit was happening on Joey. Now, I'm trying to understand fedia, mastodon, and tiff but they are woefully underpopulated so if you post something, it usually just get ignored though I did get into an argument with Charles Stross on Mastodon and probably pissed him off (I love his writing but I think my points were just valid). I miss knowing who is going to create content that I might find enlightening and who I can avoid reading. I know know 2 people IRL who actually reddit and no one who uses anything but Facebook. I don't want to argue with college roommates
You know I get that you don't see 100s or even 1000s of comments on each post but I've found that on lemmy people are actually willing to talk to you and listen. You don't have to worry no one will see you or reply to you because you don't have enough upvotes.
Especially on beehaw. The quality of discussion is in most cases significantly better than modern Reddit. It all reminds me very much of the earlier days (16 year old reddit account here).
Best I can say is, browse All on lemmy and Live Feeds / All on mastodon. You'll at least see some people and communities you want to follow. You gotta grow it organically here, with no algorithm to help. It's harder, but it's better.
Can you share your argument with Stross? I've always enjoyed his writing.
The best thing isn't to say fuck spez or draw a Lemmy. The best thing to do is to make it black. Just black.
Make it nothing of note that can be talked about, reviewed, or made into content. It is just a black screen.
That is the engagement that Reddit wants now, just a black void. Maybe we should give that to them.
I am looking at r/place now and it is kind of making me lose hope in how many people actually care about what spez is doing.
But more likely this is just my depression talking.
We need to write “join lemmy” on the canvas.
When you have that much money, does it matter?
Trump and Musk are great examples of being too rich to fall. Once you get to that point, you can fuck the poor as much as you want. The only way for you to fall is to fuck with other powerful people a la that pedo ring leader who was murdered by guards after getting caught.
Engagement is what matters, and that’s driven by habits. The protests were disruptive. The switching of apps is disruptive. I see this more as a way to distract and bring up engagement again.
Is it a good idea? Honestly, if they want to succeed I think they should focus on what has become broken with reddit first
Not really the focus of the article, but I think that /r/place was a neat idea, but hard to produce much with.
I feel like maybe there are forms of collaborative art that might go further, like letting people propose various changes to a chunk of pixels on an artwork and letting people vote on the changes.
I'm not sure why Huffman doesn't just do away with their PR department and respond to media inquiries with a poop emoji like his hero.
Probably he just doesn't want to be accused of being unoriginal. He wishes he'd thought of it first.
What a pity it would be if /r/place was suddenly invaded by a Fediverse attack fleet of instances, striking at Spez's weak spot, with the goal of freeing the Reddit peons from their alien overlords.
Nah, they want the attention. Don't give it to them
I agree with you in principle, but speaking from strictly a strategic perspective, /r/place presents a vulnerability that can be exploited without contributing what Reddit really needs to regain its status - content.
In the context of a social media war, this means we can use the space to peel off users who wouldn't have been introduced to the Fediverse otherwise, with no risk of harming ourselves or providing Reddit more than a temporary moment of attention. There's been a concerted effort to remove links to Fediverse resources in many subs, and for a great deal of redditors, they're in the dark about what the Fediverse represents and how much better it is than Reddit.
Plus it's just cool to fuck with Spez, and the Fediverse is so cool in general that I'd love to see what the effect would be if we united against a common enemy.
No that wouldn't do what you think it would. And don't need to stoop to that level. Show we're better by being better. That's all.
Being rich literally makes you delusional.
If you still have an account and want to do some good with r/place your can join the effort to advertise r/EndFPTP
A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.
Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.
Subcommunities on Beehaw:
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.