Reddit’s 2023 r/Place turned into a battleground for dunking on the CEO

HLMenckenFan@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 417 points –
Reddit’s 2023 r/Place dunks on the CEO in colorful terms
polygon.com
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Giving the site massive amounts of traffic in attempt to crowdsource a another 100x30 pixel "Fuck Spez" banner. Spez must be getting pads on his back for this.

A burst of traffic doesn't mean much if it doesn't stay. It's a safe assumption that most people participating in "fuck spez" already had an account, so they aren't getting many new users from this.

Is there any indication people have actually left Reddit? Obviously here on Lemmy a lot of us came from Reddit but we're definitely a small minority.

most people participating in “fuck spez” already had an account, so they aren’t getting many new users from this.

Why would a person even become a new user just to shit on spez, they have no stake in the drama anyway? I still have an account but I have lessened my usage to a fraction. I don't go to R/place to "protest", nor do I make bot accounts or alts to spam the place.

The thing is, most of the accounts participating this year were bots made specifically for this. Yes it's a burst of traffic, but it's a burst of traffic that will drop off a cliff as soon as it's over.

The botting was so bad this year that a small community or a single person couldn't do anything, I tried to mess around with an 8 pixel space and as soon as I put a pixel down, it was undone.

The Germans had something like 50k or more bots set up for this. That's why there were so many German flags everywhere.