They’ve had so many opportunities to advertise a competitor to migrate to, but instead they keep paying this guy to insult him.
The real fuck spez would be a blank canvas. He doesn’t care what we write on there as long as he’s getting clicks and engagement
Imagine cementing yourself into history as such a complete asshole that you were a critical catalyst for a movement towards decentralization.
Spez seeing this
Lots of people saying this is playing right into reddit’s hands, but can someone explain this reasoning to me please? People click on a pixel and reddit profits… how exactly?
Like this isn’t going to bring back their mods or power users, they’ve burned those bridges already and the exodus of lurkers is just a matter of time at this point. I don’t see how making some pixels say “fuck spez” helps them.
It drives active users and increases activity on the site. Reddit tracks site usage metrics, and active user count + engagement are two of the most important metrics, since more active users = more eyeballs on ads, and more engagement = more ads that can be placed in front of those eyeballs.
The fact that the majority of the new active users are bot accounts that can’t be advertised to is secondary, since the people who would invest in a reddit IPO wouldn’t typically look that deep, they’d just look at the top line metrics and go “oh, there’s a big bump on activity, this is a healthy website.”
I see what you’re saying, yeah, and I don’t think you’re wrong. It’s just that this creates a strong visual of how fucked the site is, that there’s such a massive show of resentment. Like, making a bunch of negative comments is one thing, but it’s easy to miss or obscure. The place image is so unmissably clear that it has to do more damage to reddit than good.
Plus even if this short term bump helps, I don’t think the reddit situation is really salvageable long term. Like user engagement is going to go down over time as they realise how bad it is to browse communities that are poorly moderated and losing submissions. If the place stunt is enough to make a real difference to metrics then those metrics are already permanently hosed.
Another thing is that the number of people doing the protests are insignificant if you consider the botters and streamers. I mean, even if NONE of the protestors engage in r/place, it will barely touch their metrics.
This is anecdotal, but I saw one person in Discord claiming (and showing screenshots) of having 500+ bots. And that’s just 1 person.
Oh, I agree overall. Long term, reddit is fucked with a capital F. But I think the goal right now is to put enough lipstick on the pig for the IPO, and then to immediately bail out and let the schmucks holding the bag clean up the mess. (The fact that there’s no real coming back from something like this, and even if there was any such theoretical recovery would take years and is prone to end up further sabotaging the website, is irrelevant.)
Why is it fuck Spex and not Fuck Reddit?
Because spez is the one in charge.
I do like to see it-- and I’m not with all these negative lemmings, a handful of people jumping on Reddit isn’t a big deal since we’re talking millions of users (and by the way it’s healthier for Lemmy to not shun double dippers, not everyone’s communities have migrated).
Also, having moonlit at a social media company, I can say shortsighted folks do jerk off to engagement metrics, usually traffic and interactions. Doesn’t change a death spiral, and usually more experienced staff know to take it in context (I e. Is it lower than last time) so either you have dumb staff relaying bad information to the top or you have smart staff panicking, quiet quitting, etc.
In other words, folks need to relax. Reddit will do reddit things; just take comfort that you’re not alone in the fuck spez mentality.
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.
Right! Although that’s mildly astounding given it was so unavoidable on like, every subreddit. But yeah, I remember seeing out of the loop messages months into the protests. Hell, even local news covered it here. Lol
I didn’t know or care until I was hit with the wave of questionable bans that seem to be going around.
What! You can’t say that! YOUR BANNED! but it wasn’t me though, be cool. Lol
huh?
