‘FUCK SPEZ’: Reddit Users Unite to Turn r/Place Mural Into a Protest::Reddit’s collaborative art project seemingly has one overarching message to Reddit’s CEO.
‘FUCK SPEZ’: Reddit Users Unite to Turn r/Place Mural Into a Protest::Reddit’s collaborative art project seemingly has one overarching message to Reddit’s CEO.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. The fact that these articles are making fairly large headlines is proof enough that this event is backfiring.
A couple days of engagement traffic do not outweigh the negative PR and advertising impact from this event.
If you were a company, you might think twice before advertising on a site that has their users actively, publicly, and loudly trashing on the CEO. It says a lot that it’s happening in the first place. Says even more that they aren’t able to stop it.
Also, look at the activity numbers here. I’m not trying to trash on Lemmy, but we are a drop on the bucket. It’s far more effective for us to be visible and loud than silent and ignored.
For clarity sake, I’m not encouraging anyone to go do anything, nor the other way around. But if you want to, ignore the comments, saying that this is going to say, Reddit with traffic and engagement from you if you go. It clearly isn’t, and your loud protest is valuable. 
Isn’t this just wishful thinking? Let’s be 100% real for a moment, those people posting fuck spez on r/place aren’t doing it because they’re moving or have moved to an alternative, they’re doing it because they are addicted to Reddit and can’t stop using it. The true protest is moving to an alternative like Lemmy.
If I’m an advertiser, all I see is a very captive audience. This isn’t like the Twitter situation, where your ads will be shown to increasingly objectionable content. In fact, with all the users begrudgingly downloading the official Reddit app, the value of advertising on Reddit may be going up not down.
That being said, Reddit has never been a good place for advertising outside of a few niches, and that hasn’t changed, so in the long run Reddit most likely won’t survive. But in the short run, I don’t think this is the victory lap.
There is no true protest. Let people react how they want. I don’t understand the gatekeeping on how to respond against spez. If you want to leave Reddit completely and stay on Lemmy, great. If others want to burn the site down in protest, that’s great as well. Why are so many people on Lemmy trashing people who similarly hate how Reddit is now? As if it would make a difference anyhow if they listened to you.
Because they’re fans of ostrich protesting, put your head in the sand and pretend the problem dissappears.
That or they’re the same content junkies who can’t seem to scroll past or block things that don’t interest them like some self hating masochist.