L4sBot'FUCK SPEZ': Reddit Users Unite to Turn r/Place Mural Into a Protest
JacktheladWho could have foreseen this?
JesterRaiinTHAT WILL TEACH HIM!
Surely.
I think insulting is the wrong way. It’s just a level that I am disappointed to see people lower themselves to.
Same here.
From where I sit, these people should simply abandon Reddit, rather than fuel its popularity.
While I like to watch a slowmo trainwreck from the distance, we should be focusing on building our new home. The foundations are already here, but everything else is still absent.
Aye.
Developing new approach and mindset to data sharing and online culture would be great. Unfortunately, plenty of people insist on making this place Reddit, with all its wrong aspects… 😑
DeemoI see it as pointless and potential risks tarnishing the image that third party apps helped improve reddit (especially to normies/non techies who only use the official app and website).
What I don’t get is what will damaging the ipo achieve now that a lot of 3rd party apps are toast (Apollo, rif, reddit sync). Even if spez or reddit as a whole did a full 180 nothing would change on the prospect of 3rdparty apps.
Only thing reddit can change is improving the first party app and mod tools (given their stance was the api was never meant for 3rdparty apps after flip flopping).
As a user you have more or less 5 options:
completely switch to Lemmy (or similar alternative).
use the official reddit app and deal with it
use social media less (pull the plug overall per say)
Use a paid subscription 3rd party app (example infinity for reddit
use a modded version of 3rdparty apps with custom api or the official reddit app modded (ex vanced)
I hope this comment doesn’t come of too corporate or shill like
I’m speculating, but at this point I don’t think the remaining Reddit protesters are doing this with the goal of having Spez reverse course. My guess is that they know its a lost cause, and are just operating out of spite, i.e. you destroyed something I care about (reddit) so I’m going to destroy something you care about (willingness of advertisers to participate in a hostile platform).
From a practical perspective I totally agree though. Frankly, this whole debacle has made me realize that I stopped actually enjoying Reddit in like 2017 - there was just nothing good to move to before the explosion of Lemmy this year.
rm_dash_r_starYes Reddit was in the advantageous position of being “it”. People promoting spez hate must realize they’re never going to get Reddit back. They’re just doing it out of spite for losing something. The best protest is to just move on and forget about them.
Like when any relationship collapses. . . “The best revenge is living well.”
INeedMana“API change is not a big deal, look how many people logged in last week”
How many?
tree fiddy
That gets an upvote
Thank you, kind strange. (yes, that was a redfuck reference, deal with it. MUAHAA-HAA)
Nooooo.
Okay.
Default_DefectWELL it was about that time that I realized Frisbeedude was just a poster, but was about eight stories tall and was a crustacean from the Protozoic era.
Loch Ness GIF - Loch Ness Monster - Discover & Share GIFs
Click to view the GIF
Probably at least, like, twelve or more
That gets an upvote.
You mention downvotes? Believe it or not, reduce. You mention upvotes, also reduce. We have the best comments in the world because of reduce.
It worked!
SanctusThe point of opening it this early again was to gsrner traffic. Don’t go there at all. It would have been best if only mods and corpo shills were placing pixels.
SudoIf you want to take a peek without sending traffic to them then there is a YouTube livestream of r/place.
Yeah. I liked Reddit and I’m still feeling the “fuck spez” thing.
But there is just nothing to be done: Reddit is going a different way and that’s fine. So now I’m here and again it’s fine. What is nice is that if I understand this federation thing correctly, there can’t be ONE bad actor that messes everything up.
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.
I actually find it kind of freeing. With Reddit I kept scrolling in hopes of finding something interesting through one of those niche communities, with Lenny I find myself doomscrolling a lot less
I get it, and that is a totally valid experience that you and probably many other people have had, but I personally never considered myself to be doomscrolling when seeing what was new with the Haskell programming language, going through what crazy experience people have had playing Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup lately, learning from the the really insightful in-depth explanations of history that were posted to AskHistorians, and so on. I do not consider the subtraction of these things from my life to have ultimately been a benefit, it just makes me feel less in the loop about the things that I care about.
I’ve seen some people talking about how the lemmy developers are planning for the ability to “group” communities (of the same name or something like that) on different instances together.
I’m taking this as those communities then forming one community that doesn’t have to rely on a single instance’s community to “survive”.
Haven’t put too much thought into this but I think that would at least lessen that problem, especially for new niche subjects popping up. The difficulty for existing niche communities starting anew here will probably remain but I’m hopeful for the future.
I’m taking this as those communities then forming one community that doesn’t have to rely on a single instance’s community to “survive”.
Haven’t put too much thought into this but I think that would at least lessen that problem, especially for new niche subjects popping up. The difficulty for existing niche communities starting anew here will probably remain but I’m hopeful for the future.
That does sound like a reason to be hopeful for the future. Thank you for telling me about this.
Me too, I’ll engage for around 15-30 minutes then go and do some writing rather than spend 4 hours doom scrolling.
I’ve legit got so much work done it staggers the mind.
I stopped using Reddit completely on July first, and in that time I’ve got a reflective log completed and submitted, a report on disruptive fintech completed a week early and submitted and now a mini dissertation completed 2 weeks early.
It’s almost as if spending my time doing coursework is better than freaking out trying to finish it and submit to turnitin 30 seconds before the deadline while praying the connection doesn’t fail.
Anyway…
We all use social media in different ways. For me, I use it primarily as a relatively mindless activity I can engage in when my brain is too tired to do something that I actually care about. For example, at work I often write comments when I am stuck or feeling burned out, and taking the time to rest in this way helps my brain recover and often after a while the solution to my problem pops into my head and I can proceed.
This was actually how the internet was before Reddit as well.
People move and adapt. Reddit wasn’t always the shining beacon of communities you think it currently is.
Activity Pub is a clear improvement over Reddit, and separating from Spez’s incompetence is a bonus.
ObiSome people want it all and they want it now. No patience to help build a better tomorrow when there’s a shitty today they can have.
That is true of most people. Those aren’t the ones that matterfor building something new and will migrate eventually. It’s always been a minority of users who do the heavy lifting of establishing thriving communities and those peoplez by definition, are the ones who are willing to roll their sleeves up and do that work on a new platform when the old one stops working for them.
Reddit wasn’t always the shining beacon of communities you think it currently is.
You are putting words into my mouth that I did not speak nor do I think; I have only pointed out that there are communities on Reddit that do not have a strong presence here whose absence I miss.
People move and adapt.
While I hope you are correct in this case, this is not always true. Sometimes good things are simply lost.
Activity Pub is a clear improvement over Reddit, and separating from Spez’s incompetence is a bonus.
I agree, which is why I have shifted the vast majority of the time I spent on Reddit here instead.
TheHighRoadMy response to this was to delete my modded Sync and transition fully to Lemmy. Done dabbling.
mawkishdaveMaybe Lemmy should change their icon to this mural /s
Kyoyeou (Ki jəʊ juː)Journals talking about it is a great thing, a pixel that holds 5 minutes will have a small impact, a jour Al that is indexed and appears when you write “Reddit” online, will have an even bigger impact
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?
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.
This is not true: QR codes have built in error correction, they are designed specifically for the purpose of working when many pixels are distorted
Hello Hotelyou need to configure it to “max” tho
QR codes have error corrections up to about ~30% error tolerance when using the highest error correction level
It’s worth noting the QR code from earlier went to this site and was not lemmy related
Ah, my mistake! I misunderstood when the post said “this site” I took it to mean “this site we are on”
I’ll edit my comment
Ah I can see that. I just wrote “this site” to keep the mystery of what the QR codes to a little alive like how it’s be if you scanned it
randintAh, I actually did successfully scan the qr code to a website promoting veganism. It was Dominion.
(there is no evidence so far that would prove this).
i saw a (likely deleted) post saying there were pixels with no user names of those who changed it “aint that sus”
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. 
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.
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.
Because they’re fans of ostrich protesting, put your head in the sand and pretend the problem dissappears.
Efforts ought to be focused more on redirecting people to / advertising Lemmy. Any entailed increase in DAUs for Reddit would be, ultimately, temporary.
It’s not easy to advertise the fediverse because the choices easily overwhelm people. Just like email, what needs to happen to thrive is for large providers to appear such that there’s like 4 big options to choose from and then the bunch of small options for those that want to look deeper.
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.
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.
Incompetent at not being a piece of shit
I would say that he is still incompetent after that, public image is important in the long term, and he completely ruined that.
He would have made far more by preserving it.
public image is important in the long term, and he completely ruined that.
It’s not important if the shareholders can net a specific amount in the short term that makes them happy.
He would have made far more by preserving it.
Well, that’s the thing. I’m saying as long as he meets a threshold that makes the shareholders/investors happy, then he’s competent.
Besides, the “public image” of the website has always been mediocre.
You’re basically saying he’s not incompetent if he finds a new bag holder.
I disagree. I think spez is trying his best. He isn’t simply trying to find a bag holder to dump reddit on.