Yes. Yes he can.
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.
That’s genius honestly. The void should win this year
Last Week Tonight is on break so The Void should be available for engagements.
I recall watching the The Void form in a timelapse and just how it consumed everything around it.
Yes, just ignore
It feels like another corporate promotional stunt. Not interested.
Anyone would see that a one time event engagement doesn’t solve anything, you cannot do the r/place every week…
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.
It’s sadly astounding how many innovative or attractive products are destroyed because greed often believes a) there’s more fat to cut (reduce overhead), b) we have to evolve (forced “innovation/features”) or die, c) both.
There’s certainly more to add but those two alone can easily account for the downfall of so many things in modern history.
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.
Fair enough!
Use an ad blocker and the traffic is of little value to them. Especially if it only goes to /r/place and doesn’t allow to create much of a profile.
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 think with the amount of things people are planning to draw the canvas is going to look pretty empty if they remove all of them. Plus, if you wrote something like “API” in small letters everywhere on the canvas they’d have a hard time keeping up
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.
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
Can you share the current design?
41 API/7?
I don’t think the 4, 7 or cyan bars are part of the design – they’re just illustrating that the whole design is 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
It would be a shame if someone conspired to coordinate such a thing…
Would be even better if we did our own on lemmy.
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 hope they do. Would be an obvious wake up call to more people on reddit.
Why is that? Covering up the protests would be the opposite of drawing attention to it surely?
Streisand Effect, which historically is something the people of Reddit LOVE to enforce
My presumption is the kind of people who would notice that kind of thing are either OK with it or are already off of Reddit.
The fact that they would be obviously covering it up would be noticeable to people and would cause what they are trying to cover up to become more prominent in the news and on the site.
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.
Maybe some employee suggested r/place a joke, fully knowing it would be a bad idea and management just ran with it.
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.
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.
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 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.
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).
Definitely seems to be trending that way.
But honestly that’s been my experience on all Internet forums I’ve been a part of.
In the beginning they’re places with few, but good, discussions, but over time as their gravity exponentially attracts more people the level of quality drops until you have people who get angry at you because they’re on the wrong side of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
I always strive to learn new things, and I hope that when I’m completely off the reservation about something and someone tells me I have the good sense to take a step back, learn something new, correct myself, and hopefully improve until next time.
This is true and where good moderation comes into play to mitigate at least some of these aspects.
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.
I set my default sorting options to “All” and “Top 12 hours”.
Between that and “Top 6 hours”, I seem to get better results than “Active”
This is my one big issue with Lemmy currently. I miss subscribing and just having a good feed. With Lemmy I find that a handful of very active communities end up pushing down the less active ones on a lot of the sorting options. I have to go directly to individual communities instead, which I guess could be considered a good thing for engagement but the UX side of my brain doesn’t like the extra clicks.
Can you share your argument with Stross? I’ve always enjoyed his writing.
I don’t know what his argument is, but Stross’s account seems to be @cstross.
Thanks for the link!
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.
Man I want Sqaubles to work so bad but it’s definitely not going to last.
Squabbles reminds me way too much of Facebook’s post and comment format.
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.
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.
[Rolling Stones intensify]
We need to write “join lemmy” on the canvas.
Yes.
Next question.
Came here to say exactly this. Take my upvote!
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.
Did you see the video?
No. Why, are they doing something like that?
https://youtu.be/K5O3UgLG2Jw for example, I think that’s a cool visualization. There’s also https://2022.place-atlas.stefanocoding.me/
I mean, that visualizes the changes, but what I’m saying is that I think that it’d be possible to go further with collaborative art than having a one-pixel-per-person cooldown.
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.
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.
