CheshireSnake

Ah. Interesting. Thanks for the link.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Thank you for this. I was kind of on the fence because of its ties to google but this helps a ton.

I did sound high-strung and aggressive, didn't I? 🤔

Apologies. I wasn't offended or anything. More shocked, tbh. I really should quit using social media after work. Lol

Lmao. What? Read my comment again. Slowly.

Ok here I'll help you out. The previous comment was complaining that people hate spez yet go back to reddit. Basically he's saying why go to a place where there's a person you hate, or maybe an idea you're against.

Now my comment in response to that is picking an individual food that a person hates (in my case is okra) to represent a single aspect I hate about reddit. Now because you hate that one single food (that one individual or concept/idea in reddit), does that mean you avoid all food (the whole of reddit)?

No, right? That would be dumb af. So just because i hate spez's guts doesn't mean i hate everything about reddit. There are still communities there that aren't on lemmy/kbin that I'm passionate about.

Honestly, if you still don't get it after this, i would be in awe. Lmao.

Personally, i enjoy watching people insist on adding nipples and piss to some artwork and watch admins give up on being subtle and erasing it wholesale, but that's just me. But yeah, what you said is hilarious, too.

I agree. I'm just not sure how that relates to what I said (not being snarky - just a bit confused).

There are still some people who are unaware of either spez, the protests, or reddit alternatives. Tbh, i still can't believe it. Even if they don't end up leaving, i think it's important for them to know a bit of history to understand things better when reddit pulls another shit like this (which they will probably do more of after the IPO).

Engaging on the platform and even constantly talking about the platform is a great sign of it's lasting influence.

You do realize you're on a sub dedicated to reddit, right? It's hypocritical if you're telling users to not engage yet stay in a sub that talks about the site.

Also, this is wrong. Advertisers do care about the traffic, but they also care about stability and how their brands will be perceived. This is why nsfw reddits don't advertise. Now put yourself in the shoes of an advertiser: there's a lot of traffic on reddit but there's a lot of hate and vitriol, with the threat of users leaving and just a lot of bots propping the communities up. Would you spend money to advertise on such a volatile site when there are literally other, maybe even bigger, sites available to you without all the BS or threats to how your brand/product will be perceived? I mean, you might. But you've probably made tons of better business decisions than that.

Another thing I keep forgetting to add is the exposure. I'm honestly shocked at how mamy people are ignorant to the protests. A lot of them don't even know who spez is. Even if they don't leave reddit, they'd at least have an idea of what reddit is becoming.

Would they care? Maybe not. But they can't even decide for themselves if they don't even know wtf is going on.