I just love how pervasive the hate is. Like, you know you fucked up when something like this can coalesce and unify around a single message.
Really says something.
It does feel ultimately kind of meaningless though. I remember going through this with Ellen Pao. She made all the unpopular decisions the Reddit board wanted to make anyway and rode away into the sunset. Just a fall guy essentially. Feels like we’re going through the same motions with Spez.
I’m not so sure. I still think that Ellen Pao was pushed off the glass cliff. I’m expecting the same thing to happen to Linda Yaccarino at The Company Formerly Known as Twitter.
Spez is directing this. He’s leaning into it. He’s embraced what Musk is doing at The Company Formerly Known as Twitter. He has publicly mocked both users and mods who have signaled their concerns, it was his decision and his timeline. It’s not like he’s a recent hire brought into a failing company.
Spez isn’t the fall guy. He’s the bad guy.
Except he’s accepting the ‘bad guy’ title in hopes of a large payout from IPO. This is why reddit should’ve been abandoned by all users who care when Apollo and RIF shut down. Even those remaining to protest only enforce the bluff that Huffman called by doubling and tripling down on his antics.
I think the analogy is closer to the landed gentry…
Man, I don’t know. I know this is just a personal anecdote, but around my friend circle, I haven’t gotten a single share from reddit in over a month when we used to send links back and forth daily. Those same people have said they haven’t visited reddit in a month, other than the rare checkin on the drama.
I’m sure the significance of the impact is relatively small, but I’d also guess many of those that left were heavy users and contributors. I’ll go over there to check every few days and have noticed the content quality is significantly worse than 2 months ago.
That said, it is also very possible this whole thing blows over and the million or so of us that left are meaningless in reddits overall lifespan.
To be clear I don’t think it’ll blow over. The site is definitely worse off than it was before. But I do think it’ll continue instead of collapsing. It will just turn into something completely unrecognizable compared to what it was. Imagine Tumblr or Imgur.
It will just turn into something completely unrecognizable compared to what it was.
Completely agreed. Reddit won’t die, but it also won’t be the “front page of the internet” as it was from 2016-2022 or so.
Or Digg, which still exists to this day.
I mostly only use car subreddits like r/cars, but it’s mostly the same over there - things haven’t changed for the most part.
The difference is that Ellen Pao was that was talent acquisition.
And I think, with Spez, the analogy is closer to the landed gentry
I just love how pervasive the hate
The opposite of love isn’t hate. It’s indifference.
Another fun thing is that at 0,0 in the center of the canvas it said “Never forget what they stole from you r/save3rdpartyapps” and later had a join-lemmy.org banner above it. We also had a few other places for the join-lemmy banner but that was the final location, and a big thanks to the Black Company discord server for helping with that.
A Reddit spokesperson declined to comment about this year’s edition of r/Place, telling Polygon via email “redditors are going to reddit.”
Honestly, that’s probably the best response he could’ve given.
“Redditors went to Reddit to tell Reddit to fuck off” would be the more accurate statement. The engagement they’re touting is like your ex getting your “Dear John” letter and gushing about how much you really care because you took the time to say goodbye.
I can’t believe they would expect anything else. It was way too soon for an event like this.
Wait, what the hell happened at the end with the enormous “FUCK SPEZ!” that covered the whole thing? Watch the timelapse, you can see it as all the pixels start to fade to white:
That’s just how Place has always ended, with an automatic random white tile placement that slowly erases everything.
At the end you can only place grey scale pixels, and after that only white pixels
Giving the site massive amounts of traffic in attempt to crowdsource a another 100x30 pixel “Fuck Spez” banner. Spez must be getting pads on his back for this.
A burst of traffic doesn’t mean much if it doesn’t stay. It’s a safe assumption that most people participating in “fuck spez” already had an account, so they aren’t getting many new users from this.
most people participating in “fuck spez” already had an account, so they aren’t getting many new users from this.
Why would a person even become a new user just to shit on spez, they have no stake in the drama anyway? I still have an account but I have lessened my usage to a fraction. I don’t go to R/place to “protest”, nor do I make bot accounts or alts to spam the place.
The thing is, most of the accounts participating this year were bots made specifically for this. Yes it’s a burst of traffic, but it’s a burst of traffic that will drop off a cliff as soon as it’s over.
The botting was so bad this year that a small community or a single person couldn’t do anything, I tried to mess around with an 8 pixel space and as soon as I put a pixel down, it was undone.
The Germans had something like 50k or more bots set up for this. That’s why there were so many German flags everywhere.
I imagine if it keeps Reddit in the news, so they can more credibly talk up that upcoming IPO, they are happy to let as many users as they want badmouth the guy in charge.
Really glad to see it
All of those protesters that went to Reddit for the last week to engage, generate ad revenue, and ultimately benefit Reddit, really showed them. Idiots.
Yes because if I’m an investor I see an uptick in engagement and don’t ask a single question about it. I invest blindly based solely on numbers not on news articles blatantly posting issues with the CEO. I DEFINITELY want to invest in a company that. A.) Has a CEO who is mired in controversy B.) Has communities dedicated to taking engagement away. C.) Has an uptick in use once a year for this event, which is undermining the companies ability for engagement longterm.
People still invest in Tesla even though Musk is at helm.
Personally, I didn’t engage because I felt to “nothing” them during their big event was more worthwhile and also contributed to lessening my overall Reddit visits. Ultimately, however, numbers are what speak to investors.
