Can spez really be that stupid?
Can spez really be that stupid?
www.theverge.com Reddit is bringing back r/Place at perhaps the worst possible time
What could go wrong?
Yes. Yes he can.
115 comments
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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.
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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.
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Yes, just ignore
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It feels like another corporate promotional stunt. Not interested.
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Anyone would see that a one time event engagement doesn't solve anything, you cannot do the r/place every week....
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r/place being filled with API protest signs would be really hilarious
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But isn't that just giving Reddit more traffic and doing exactly what spez wants us to do? 
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Me right now:
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I went easy on myself. I vowed to never comment or post on that account... buuuut I didn't say I wouldn't place any dots in protest.
Hmmm I wonder if the V O I D will win out this time.
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Anyone over there using the service and still trying to protest are just lost.
They already went through the hard part PR wise
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Perhaps some will try plaster LEMMY across the board. Who knoes.
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It would be a shame if someone conspired to coordinate such a thing...
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Would be even better if we did our own on lemmy.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Maybe some employee suggested r/place a joke, fully knowing it would be a bad idea and management just ran with it.
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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.
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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.
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In a similar vein, I vaguely remember a sociological tract detailing the value of psychopathy in ye olden times (think at the tribal level) as they both want power and are willing to make the hard choices that others might be too empathetic to do.
But their continued existence and proliferation among certain sectors (business, politics, religion) has become a detriment.
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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.
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I guess I've been 'lucky' to be formerly part of an almost completely outsourced profession (IT) since right around when it was getting outsourced. So it's all sadly old hat to me... not an endorsement, simply a tired observation.
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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
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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.
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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.
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Can you share your argument with Stross? I've always enjoyed his writing.
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I don't know what his argument is, but Stross's account seems to be @cstross.
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The Internet is full of people to argue with, if that is what you’re looking for.
I once tweeted at a guy who had gotten his name on an editorial about how Apple Pay (and Google Wallet/Pay) would fail as Walmart (IIRC) now had launched their own app-based payment service.
My tweet was just that he completely overlooked that Apple and Google had device level integration and a wider reach, and that Walmarts wallet-thingy thus would be competing with a lesser customer experience and way fewer supported locations.
His response was something along the lines of “boy, you really meet the crazy ones on Twitter”.
I think the fediverse might work out, but on the other side - a bit less social media never hurt anyone.
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Man I want Sqaubles to work so bad but it's definitely not going to last.
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Squabbles reminds me way too much of Facebook's post and comment format.
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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.
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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.
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People don't and that's OK because there's enough people who does care to fragment off and start something new. That's the whole point of the internet. The reason Reddit got as big as it did was because it had a wide enough net to attract everyone, now they are deciding to focus on just the ones that matter to them and that allows an alternative to exist.
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[Rolling Stones intensify]
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We need to write “join lemmy” on the canvas.
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Yes.
Next question.
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Came here to say exactly this. Take my upvote!
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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Probably he just doesn't want to be accused of being unoriginal. He wishes he'd thought of it first.
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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.
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Nah, they want the attention. Don't give it to them
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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.
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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.
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My fantasies of Fediverse starships aside, let's be honest. Neither of us have any idea what it would do, as it's never been done before. And, at least for me, it would be fun to do, even if we don't need to do it.
I don't really see it as stooping to their level. After all I'm not suggesting we just go scrawl "fuck Spez" all over the place - we're already doing that enough here. But sticking up Lemmy, Kbin and Mastodon logos would be a positive organic social media campaign meant to improve the lives of its viewers - and unlike most advertisements, entirely driven by the desire to help others looking for free non-corporate alternatives.
This certainly seems better than any campaign Meta, Twitter, or Reddit could come up with, so I'd say we would be showing them that we're better by being better.
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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
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While I agree with that cause I would like to point out to other readers that it is not directly related to the spez situation.
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Yes correct, sorry if that was confusing.
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Sorry. What's r/Place?
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It's a limited-time event that Reddit occasionally does where users can all draw on a large, shared board, one pixel at a time. There's a time limit on how often you can draw a single pixel. A lot of subreddits would get together to organize and plan out images for their communities to draw. And since it's a single, shared whiteboard, you have a lot of communities competing with each other over space and vandalizing each other's works. Then usually at the end Reddit will create a full-size PNG of the "completed" work and end the event.
It's usually seen as a melting pot of the communities, where people could get together and interact with groups they probably wouldn't have otherwise. Launching this now, when they're facing so much backlash over a slew of ridiculous policy changes that have forced many users off the platform, is an incredibly delusional move on their part.
There are two things that Reddit wants to do with opening /r/Place again:
1: Trick the users into thinking that Reddit still cares about the community that they've nickeled and dimed off the platform
2: Force more people into using the official app and new web layout, since /r/Place can't be interacted with using third-party apps or old.reddit -
First sentence of the article:
Reddit is bringing back r/Place — a collaborative project where individual users can edit pixels on a giant canvas
More details here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/place
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Typo for our place
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Alright so we either try griefing everything or we band together to make something
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Hahahaha, uh oh I might see if there's going to be a join lemmy logo effort.
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Or both. Both is good.
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I'm already seeing users working together to put up protest banners and void everything else. The internet is beautiful
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It looks like people have created /r/place alternatives. If you like /r/place, could just use one of those and go draw something neat and popularize that. I don't really see what drawing a bunch of images complaining about spez using the service that spez runs is going to accomplish. On the other hand, if people are doing neat things elsewhere, then other people might want to participate.
https://old.reddit.com/r/place/comments/64zlnw/aneasyguideforrplacealternatives/
That was six years ago, so could be newer stuff out.
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What made Place special was the rarity. It created a sort of internet time capsule of what was popular or in the collective mind at that point in time. If you wanted to get what was important to you on the board then you had to act with purpose RIGHT NOW because it would be over and gone in a couple of days. Even with all the effort put in it would be erased at the end. Just Dust in the Wind.
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115 comments