This seems like a lot of effort that achieved nothing but adding to R’s traffic numbers.
There was like 3 major articles about it so as far as protests go it was successful. Did you expect Spez to post a video crying about it?
r/place would have been successful even if zero protestors even thought about going there. That’s the unfortunate reality. You gotta understand that in terms of traffic (this includes bots and streamers), we’re nowhere near reddit to make any difference.
Given that, what would we have accomplished had we just stayed silent? I’m not saying all of us must participate (that would be stupid of me), but we can still do something despite the odds.
A lot of people are blissfully unaware of the protests. A lot of people don’t even know spez. Much less knows about the fediverse or other alternatives. I think it’s worth it to even get those people thinking why a lot of people are reacting to spez that way.
You gotta understand that in terms of traffic (this includes bots and streamers), we’re nowhere near reddit to make any difference.
What I don’t understand is why that matters. Why make it an us vs them thing?
If you want to move on from R, move on.
Given that, what would we have accomplished had we just stayed silent?
Exactly what was achieved, nothing. The API blackouts showed the admins don’t care what the community thinks or wants, and no amount of fuck spez on r/palce was going to change that.
If you want to save R, this is not the place to do it. (and it cannot be done.)
A lot of people are blissfully unaware of the protests.
And the majority of R users will never care. That is my point. Most people go there for fun and do not care about anything else.
That will not change.
What I don’t understand is why that matters. Why make it an us vs them thing?
Because many protesters called reddit their home for years and would probably have never left if what happened didn’t happen. They don’t hate reddit - they hate what spez and the top management are doing to it.
In my case, there are still communities there that haven’t moved here nor on other alternatives. You can say start a community, but that’s being simplistic. It’s hard to make a community when you’re the only one active there.
Exactly what was achieved, nothing. The API blackouts showed the admins don’t care what the community thinks or wants, and no amount of fuck spez on r/palce was going to change that.
I disagree. This is about money. This is about investors. This is about advertisers. It’s the same reason why there are no ads on nsfw subs.
Sure, they can show investors/advertisers how much traffic there is, but they also can’t hide how much turmoil there is. And we all know advertisers care about how their brand is perceived, while investors are also concerned about a site’s stability. At the very least, it’ll give them pause since there are other places to advertise without all the hate and instability.
Investors and businesses aren’t (always) stupid. It’s impossible to miss that many accounts on r/place were bots which means nothing to their goals (and even hinder them).
And the majority of R users will never care. That is my point. Most people go there for fun and do not care about anything else.
Everyone knows that. But what about the users who don’t even know what’s going on? What about those who want to leave but have no idea there are alternatives?
And don’t bother telling me no one will come after learning about alternatives. Tons of us came here exactly because of that. It may not be a huge wave (probably a trickle, if that), but it’s much better than nothing.
That will not change.
Then why bother protesting ANYTHING at this point? And I’m not talking about just reddit.
Then why bother protesting ANYTHING at this point?
The protest failed, you need to accept that. You sound really emotionally invested in R. So nothing I say will likely change that.
I am saddened that r is over for me, but honestly the 2 or 3 hours a day freed up by that has made me not even want to go back.
Anyway, I am going to follow my own advice and stop talking about it. Time to go for a walk.
Lol no. I’m definitely not invested. I just deleted the account I made for r/place literally half an hour ago and uninstalled the app.
I also don’t believe the protest failed because killing reddit was never my goal nor expectation. We’re on lemmy/kbin. That’s a win. There are people who think the way to win is to bring down reddit, but imho that’s simply impossible.
Enjoy your walk. :)
Unfortunately I can’t because there’s a storm here. :(
Holy shit, you made a new account and installed the official app when they started /r/place again?
Yeah. It’s not that hard. And it’s not like there weren’t thousands (I’m not even exaggerating - it’s probably tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands) 1-karma 1-day-old accounts there for bots. So no, i did not cause reddit’s traffic to skyrocket, if that’s what you’re trying to get to.
Because of this lots more people got to know about reddits api problem… the bigger streamers had 100k viewers each and they worked together to create it. I would say it’s fair to assume that more than a million people could see this yesterday, because it was also on the twitch frontpage for a decent amount of time.
The german steamer’s manager even got a call by reddit if they need anything, a day before he helped to create this piece haha
And what did that achieve?
Nothing.
I am not saying the effort was worthless, but the reality is it changed nothing. The admins road it out and the reddit user base (the vast majority) rolled over and accepted it.
Protesting reddit by being on reddit is worse than nothing. You are still pumping up traffic number to a site that has proven it does not give one shit what the users think.
Exposure in these numbers is worthless? Bad take imo.
I know you’re critical because you care, but it’s not stupid to protest within a wrong system. Some (most) people don’t have it as easy as us switching to other platforms like Lemmy. It’s always been predominantly the tech crowd. We’re privileged, because the structures are more known to us and therefore make it easier to switch.
Maybe with any Iuck it will kill /r/place for good. It’s overrun by bots, just like the rest of reddit
I love the replies in that thread complaining about “bots” as if past years weren’t exactly the same.
Everyone had a different overlay first, which is why it looks so chaotic, but it’s not botted. They made tampermonkey overlays for the most art pieces. Otherwise there is no way you can defend an attack. They did the same for ‘fuck spez’
Using an automated script to automatically place pixels without human intervention over a large number of accounts isn’t bottling?
I’m not sure how many people might have done that, but the overlays the person you’re replying to mentions is not that. The overlays literally just show you what colour each pixel should be and a human must place the pixel. Those are used by tons of legit people. While I have no doubt that there is botting, large communities on Reddit can have millions of people. They only have to convince less than one percent of their most dedicated members to use an overlay and they’ll be able to defend a sizable chunk of the canvas.
And we know of most cases where botting was used. They don’t grow as organically as the ‘fuck spez’ did with all the fuckups :D
Ah OK, I misunderstood what was meant by overlay
What the other guy wrote. How is using an overlay automatically botting? You still have to place your pixels manually.
As much as I’m on the fuck reddit train, I’m pretty sure it was already ending as this happened
Yes
Then why lie in the title?
To get clicks.
r/place (at least last year’s did) ends with a whiteout. I was asleep when this happened, but I’m 90% sure this happened because r/place was ending and not the other way around.
Is that why all of Reddit went down at the same time /r/place ended? Or was it because the admins panicked and hit the off button?
I’m going with the latter, considering past actions and evidence.
There’s no evidence. If they wanted to censor “fuck spez” they would have done it from the beginning. They were censoring nipples and piss - why did they leave those? There were tons of them all over the canvas, with a big one by various communities towards the end. Plus, it’s a known fact that admins remove all color but white towards the end - that’s why this was planned when people knew r/place was ending.
I also don’t see anyone mentioning reddit going down anywhere. You’re the first one to mention it that I’ve seen. You have links that reddit went down? Legit Q because not even the discords I’m in mention anything about that.
I think the admins deliberately chose not to censor “fuck spez” because it makes people think they are a free platform
I 104% expect them to use Spez as a scapegoat at this point. Even if that wasn’t their original intent, I fully expect that now they’re letting the hate focus on him, then they’ll fire him (don’t worry, he’ll still get a hefty severance package) in hopes that it will satisfy people. They want the anger many people have towards Reddit to get transferred to Spez.
After all, this is exactly how Spez ended up CEO. They pulled this with Ellen Pao.
They don’t care. They only care about engagement and they got excellent numbers this month, I wager.
Could be, tbh. Or they thought it’d just alienate users more and add more controversy.
Yeah, everyone was talking about it earlier today. Look at the down reports from earlier today: https://downdetector.com/status/reddit/
Ah. Interesting. Thanks for the link.
They did censor the spez guillotine though.
Yeah. But that’s expected (it’s like encouraging violence on a real person). And it’s only 1 artwork among a sea of “fuck spez” lol. The snoo hung upside-down (Mussolini -style) wasn’t.
