1d ago

Reddit bought giant ads in Paris, urging people to join

"Come make friends on Reddit"

147 comments

Hey you there reading this, I already upvoted all the anti-Reddit comments in this post, you can go rest instead

Proud to be part of the resistance

Maybe they shouldn't have permabanned thousands of active users like me, with a 12 year account and nearly 1 million Karma. People like me built Reddit, and as soon as HitlerPig was inaugurated, the DOGE Goblin demanded that Reddit purge its membership. Now they're stuck with bots, novelty accounts, punsters, Russian Propaganda Farmers, MAGA activists, etc.
- Did you get any reason for the ban?

Looks like there's enough space to write "lemmy" in there

Yo france, you busy this evening? There are some new canvises we can paint on. A nice "Reddit ist so ein Pimmel" - germany

Why don't they just fire up some more bots?

Are those signa blocking windows
- No they are remaking the building exterior so they put up a scaffolding, hidden behind the add and fake windows. It's a common practice in Paris, though there are talks of banning the adds to reduce visual pollution

Is France making an effort to untether itself from US tech companies like some other parts of Europe are?

les autres
I prefer "lesbian with autism" merci beaucoup
- What?
  
  It means "thanks a lot".

Now hear me out: we all put together some Money to Buy ads for lemmy lmao
- Why? We don't need the service to be popular. That's the great thing about it being decentralised, it kind of doesn't matter.
  Also we don't want a bunch of French people on here, speaking their strange heathen lingo.
  
  Trop tard! Mouhahahahha!
- I fear that Lemmy might not scale well. Many instances might die from it

I'm staying with my boyfriend because of his dog. Am I horrible?
Is there a Parisian who doesn't do rock climbing, Pilates, or ceramics?
I'm going to the Maldives but I'm composting, does that make up for it?
Just between you and me, who's ever bought fruit on the metro?
So, what do we do with the people on the wrong side of the escalator?
Has anyone ever found the exit at Chatelet, or is that a myth?
- Oh good, I was starting to distrust my French.
- These are all valid and important questions that need to be discussed... ;-)

That place is a doomer and mental illness circus.
- This place is even more pessimistic though
- Yeah Paris is shit
- Are we any better though?
  
  It’s been a backslide over there since the election.
  
  Much, much better. Just look at r/popular and tell me you don't feel negative.

Join, just so they can ban you for bullshit.
- My favorite reddit ban was when I was making a very obvious joke about how white people suck or something, and some worthless dumbfuck called me racist and I got an immediate permanent ban.
  
  It does not sound good.
- join, just so they can ban you for calling a Nazi a Nazi.

Reddit is the most new-user-unfriendly site I have ever been to. You've got to farm an unknown amount of karma before you can post or comment in subreddits. There's a reason I'm at Lemmy now. Fuck Reddit. (Also, 4chan is a toilet. The occasional nuggets of good stuff aren't worth trawling through pages of shitposts for.)
- reddit recently became hostile to new users, and inactive users(users that suddenly decide to use thier old accounts to comment) they just shadowban most of them now. the only people ive seen that succesful are the ones that are using other methods(not vpn) to hide thier device, fingerprinting, IP adress etc. even this is temporary, since reddit is also catching up to the other methods.
  
  Reddit after banning literally everyone: "WE DID IT! WE SAVED REDDIT!"
  
  That's funny cause all but one of my alts was banned, which so happened to me the only account I didn't use the same email address for. So I figured that email is the only tracking method they use. I've had no issue making new accounts under different address.
- Isn't 4chan dead and gone?
- It's worse than ever. Once you work your way up to being able to say anything - BAN! It's more of an echo chamber than ever before.
  
  They don't even let you see what you were banned for. Links to a comment that doesn't exist within your ban notification
- The good gteen texts always end up on other platforms anyway.
  
  And get reposted for decades to come
- you have summoned me?
- Moved here and haven't looked back.
  I do keep a Reddit account that is strictly used for informational/support type stuff (i.e. "help me figure out what type of widget I should buy for this task"). I avoid anything controversial on that account.
- The fucking acronyms and in-jokes don't help, either.

Rule of thumb: the more something is advertised, the more shit it is for one reason or another, and you'll do well to avoid it altogether. When I'm advising people on contractors, my number 1 rule is: if they're on TV, they're criminals, I promise you.
- I help friends and family with minor plumbing repairs and they will tell me:
  oh I had "x" company come and they did that
  " well it's all wrong "
  They charged me a lot of money for that!
  " why on earth would you have called them"
  Because I saw their advertisement on TV. I thought they were good
  " nah they're crooks"
- Mullvad is good though
  
  Their ads mostly carry a political message, like the one opposing chat control during an EU summit in Sweden...
  Mullvad VPN - an interview with the Swedish mole
  
  The only time I've seen Mullvad get promoted is by word of mouth.

Silly Reddit, bots aren’t going to sign up because of an ad

- It is still a very good place to have information on a variety of topics.
- TV show discussions threads, game-specific forums.
  I mean... some decided they don't like reddit and migrated...
  ...to Discord
  So yea, pick your poison, normies ain't coming here, the Fediverse is a nerd platform.
- Because I like pit bulls and deisel VW's. Nobody here likes them enough to post every day ...or even once a month ...or even once every 6 months...maybe once a year
  But I'm confident they will one day ! Viva la Pit Bulls !!! Viva La Lemmy!!!
  
  Or woodworking. Or drones. Or... basically any sport, including basket and soccer/football. Or Maine coons. Or tiny houses. Or off-grid cabins. Or...
- I don't use it for discussion, but for some information/support it is helpful to have a larger community to discuss with. I stay the fuck away from anything that has a hint of controversy though.
- I hate that still some troubleshooting that I need to do is much easier when I look for answers through Reddit...
- they haven't yet banned all the anti genocide people.
  
  Given the general demographics of Reddit, it would just be a bunch of bots left if they did this.

Wow, I've never seen them actually pull ads for membership. Site must be struggling for real users. Bot takeover isn't working out, shouldn't have banned the top users for petty bullshit.
The archive of past posts and problem solving is the greatest value of the site.
- raises hand
  Literally in the top 1% of karma users in 2023. Banned in 2024 for.....
  checks notes
  ........posting a comment that my bike was stolen when I was 7.
  Reddit claims the ban was done by a human. However I just cannot see a human looking at the post I got banned for, and saying "This guy deserves to get banned".
  My best theory, based on the timeline, is that they offered me a presale enter IPO offering before it went public. At the time I was on cancer treatment, and had $0 income, with my two sisters and mom paying for my apartment.
  I had no ability to buy an IPO.
  3 days after it went public, I still didn't own stock, and was banned. Because I said my bike was stolen 30+ years earlier.
  
  My ban was for expressing “extreme indifference” about Kissinger taking a dirt nap.
  
  sucks about the bike mang
  
  I hope you're cancer free now.
  ^^I ^^also ^^hope ^^you ^^get ^^your ^^bike ^^back.
  
  I got banned during women's March just for cheering. Lemmy is a perfect replacement.
- I got banned for saying we should have hanged every part of the Confederate leadership for treason.
  
  I too got banned for voicing non pc opinions.
- They've done it before in the USA. My guess is that they want to push their non-English offerings, which is something they've only focused on recently.
  
  Makes me wonder what the French equivalent of "glue pizza" will be.

Who wouldn't want to talk to bots and train "AI"?
- they banned and shadowbanned so many people, they nu-users to compesate for the loss of engagement.
- Comme c'est excitant!

Fuck Reddit and Fuck Spez.
- The guy that used to mod /r/jailbait? Yup. That guy.
  
  the alien called spez.
  
  It seems we are ruled by child rapists so it makes sense executives are into it too.

What the fuck, that looks absolutely desperate! I'm sure it will have the opposite effect. Fuck reddit.
- I don't know how difference france is from the US, but I generally believe people are kind of ignorant and thoughtless. These will pull in people. People click on "Four things that are secretly unhealthy - #3 will SHOCK you" chum all the time.
  
  the buzzfeed clickbait method.
  
  Wait what's number 3

I don't know about the rest of the images, but the last one is definitely photoshopped. Check out the reflection on the floor.
- Great find! Misinformation is getting out of control…
- Yeah I hate reddit as much as the next guy, but come on.
  I would say all of them are photoshopped.
  Also in the third image you can see in the reflection there's a word that is not mirrored.
  
  Also in the third image you can see in the reflection there's a word that is not mirrored.
  I cannot find it.
- The second picture on the house seems suspicious as well.
  By exception, advertising is forbidden at the following locations:
  On the walls of buildings except when these walls are blind or have at least one opening with a unit area of less than 0,50 m²
  Within 100 meters and in the field of visibility of buildings with an aesthetic, historic or picturesque character
  Source: https://entreprendre.service-public.fr/vosdroits/F24356?lang=en

jus engage bro, just give us more data bro, just doomscroll all day, comment all the post bro, just engage bro, we need to keep the users coming bro, so we strike a better deal with google bro

“Make an account”….”get banned before you can even verify”

Cringe.

I have been playing a game, Chasm, I Kickstarted years ago. I am having some difficulties and while Steam discussions are helpful for some, most discussions are on Reddit. The posts are 3+ years old, and every time I try to open one I get a notification that the discussion hasn't been reviewed by the community so I can only read it with the app. Shit website.
- You can insert ‘old.’ before any Reddit link (old.reddit.com) to bypass that crap
- Switching to old Reddit is a still-working loophole for that.
- I just redirect to a redlib instance, it works 99% of the time.

They have millions of posts, and this is the funniest they could find? Sheesh.

take them down
- Put the sticker of a lemmy instance over the Reddit logo
  
  Put a different QR code over the QR code

I would vandalise those to link to lemmy is I saw them tbh.

Desperation struck huh?

There's big money behind it now, I guess. 🤷

“Entre inconnus, on peut tour se dire” “Inconnus” but please sign in using this Google SSO modal.

Reddit: "Come make friends on Reddit, France!"
Also Reddit: "Ew... French 🤢"

Can anyone put lemmy stickers

How is this infuriating? Businesses have ads.
- Lol glad someone else had this thought. I get that people hate reddit here but this post is inane.
  
  Advertising is cancer and part of the enshitification process where capital is wasted
  I know a lot of it works but that's due to to people having poor media literacy

this is what the fediverse needs
- Nah, this is one more landmark on the eventual enshitifcation of every platform, only happening because as company that is publicly traded. Someone at Reddit HQ realized that they could make more money off new french users than the cost of ads. So then they have a fiduciary duty to do exactly that. Just like the reddit API-ocalypse, the finical benefits data from every redditors mobile being forced to use the official app was determined to be more profitable than those who would be pissed enough to leave.
  Either Lemmy dies or it grows enough to do the same eventually.
  
  they have to expand thier user base, after purging so many from the platform recently, and its being held up by bots currently,.
  
  Well but as far as I am aware Lemmy has no fiduciary responsibility, as it is not a corporation, is open source and uses a web standard to communicate. Therefore there is no requirement for instance server managers to use the "official" version of Lemmy and could refuse to implement anti-user features, like specific app requirements. So I would say it would be really really hard to enshittificate Lemmy, if not borderline impossible, because users would just use their own fork, which would still be interoperable.
  
  But lemmy cant be controlled like a company
  Maybe it gets smaller because people switch to piefed or something but i dont see how lemmy can enshitify the way corpo platforms can
- Seems pretty easy to 'improve' with some paint?
  r becomes f, add a .org

Is that what we were supposed to do on Reddit?
- Evidently they were friends, because they told me about Lemmy.

Nah dawg. I'm good on the censorship.

What's behind the fake building front?
And damn it's ugly in terms of city and building front and feel. Such a strong color. I wonder how it looks IRL.
- Behind the front is a building that looks a lot like what you're seeing.That's a common practice to make the construction work less visible. Of course, it's less useful when there's a giant red banner in the middle of it.

Reddit has something in common with Russia
- they do use thier troll farms to keep engagement up, now including the troll farms of the usa like palintir.
- Run by a clown?
- Full of bots.

do we have lemmy posters (as in the paper kind?)
- With some flour you can bring fediverse posters to your area!

I'm not sure about infuriating. Maybe more like pathetic. Can that even make economic sense if you're an ad-driven business yourself?

The worst part is their châtlet joke is actually good 😭.
I hope someone tags over all this.

'tain ça fait tiep 🤣

They even bought TV space. Apart from meeting apps, I'm not sure if I ever saw any other online network advertise on TV. Maybe Facebook did years ago, but I don't think so.

147 comments