• Lennvor@kbin.social
    12·
    1 year ago

    After giving it some thought, I think you should indeed do that. For Lemmy AND Kbin and more.
    tl;dr: Advertising the existence of kbin and lemmy to random Reddit users is exactly what you want to do if you want to go against Reddit, and r/place is an excellent way of 1) telling people who don’t know about it that these platforms exist, and 2) showcasing the vitality and size of the communities on these platforms

    The major objection is that going to r/place gives Reddit the engagement and numbers they want for the IPO, and I think that’s a compelling point but I don’t think it’s as obvious as the people making that point seem to think. The idea of “don’t go on Reddit to protest Reddit, that’s just helping Reddit” has some “But you live in a society, curious” vibes to it; I think the question of whether to protest vs abstain and how to best protest is always going to depend on the details of what you’re protesting or abstaining from.

    In this case I think Kbin and Lemmy users should put their names on the r/place board according to the following reasoning:

    • The argument that you shouldn’t go on r/places is essentially saying that the best protest against Reddit is people leaving Reddit, which I agree with

    • Like all protests however it’s not that impactful if it’s a few isolated people doing it, you need to find a way to have users do it en masse. Coordination is key.

    • Same thing for going on Kbin and Lemmy and others - these platforms become good if they have enough users to sustain vibrant communities, they rely on network effects.

    • r/place as an event is a showcase of a community’s coordination. It both requires a community to be large and well-communicated and it gives a very practical, visible way of advertising that coordination to both rivals and random observers (there’s a paper out there proposing that this is why music evolved btw, hmmm that’s pretty cool)

    • what ultimately made me decide to post this is going on the thread for r/place’s first day. Look at the conversations, this is exactly what they’re doing: discussing the communities participating, commenting on what they draw and explicitly talking about what it means for those communities’ size and coordination

    • These comments also included people asking “why fuck u/spez ?” and “the only reason I’m still on Reddit is that there aren’t any alternatives”

    • This means there is a pool of normie users who aren’t aware of the protest, but are following r/places, and the “fuck u/spez” movement is effective in bringing their attention to it

    • By the same token there are tons of users who aren’t aware of existing potential Reddit alternatives (one of those comments got “Lemmy” as a recommendation in replies and said “interesting I’ll check it out” - they legit hadn’t heard about it).

    In conclusion:
    Advertising the existence of kbin and lemmy to random Reddit users is exactly what you want to do if you want to go against Reddit, and r/place is an excellent way of 1) telling people who don’t know about it that these platforms exist, and 2) showcasing the vitality and size of the communities on these platforms.

    Now in practice I don’t know that these platforms actually have the size and coordination to showcase that on r/places and that’s fine, clearly a huge percentage of people here believe that boycotting Reddit entirely is more effective or more convenient. But if the question is “which hurts Reddit more, promoting Lemmy/Kbin on r/places or avoiding r/places”, I’ve come to believe the answer is the first.

    EDIT: oh right another objection I saw was “but the admins will just erase it”, and there again look at the comments on r/place. Clear streisand effect on the guillotine, if there’s stuff for lemmy/kbin/squabble that’s visible enough and admins erase it it still works fine from a comms perspective.

  • effingjoe@kbin.social
    12·
    1 year ago

    I feel like Spez doesn’t give two tiny rat shits about anything but the fact that this counts as more engagement, which he can leverage to call Reddit more valuable.

    It should be one giant fediverse ad.

    • fiat_lux@kbin.social
      4·
      1 year ago

      Oh that makes sense. He gets to tweak the active users numbers to minimise the loss but call it community engagement. Then he shows the investors that number and they think the protest hype is overblown. Plus keep CPI income from advertisers coming in while trying to pivot to crypto bullshit.

      • effingjoe@kbin.social
        8·
        1 year ago

        He’s probably laughing his ass off at this form of “protest”. It’s functionally equivalent to when people get mad at a company so they buy their product and destroy it on social media.

        Think about what Spez wants, and do the opposite.

        • fiat_lux@kbin.social
          1·
          1 year ago

          The protests are also making it to more mainstream media like The Independent. Extra name recognition will be great in the less techy demographics.

    • AnonymousLlama@kbin.socialOP
      1·
      1 year ago

      Always great to be about to look back at these things over the years and see how it’s progressed. Be great to see if a majority of the 2023 place was filled with “fuck Spez”, exactly what he deserves

  • fiat_lux@kbin.social
    11·
    1 year ago

    I just assumed the current place was a way of honeypotting dissenting organised accounts. It wouldn’t be the first time place had mod/administrator drama. Granted last time they were just overwriting pixel data, but logging account id and timestamps in addition to a hex code is pretty trivial extra code.

    • parrot-party@kbin.social
      1·
      1 year ago

      I fail to see the goal of “finding dissenters”. Reddit wants users. They aren’t going to ban users for placing pixels. Besides, they already know the worst dissenters because they write fuck spez in their comments.

      • fiat_lux@kbin.social
        2·
        1 year ago

        They can flag the accounts and shadowban based on metrics. Keeps them in total user count, might drive more signups too afterwards. They know who writes “fuck spez” in comments, but they don’t know which accounts are run by single people or coordinated groups. Place potentially provides some of that information.

        Reddit wants users who engage authentically with content, generate interesting content, and interact with ads. High-intent users, not people who coordinate to post “fuck spez” and bad-mouth Reddit.

        Whether they’re forward planning enough to realise that is another issue altogether.

  • chaogomu@kbin.social
    9·
    1 year ago

    Apparently there was a guillotine on the French Flag that had the word spez below the blade. Admins cheated and replaced it all with white pixels to match the background of the flag.

    • bruzie@lemmy.nz
      1·
      1 year ago

      There’s a gif of random coloured splats covering it over. When it first went up it had a snoo with SPEZ written in white on a red background for its eyes. It was heavily brigaded. If you click on any random spot it’s most likely a brand new bot account, or a bot account from last year.

  • AnonymousLlama@kbin.socialOP
    4·
    1 year ago

    Never forgot what old mate Spez took from us. The least he deserves is a big portion of the 2023 places map dedicated to his shithouse handling of Reddit

    • atzanteol@sh.itjust.works
      2·
      1 year ago

      Yep. A good section of it at least. Other anti-spez stuff in there too. Can’t imagine why they thought this was a good time to do this…

      • Hegar@kbin.social
        2·
        1 year ago

        They didn’t. It’s been delayed again and again since April and they just decided not to wait any longer. Reddit has admitted it’s not a great time for this.