Reddit’s 2023 r/Place turned into a battleground for dunking on the CEO
Reddit’s 2023 r/Place turned into a battleground for dunking on the CEO
Redditors are trying to Google bomb search engines with an collaboratively made image that reads ‘Fuck Spez’
I just love how pervasive the hate is. Like, you know you fucked up when something like this can coalesce and unify around a single message.
Really says something.
120It does feel ultimately kind of meaningless though. I remember going through this with Ellen Pao. She made all the unpopular decisions the Reddit board wanted to make anyway and rode away into the sunset. Just a fall guy essentially. Feels like we’re going through the same motions with Spez.
78Man, I don't know. I know this is just a personal anecdote, but around my friend circle, I haven't gotten a single share from reddit in over a month when we used to send links back and forth daily. Those same people have said they haven't visited reddit in a month, other than the rare checkin on the drama.
I'm sure the significance of the impact is relatively small, but I'd also guess many of those that left were heavy users and contributors. I'll go over there to check every few days and have noticed the content quality is significantly worse than 2 months ago.
That said, it is also very possible this whole thing blows over and the million or so of us that left are meaningless in reddits overall lifespan.
41I’m not so sure. I still think that Ellen Pao was pushed off the glass cliff. I’m expecting the same thing to happen to Linda Yaccarino at The Company Formerly Known as Twitter.
Spez is directing this. He’s leaning into it. He’s embraced what Musk is doing at The Company Formerly Known as Twitter. He has publicly mocked both users and mods who have signaled their concerns, it was his decision and his timeline. It’s not like he’s a recent hire brought into a failing company.
Spez isn’t the fall guy. He’s the bad guy.
40The difference is that Ellen Pao was that was talent acquisition.
And I think, with Spez, the analogy is closer to the landed gentry
10
I just love how pervasive the hate
The opposite of love isn't hate. It's indifference.
5
Another fun thing is that at 0,0 in the center of the canvas it said "Never forget what they stole from you r/save3rdpartyapps" and later had a join-lemmy.org banner above it. We also had a few other places for the join-lemmy banner but that was the final location, and a big thanks to the Black Company discord server for helping with that.
54A Reddit spokesperson declined to comment about this year’s edition of r/Place, telling Polygon via email “redditors are going to reddit.”
Honestly, that's probably the best response he could've given.
49"Redditors went to Reddit to tell Reddit to fuck off" would be the more accurate statement. The engagement they're touting is like your ex getting your "Dear John" letter and gushing about how much you really care because you took the time to say goodbye.
30
Wow guys here's a great idea let's go on this app we said we were done using and fill it with traffic so that the CEO can say people are still using it so their changes had a minimal effect.
Come on people, the same thing happened when Musk took over Twitter. Stop using the fucking app if you don't like it, Spez doesn't give a fuck if you send him hate, because you're lining his pockets in the process.
Look at it this way, if someone went up to you, handed you a dollar and told you to fuck off, would you care? Of course not! You'd take the dollar and fuck off!
29We should probably discourage these posts here too. There seems to be a lot of content about reddit here on Lemmy sometimes... I thought it would die down.
7I agree, what happened with Reddit is done. Either the app will survive or it won't. There's about as much use in complaining about it here as there is complaining about it on Reddit. The only people seeing it here already made the decision to switch, and the people seeing it there don't care.
3
Might be more accurate to say, in this case, that they're telling you, "fuck you and pay me a dollar." And then Redditors say "fuck you and here's a dollar."
5Mutual fucking off
2
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.
24A 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.
18Is 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.
5most 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.
2
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.
11
I can’t believe they would expect anything else. It was way too soon for an event like this.
21Wait, what the hell happened at the end with the enormous "FUCK SPEZ!" that covered the whole thing? Watch the timelapse, you can see it as all the pixels start to fade to white:
19At the end you can only place grey scale pixels, and after that only white pixels
8That's just how Place has always ended, with an automatic random white tile placement that slowly erases everything.
5It's not random. At the end they let users place a pixel just as before, but the only colour available is white. It's not random hence why there was an organised push for the huge Fuck Spez that appeared.
30
I imagine if it keeps Reddit in the news, so they can more credibly talk up that upcoming IPO, they are happy to let as many users as they want badmouth the guy in charge.
11All of those protesters that went to Reddit for the last week to engage, generate ad revenue, and ultimately benefit Reddit, really showed them. Idiots.
3Yes because if I'm an investor I see an uptick in engagement and don't ask a single question about it. I invest blindly based solely on numbers not on news articles blatantly posting issues with the CEO. I DEFINITELY want to invest in a company that. A.) Has a CEO who is mired in controversy B.) Has communities dedicated to taking engagement away. C.) Has an uptick in use once a year for this event, which is undermining the companies ability for engagement longterm.
45People who say stuff like what the person you're answering said are just being naive. To them, protest = boycott. Personally, i dislike retreating with tails between my legs (but I'm not going to try to convince people to do anything either way). They also seem to believe there are so many protestors that any action we do affects reddit so much. It's hilarious. They left reddit but retained reddit's black and white mentality.
10People still invest in Tesla even though Musk is at helm.
Personally, I didn’t engage because I felt to “nothing” them during their big event was more worthwhile and also contributed to lessening my overall Reddit visits. Ultimately, however, numbers are what speak to investors.
2
Really glad to see it
1