Yes. Yes he can.
My guess is Reddit is doing this to temporarily raise traffic. It’s like rage bait. They know they’re pissing people off and protestors will flood the site, but traffic is traffic. If they can demonstrate engagement it must be good enough for the upcoming IPO.
Right? I don’t understand why people on the fediverse are getting excited about this. At best, Reddit will have admins to insta-wipe anything objectionable. At worst, Reddit will point to the increased engagement as a sign that the protesters gave up and came back.
The best protest would be a blank canvas.
That’s genius honestly. The void should win this year
Last Week Tonight is on break so The Void should be available for engagements.
I recall watching the The Void form in a timelapse and just how it consumed everything around it.
Anyone would see that a one time event engagement doesn’t solve anything, you cannot do the r/place every week…
It’s really apparent that Spez and the rest of the admin team don’t actually use Reddit on a day to day basis. Their decisions are like some consultant coming in and recommending ideas.
deleted by creator
I recently listened to a delightful pair of Behind the Bastards episodes (a podcast I can’t possibly recommend enough) about Jack Welch, the darling of the modern C-suite and those aspiring to such.
The way he shaped modern capitalism to the detriment of all is terrifying. But the hilarious aside is much he was like Trump, Musk, Zuckbot, spez and all the rest. A raging little boy who has been dealt some insignificant slight, generally imagined, who wants to burn down the world as a result.
But, since this was entirely in the pre-Internet era, and he was mostly a darling of the press when interviewed for his pithy anecdotes about how to business, it mostly flew under the radar. The modern hyper toxic tech bro CEO or his presumptively dumber and louder counterparts who have still stumbled into social media is nothing new. They are just airing their dirty laundry in the public square with a much bigger megaphone.
I recall listening to an interview with a psychologist who made a special study of psychopaths, but it was a long while back so I don’t recall the details, except that he noted that most rich corporate types definitely fit the mold.
In a similar vein, I vaguely remember a sociological tract detailing the value of psychopathy in ye olden times (think at the tribal level) as they both want power and are willing to make the hard choices that others might be too empathetic to do.
But their continued existence and proliferation among certain sectors (business, politics, religion) has become a detriment.
One of the jobs that I worked for awhile had a bunch of old timers waiting for their pensions to be ready and newer people who only lasted a few years, with basically nobody in between. The old timers seemed weirdly surprised that everyone who didn’t have the same heritage/grandfathered in incentives and benefits didn’t want to stick around. I got to watch the tail end of the transition from the old engineer-run company that all the old guys talked about, to one run by beancounters who stiffed people on raises, bonuses, and promotions when times were good, and had plenty of layoffs when times dropped to ok. Thanks Jack Welch. I left pretty much right after my 401k match was fully vested.
I guess I’ve been ‘lucky’ to be formerly part of an almost completely outsourced profession (IT) since right around when it was getting outsourced. So it’s all sadly old hat to me… not an endorsement, simply a tired observation.
I can’t even view it on mobile without logging in or getting an app.
He seems desperate to make Reddit work. It seems that he can’t take the ego hit to back pedal his decision and is trying to figure out a way forward.
My gut says this is an effort to make employees feel good after layoffs and protests, but also this looks to be someone to juice the monthly active users metric before an IPO roadshow or fundraising or something.
Ironically /r/place would be a good opportunity to win users to the official app, they probably should have done that before the API price changes to shake the tree of third party apps, so to speak.
Anyways, this is going to be 80% “fuck /u/spez” memes, a German flag, the Apollo logo, and a perfect OSU game logo.
I almost decided to make an account just to participate in the new /r/place, but then I would be supporting Reddit.
Maybe some employee suggested r/place a joke, fully knowing it would be a bad idea and management just ran with it.
Yes.
Next question.
Came here to say exactly this. Take my upvote!
Engagement is what matters, and that’s driven by habits. The protests were disruptive. The switching of apps is disruptive. I see this more as a way to distract and bring up engagement again.
Is it a good idea? Honestly, if they want to succeed I think they should focus on what has become broken with reddit first
When you have that much money, does it matter?
Trump and Musk are great examples of being too rich to fall. Once you get to that point, you can fuck the poor as much as you want. The only way for you to fall is to fuck with other powerful people a la that pedo ring leader who was murdered by guards after getting caught.
I’m not sure why Huffman doesn’t just do away with their PR department and respond to media inquiries with a poop emoji like his hero.
Probably he just doesn’t want to be accused of being unoriginal. He wishes he’d thought of it first.
Not really the focus of the article, but I think that /r/place was a neat idea, but hard to produce much with.
I feel like maybe there are forms of collaborative art that might go further, like letting people propose various changes to a chunk of pixels on an artwork and letting people vote on the changes.
Being rich literally makes you delusional.
If you still have an account and want to do some good with r/place your can join the effort to advertise r/EndFPTP
While I agree with that cause I would like to point out to other readers that it is not directly related to the spez situation.
Yes correct, sorry if that was confusing.
What a pity it would be if /r/place was suddenly invaded by a Fediverse attack fleet of instances, striking at Spez’s weak spot, with the goal of freeing the Reddit peons from their alien overlords.
Nah, they want the attention. Don’t give it to them
I agree with you in principle, but speaking from strictly a strategic perspective, /r/place presents a vulnerability that can be exploited without contributing what Reddit really needs to regain its status - content.
In the context of a social media war, this means we can use the space to peel off users who wouldn’t have been introduced to the Fediverse otherwise, with no risk of harming ourselves or providing Reddit more than a temporary moment of attention. There’s been a concerted effort to remove links to Fediverse resources in many subs, and for a great deal of redditors, they’re in the dark about what the Fediverse represents and how much better it is than Reddit.
Plus it’s just cool to fuck with Spez, and the Fediverse is so cool in general that I’d love to see what the effect would be if we united against a common enemy.
No that wouldn’t do what you think it would. And don’t need to stoop to that level. Show we’re better by being better. That’s all.
My fantasies of Fediverse starships aside, let’s be honest. Neither of us have any idea what it would do, as it’s never been done before. And, at least for me, it would be fun to do, even if we don’t need to do it.
I don’t really see it as stooping to their level. After all I’m not suggesting we just go scrawl “fuck Spez” all over the place - we’re already doing that enough here. But sticking up Lemmy, Kbin and Mastodon logos would be a positive organic social media campaign meant to improve the lives of its viewers - and unlike most advertisements, entirely driven by the desire to help others looking for free non-corporate alternatives.
This certainly seems better than any campaign Meta, Twitter, or Reddit could come up with, so I’d say we would be showing them that we’re better by being better.
