'FUCK SPEZ': Reddit Users Unite to Turn r/Place Mural Into a Protest

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 1149 points – 'FUCK SPEZ': Reddit Users Unite to Turn r/Place Mural Into a Protest
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'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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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.

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

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

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.

If you want to take a peek without sending traffic to them then there is a YouTube livestream of r/place.

My response to this was to delete my modded Sync and transition fully to Lemmy. Done dabbling.

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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.

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

you need to configure it to "max" for the most protection and most size

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" and I never bothered to check it.

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

Ah, 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"

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.

The fact that they're bringing this back in a month other than April is pathetic. I don't know what species is worse. You don't see them trying to fuck each other over for a goddamn percentage.

the problem is that the r/place this out of season will be known only by its meta because very few are posting for non meta reasons

Even if the designs are less fancy than before it is still very active.

Yep, which is all Spez and the other higher ups care about. Stop using reddit.

Quantity over quality for them. Very obviously so.

its bot traffic, copy+pastes, or meta commentary

its debatable if r/place is used by humans in any notable capacity.

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. We have Lemmy. Get over it.

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 at best. Maybe 2 levels of quality higher than 4chan.

Remember, r/watchpeopledie used to be a subreddit. For a long, long time.

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.

please elaborate, most here disagree so mutch that they cannot see your perspective

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.

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.

Why do people even participate after all this mess

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.

I think using the site you're protesting against is peak slacktivism

Why do they want to save the site? The leadership deserves to see it die.

It's kinda cozy on lemm.ee, I like it

Btw, do you guys also have JSON error when you try to upload some files for like a banner or something? Or is it just me?

Nah, I had the same issue too. It turned out to be the size of the banner, but I went through trial and error to get the right size because I couldn’t find any lemmy documentation for what the right size is.

There's nothing wrong with Reddit trying to be profitable. It should be profitable.

Apollo and Reddit Is Fun even had large subscriber bases willing to pay up to support our usage.

Reddit leadership is just really shitty. That is just the reality. Even if they wanted to be profitable, Spez simply doesn't know how to get there.

there is a problem, in the same way your cat pees on your rug to mark territory, its instincts for marking are too strong and its higher reasoning is too weak to stop it. its when capitalism being an instinct, takes over higher brain functions is it a problem.

No, community-owned efforts like Lemmy and Debian exist precisely because neither corporations nor governments are fit to run them.

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.

That or they're the same content junkies who can't seem to scroll past or block things that don't interest them like some self hating masochist.

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

How many?

tree fiddy

WELL it was about that time that I realized Frisbeedude wasn't just a poster, but was about eight stories tall and was a crustacean from the Protozoic era.

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!

THAT 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 also like to watch a slowmo trainwreck from a 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... 😑

I 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:

  1. completely switch to Lemmy (or similar alternative).

  2. use the official reddit app and deal with it

  3. use social media less (pull the plug overall per say)

  4. Use a paid subscription 3rd party app (example infinity for reddit

  5. 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.

Yes 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."

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

That's the reddit logic for you.

Make a huge, heavily invested deal about a cause.

Do something that suggests that there's going to be a follow-up of change.

But actually do nothing about it and resume status-quo, while talking about how there could've been change, what can be done and act all defeatist.

I'm on a private sub with a whole cross section of people (it's a Keble sub) and so many of them where angry and never gonna use Reddit again, none of them have left the sub and still post though.

That's disappointing, Lemmy is fantastic but I guess I understand it's hard to break up with what's familiar

It takes a commitment. I still use Reddit, but only if I run out of content on fedi.

I'm firmly in the camp that once the major 3rd party apps end up making lemmy apps there will be a gradual migration

I think it's chicken and egg.

I find it hard to spend much time on Lemmy cause there's not as much content being posted... Which is because there aren't as many users... But users won't come until there's content...

I also still stand by the whole instance thing being confusing for someone to join (though I do understand its benefits I guess)

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

Exactly, I'm fully expecting the admins to wipe out any undesirable things off the wall the second the timer runs out. And that's the wall they'll show to their investors.

You can't spend engagement. It's not real.

But you can convince advertisers to give you money based on how much engagement the site gets and therefore how much engagement their ads are likely to get. ~Cherri

The admins can push whatever stupid numbers they want. People were not somehow tricked into giving the site a second wind, by turning this desperate exploitation of a beloved icon into a vulgar billboard against the fucker selling us out, or by dumping all the soon-to-be-stolen awards onto comments asking what the fuck he thinks he's doing.

The nature of bad faith is that there is no right answer. Any response, including no response, will be twisted around and treated as victory, because the person being condemned for making shit up gets to make shit up. There are no circumstances where they don't go "Ah-HA!" There is no point scolding people for not doing the thing that would stop this, because that thing does not exist. People who care what's real just have to deal with it and act in spite of it.

Reddit has the worst per-user stats of any social media site, by an order of magnitude... and the bump in engagement here is bluntly saying it's time to leave.

If you run an ad blocker and no ads turn up when you browse , they they won't get ad money from you. Negating the value of engagement.

You went there, generated content for them which is generating publicity. Other people, without ad blockers, are going there to see it ..

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.

Exactly. The real protest would have been to totally ignore r/place. Could you imagine a blank canvas. That would have been epic.

Problem is, that reddit themselves would just start using bots to create simulated pixel placements so it would look like people are interacting such that people feel they must start playing as well. Much like agar.io or similar .io games that are actually not real multiplayer games untill they gain critical mass, bit still probably contains bots.

Bizarre that people are on Reddit complaining about reddit still

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.

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.

Yeah you're right. I'll think about that.

There might be some solutions for this.

If they still don't know what lemmy is, they aren't the type of educated we need to be pushing towards lemmy.

This has been my thought.. I'm sure there is still an extremely large number of productive, healthy users left on reddit. However, I think the proportion of the userbase sways very heavily towards trolls, bots, and toxic users at this point.

I feel okay with shutting the hatch to a flooding chamber at the cost of a few, to save the many others on the ship..

Most of the healthy users have left reddit. Now just let reddit consume itself and fulfill its new destiny to become a bot-filled, anti-intellectual, hate-filled, giant corporate circle-jerk.

I also think this whole place thing being back up is a test from Reddit how engaging the community is in their “Quarterly Reports!”. Many people and old time users left Reddit stating that losing the active or dedicated users will be enough for them to go down and Reddit needs data to support the opposite. In Reddit’s eye if “F u/spez” generates clicks and ad revenues, why not letting it loose!

Louis Rosmann put it nice on his series of videos about the topic. And unfortunately Reddit will still have that portion of users that are so invested in it, that will play along with whatever Reddit cooks for them.

For me, the simple fact that Reddit thinks they “own” the data that millions of people have put the time into making, was an enough reason to stop participating in anything there. Including upvoting and downvoting.

Half the problem is, that's where people are.

The network effect exists because adoption is a feature you can't design.

EDIT: I attached this to the wrong comment

if you don't want the drama, you can always block the reddit communities from your account, be a pioneer for the new culture of Lemmy, ping me if you found something cool. we are constantly getting new people who aren't over our "shared Ex" yet. be patient with them.

Sounded more like they were talking about the users that are still on Reddit, not the ones that came here but talk about Reddit.

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.

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

You might have something here. Development would be easy but maintenance and moderation is another beast.

which is why it should be limited as a yearly event similar to r/place right now.

It's not federated but there is pixelcanvas.io, which is like r/place but infinite and not controlled by Reddit

Also an app called Everyone Draw

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

please be patient, people cant know everything, teach them to stop but don't jeer at them.

Okay I admit I was a bit harsh, but arghhh, sometimes it gets frustrating...

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

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.

Best protest would be if people didn't obsess over clicking pixels in r/place, giving the site traffic. I can't stand these people.

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).

Can't you track who draws the pixels and timing of said pixels or some shit?

Yea, a bunch of admins edited at the last minute to remove spez-comments

Spez Démission! in true french fashion. Proud to be french. 🇫🇷

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

Especially with apps like memmy and avelon, the fediverse is much better than reddit will ever be. Now if only everyone knew about them. And reddit users just stopped using reddit.

Spez is just a scapegoat. He's supported by his board, which would continue this path with or without him as the "leader".

I don't get it, if it's so bad being on redit then don't come. Or is it like those women in abusive relationships where their husband/boyfriend beats the shit out of her and she still crawls back to him and for some reason can't imagine a life without him?

Because abusive relationships force people to stay in them for reasons people who haven't been in that situation could never understand. Seems you haven't been, so you drag people who have. Women, specifically. Fun!

I asked if those are related because I know that the second happens. But reading it back I agree I phased it very badly, sorry for that.