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.

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

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 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 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.

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

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.

We need to write “join lemmy” on the canvas.

Yes.

Next question.

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.

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.

Being rich literally makes you delusional.

https://youtu.be/IP2EKTCngiM

If you still have an account and want to do some good with r/place your can join the effort to advertise r/EndFPTP

https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/154kix3/rplace_returns_in_5_hours_we_must_create_a_spot/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb