this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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Yes. Yes he can.

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[–] Foreigner@kbin.social 146 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

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.

[–] Sinnerman@kbin.social 57 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] pizza_rolls@kbin.social 62 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The best protest would be a blank canvas.

[–] quortez@kbin.social 23 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That's genius honestly. The void should win this year

[–] pbjamm@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago

Last Week Tonight is on break so The Void should be available for engagements.

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[–] Hotzilla@sopuli.xyz 18 points 1 year ago

Yes, just ignore

[–] XTornado@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Anyone would see that a one time event engagement doesn't solve anything, you cannot do the r/place every week....

[–] patchymoose@lemmy.ml 113 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] 100thCatMarch@kbin.cafe 76 points 1 year ago (6 children)

r/place being filled with API protest signs would be really hilarious

[–] RealAccountNameHere@beehaw.org 36 points 1 year ago (2 children)

But isn't that just giving Reddit more traffic and doing exactly what spez wants us to do? 

[–] 100thCatMarch@kbin.cafe 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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!

[–] trollercoaster@feddit.de 7 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] the_itsb@beehaw.org 30 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] takeda@kbin.social 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

You know admins can easily remove anything drawn there. They are trying to bring traffic back, because of the upcoming IPO.

[–] B0rax@feddit.de 9 points 1 year ago

They also did remove stuff last time. Was a shitshow

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[–] morrowind@lemmy.ml 23 points 1 year ago (5 children)

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

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[–] Contend6248@feddit.de 22 points 1 year ago

Anyone over there using the service and still trying to protest are just lost.

They already went through the hard part PR wise

[–] trollercoaster@feddit.de 5 points 1 year ago

It would be a shame if someone conspired to coordinate such a thing...

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[–] worfamerryman@beehaw.org 47 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] soft_frog@kbin.social 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] B0rax@feddit.de 4 points 1 year ago

Maybe some employee suggested r/place a joke, fully knowing it would be a bad idea and management just ran with it.

[–] Dethedrus@beehaw.org 41 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

[–] zhunk@beehaw.org 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] Uniquitous@lemmy.one 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] Sardonicsorceror@fedia.io 39 points 1 year ago (4 children)

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

[–] Uniquitous@lemmy.one 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] prole@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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"

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[–] ClassyHatter@sopuli.xyz 38 points 1 year ago

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

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 34 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

[–] NaoPb@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] lasagna@programming.dev 23 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

[–] SalaTris@beehaw.org 20 points 1 year ago

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

[–] tal@kbin.social 18 points 1 year ago (4 children)

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.

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[–] lightninhopkins@beehaw.org 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Uniquitous@lemmy.one 7 points 1 year ago

Probably he just doesn't want to be accused of being unoriginal. He wishes he'd thought of it first.

[–] Arotrios@kbin.social 10 points 1 year ago
[–] Mothra@mander.xyz 7 points 1 year ago (3 children)
[–] Chozo@kbin.social 29 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's a limited-time event that Reddit occasionally does where users can all draw on a large, shared board, one pixel at a time. There's a time limit on how often you can draw a single pixel. A lot of subreddits would get together to organize and plan out images for their communities to draw. And since it's a single, shared whiteboard, you have a lot of communities competing with each other over space and vandalizing each other's works. Then usually at the end Reddit will create a full-size PNG of the "completed" work and end the event.

It's usually seen as a melting pot of the communities, where people could get together and interact with groups they probably wouldn't have otherwise. Launching this now, when they're facing so much backlash over a slew of ridiculous policy changes that have forced many users off the platform, is an incredibly delusional move on their part.

There are two things that Reddit wants to do with opening /r/Place again:

1: Trick the users into thinking that Reddit still cares about the community that they've nickeled and dimed off the platform
2: Force more people into using the official app and new web layout, since /r/Place can't be interacted with using third-party apps or old.reddit

[–] Seathru@beehaw.org 14 points 1 year ago

Or 3. Something to boost engagement numbers they can show potential shareholders.

[–] nefarious@kbin.social 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

First sentence of the article:

Reddit is bringing back r/Place — a collaborative project where individual users can edit pixels on a giant canvas

More details here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/place

[–] Mothra@mander.xyz 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah I deleted the comment immediately as soon as I read the article but I guess I still got replies

[–] Soundhole@lemm.ee 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's not deleted for me, I can still see it.

[–] 14th_cylon@lemm.ee 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

deleting works like that. when you delete a comment, you delete it from your own instance where you created it, but it is not deleted from all the other instances where it propagated meanwhile.

i have no idea whether it is a bug or feature.

[–] Chozo@kbin.social 13 points 1 year ago

I believe it's a sync issue between instances. Eventually, his comment should update and show as deleted on the instance you're viewing from. New material seems to sync immediately across most instances, but edits/deletions appear to be lower-priority and take longer. Some mod actions like thread removals also don't appear to sync correctly right away.

At least, that's been my experience, not sure how much truth there is to that. I'm using Kbin, which is also a bit weird with Lemmy content in the first place (for instance, Kbin apparently does not recognized locked threads from other instances, and will still let you comment, though they won't appear on the original instance at all).

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