I think this opinion is a bit... strange.

So no, spending an hour putting pixels on r/place is not a great way to stick it to Reddit. Constantly talking about Reddit and basically giving it free ad-space and mind share on Lemmy also does not stick it to Reddit. The original poster is correct: best thing is a blank canvas.

This is basically a rehash of: "There is no bad publicity!"

That's complete nonsense. An advertiser looks at a few things in a website to advertise on. Three very important factors: Traffic, because you want a sufficient number of people to potentially click your ad. Engagement, because people who participate on the website will be more likely to click your ad and then buy something. AND brand identity. That third one is the reason why advertising Disney plus on PornHub might be a bad idea, even if PornHub has great engagement and traffic.

This third factor is the problem reddit is currently facing, and has always been facing: Really big players spend millions on PR so that they are catching the current feeling of what is hip, young, and positive in their advertising and brand identity. They also want to advertise their product on websites which give people the same feeling: They want their product displayed on websites which feel young, hip, and positive. You do not want your product associated and displayed on a website whose userbase is obviously annoyed, negative, and keeps shouting "Fuck Spez", whatever that means.

That has been a reddit problem for quite a long time: It never had a brand identity which was glitzy and positive enough to be very attractive. It isn't young, and hip, and positive. It always had the stigma of being a "nerd cave". Which is fine, if you have a product that you don't mind to be associated with that, and if the userbase is happy with that. "When did the Narwahl bacon?", was cringey as fuck, but it reflected an essentially positive attitude and feeling of a userbase which didn't mind to be associated with the site. As an advertiser you can work with that, and cann piggyback on that.

You do not want to piggyback on "Fuck Spez". Because you don't want your product to be associated with an obvious feeling of negativity and frustration. You don't want your brand to be caught in that. The best option for an advertiser when faced with a website that carries clear negative reputation and connotations, is to just not be there.

So, I think what you are saying here, is not true. It would be better for reddit, if nobody talked about reddit. A bad reputation, and a brand identity associated with "frustration" (in exchange for more clicks and engagement) is far worse than being a "mostly neutral nerd cave", which is a bit less popular.

Engaging on the platform and even constantly talking about the platform is a great sign of it's lasting influence.

You do realize you're on a sub dedicated to reddit, right? It's hypocritical if you're telling users to not engage yet stay in a sub that talks about the site.

Also, this is wrong. Advertisers do care about the traffic, but they also care about stability and how their brands will be perceived. This is why nsfw reddits don't advertise. Now put yourself in the shoes of an advertiser: there's a lot of traffic on reddit but there's a lot of hate and vitriol, with the threat of users leaving and just a lot of bots propping the communities up. Would you spend money to advertise on such a volatile site when there are literally other, maybe even bigger, sites available to you without all the BS or threats to how your brand/product will be perceived? I mean, you might. But you've probably made tons of better business decisions than that.

The average user has already forgotten about the API changes

I see what you're saying, yeah, and I don't think you're wrong. It's just that this creates a strong visual of how fucked the site is, that there's such a massive show of resentment. Like, making a bunch of negative comments is one thing, but it's easy to miss or obscure. The place image is so unmissably clear that it has to do more damage to reddit than good.

Plus even if this short term bump helps, I don't think the reddit situation is really salvageable long term. Like user engagement is going to go down over time as they realise how bad it is to browse communities that are poorly moderated and losing submissions. If the place stunt is enough to make a real difference to metrics then those metrics are already permanently hosed.

I think you need to check again because I'm not seeing either right now. In fact, I see one noticeable mention of spez and it's in another language and pretty small. And my conspiracy theory is that admin had bots running to ensure it.

EDIT: I am wrong. I didn't realize you had to scroll further to the right.