'FUCK SPEZ': Reddit Users Unite to Turn r/Place Mural Into a Protest::Reddit's collaborative art project seemingly has one overarching message to Reddit's CEO.

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[–] 217 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (4 children)

The point of opening it this early again was to garner traffic. Don't go there at all. It would have been best if only mods and corpo shills were placing pixels.

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  • [–] 114 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    This 100%. Engagement to show your protest is still engagement. Give Reddit your absence.

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  • [–] 19 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    I wish I did this. I went to check if there were any signs of the protest and couldn't help but contribute to one of the "fuck spez" signs

    I then realized that place already felt kind of overdone last time they did it, this time it just feels completely meaningless

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  • [–] 18 points 3 years ago

    Place is cool when its people just working together to draw things. What is not cool is the corpo bots instantaneously placing their logo and people fucking with the art outside of the given rules to users. That ruins it completely.

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  • [+] 30 points 3 years ago (1 child)
  • [–] 13 points 3 years ago (5 children)

    As much as I've been enjoying Lemmy and really like it as a platform, I don't think any of this this is fine because there are just too many niche communities that are either unwilling or unable to just pick up and move, which means that in practice to the extent that I only participate here and not on Reddit I am missing out on a lot of content that I used to look forward to.

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    [–] 157 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (3 children)

    Over the last few hours, many of the "FUCK SPEZ" drawings have started to be taken over by other image, causing users to suggest that Reddit admins are interfering with their art (there is no evidence so far that would prove this).

    Except the fact that the over writing pixels all arrive in large blocks at the same time rather than individually like real users would place them, and also that they appear with no username attached to them like user placed ones?

    They also went out of thier way to use the same checkerboard overwrites that they used on the guillotine, on a QR code that took people to a website promoting veganism.

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  • [–] 29 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    QR code was a mistake and does not suite that use case. Changing a few spots would have corrupted the URL whereas a "Lemmy" sign would've been much better. Even with corrupted pixels, it would still be distinctly recognizable.

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    [–] 114 points 3 years ago (5 children)

    This r/place is a great visualization of the damage done to Reddit. Previous r/places have been much more interesting and vibrant. The current canvas has large portions covered with boring flags and overall there's just less going on, much less depth and variety. A great confirmation that Reddit has indeed changed, and a great visualization of how it has changed.

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    [–] 78 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    This fuckin' guy is gonna burn it all down and somehow walk away with more money than I could earn in several lifetimes. There's something intrinsically wrong with a system that so egregiously rewards such gross incompetence.

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  • [–] 13 points 3 years ago* (5 children)

    Where is the incompetence? His competency is dependent on making money for a specific few.

    It has nothing to do with the outcome of the site, beyond how that outcome influences said making of money.

    If the shareholders cash out happy and the site dies out, he did his job, regardless of whether or not you think that's fair.

    Yes, it sucks for the rest of us who liked Reddit. I am one of those people.

    Saying this guy is incompetent just because his interests go against the interests of people who use Reddit is ludicrous.

    The interests are in conflict, it sucks. That's it. We have Lemmy. Get over it.

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  • [–] 76 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    causing users to suggest that Reddit admins are interfering with their art (there is no evidence so far that would prove this)

    If you watch the time lapse, you'll see that the guillotine was wiped away in an instant, which would either require mass coordination or admin privileges. There's also the fact that it was removed in chunks, not pixel-by-pixel. Also, it was proven last year that one of the mods didn't have a cooldown.

    Reddit has been thrown into chaos because the company began charging for access to its API

    No, it's because they began charging an amount that isn't affordable to third-party app developers and with very little notice. They also lied about being willing to work with developers and they made false allegations against Apollo's developer.

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  • [–] 22 points 3 years ago*

    In some of the screenshots, it's clear that a brush is being used by the uniform distribution of pixels in the same size/pattern in multiple areas.

    I don't really think the admins are concerned about concealing their actions anymore. They're just trying to cashout on a sinking dumpster fire while its valuation plummets.

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  • [–] 69 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Why do people even participate after all this mess

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  • [–] 70 points 3 years ago (4 children)

    Because they're hopeful they can save the site through activism. What they forget is that they are not protesting a government, they are trying to stop a corporate entity from fulfilling it's legal obligations to make money for it's investors.

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  • [–] 63 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. The fact that these articles are making fairly large headlines is proof enough that this event is backfiring.

    A couple days of engagement traffic do not outweigh the negative PR and advertising impact from this event.

    If you were a company, you might think twice before advertising on a site that has their users actively, publicly, and loudly trashing on the CEO. It says a lot that it’s happening in the first place. Says even more that they aren’t able to stop it.

    Also, look at the activity numbers here. I’m not trying to trash on Lemmy, but we are a drop on the bucket. It’s far more effective for us to be visible and loud than silent and ignored.

    For clarity sake, I’m not encouraging anyone to go do anything, nor the other way around. But if you want to, ignore the comments, saying that this is going to say, Reddit with traffic and engagement from you if you go. It clearly isn’t, and your loud protest is valuable. 

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  • [–] 25 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    If you were a company, you might think twice before advertising on a site that has their users actively, publicly, and loudly trashing on the CEO.

    Isn't this just wishful thinking? Let's be 100% real for a moment, those people posting fuck spez on r/place aren't doing it because they're moving or have moved to an alternative, they're doing it because they are addicted to Reddit and can't stop using it. The true protest is moving to an alternative like Lemmy.

    If I'm an advertiser, all I see is a very captive audience. This isn't like the Twitter situation, where your ads will be shown to increasingly objectionable content. In fact, with all the users begrudgingly downloading the official Reddit app, the value of advertising on Reddit may be going up not down.

    That being said, Reddit has never been a good place for advertising outside of a few niches, and that hasn't changed, so in the long run Reddit most likely won't survive. But in the short run, I don't think this is the victory lap.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    There is no true protest. Let people react how they want. I don't understand the gatekeeping on how to respond against spez. If you want to leave Reddit completely and stay on Lemmy, great. If others want to burn the site down in protest, that's great as well. Why are so many people on Lemmy trashing people who similarly hate how Reddit is now? As if it would make a difference anyhow if they listened to you.

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  • [–] 56 points 3 years ago (11 children)

    "API change is not a big deal, look how many people logged in last week"

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    [–] 44 points 3 years ago (8 children)

    THAT WILL TEACH HIM!

    Surely.

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    [–] 38 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    And then they went back to using reddit. Hell of a protest. /s

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  • [–] 36 points 3 years ago (6 children)

    And yet this is probably good for reddit. They live on amount of engagement and you dummies just fell for it.

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    [+] 36 points 3 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)
  • [–] 34 points 3 years ago (9 children)

    Bizarre that people are on Reddit complaining about reddit still

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  • [–] 11 points 3 years ago (6 children)

    I don't think enough folks even know what Lemmy is.

    I have a product I'm trying to build and will be launching shortly to allow folks easy access to their own lemmy servers and I plan on running some ad campaigns.

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  • [–] 12 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    The problem is people are selling Lemmy the wrong way, lol. The average user doesn't give a fuck about decentralization or federation. If you want to convince people that Lemmy is a good Reddit alternative, you have to show them the content/discussions and the UI/UX.

    UI/UX is getting better, but still far away. The mobile apps are okay. Content is still behind, mostly because most lemmings aren't helping their communities in generating content and engagement. The moderators can only do so much in curating. You got to help them out by posting content as well or at least commenting on the threads. Don't just lurk.

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    [–] 34 points 3 years ago

    Protest about reddit using reddit is not a great idea

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  • [–] 34 points 3 years ago* (2 children)

    There’s something weird about “protesting” a site by continuing to use their site. Hopefully it’s just bot traffic flooding /r/place rather than real people coordinating in real time.

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    [–] 19 points 3 years ago

    Ya all weird as heck. People who decided to not leave reddit because that's still their main content provided try to vent their anger in any possible way. And while there's no thing like bad PR, according to the saying, the truth is that media coverage is underlining bad management from reddit side and how uncooperative it's users became (they literally fight administration at this point ). So while reddit may have gained numbers in interaction, I don't believe potential investors can simply omit all these news and quite evident burning of company.

    I'd say if they ain't gonna leave, doing this is the second best thing. Keep it up, redditors, keep it up.

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  • [–] 15 points 3 years ago (3 children)

    somebody should really build a Fediverse version of r/place so anybody from any ActivityPub-powered site can join in and place a pixel every 5 minutes

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    [–] 10 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Pathetic the people that participate in this r/place, such protesting! wow! you're so brave! You're still giving reddit traffic btw...

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  • [–] 10 points 3 years ago

    That's not a protest, that's a statement.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 years ago (4 children)

    Efforts ought to be focused more on redirecting people to / advertising Lemmy. Any entailed increase in DAUs for Reddit would be, ultimately, temporary.

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