Screenshot: Gizmodo
The third incarnation of Reddit’s r/Place has come and gone, and now the social media platform has launched a timelapse compilation of the undertaking to spotlight the entire whimsy—and anger—of its customers.
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r/Place is a group artwork undertaking on Reddit that has simply ended its third yr of operation—the primary undertaking occurred in 2017 whereas the second wasn’t launched till 2022. In r/Place customers are in a position to depart a single pixel of any coloration on a clean canvas as soon as each 5 minutes, leading to a whole bunch of teams and subreddits crafting photographs that characterize their communities. Reddit has simply unveiled a timelapse of the 2023 version, which includes a greater canvas than ever and loads of protest artwork directed at CEO Steve Huffman, who goes by u/spez on the platform. You can too take a more in-depth have a look at the canvas on the official r/Place subreddit.
Official r/place 2023 canvas timelapse
Whereas there are many examples of “Fuck Spez” to go round, probably the most inventive second occurred on the finish of the undertaking. As r/Place wound to an in depth, customers have been in a position to place a pixel as soon as each thirty seconds, however the pixel needed to be white—an effort to wipe the slate clear. Nonetheless, within the ultimate moments of the undertaking, customers collaborated to go away one huge “FUCK SPEZ” throughout the canvas.
In April, Reddit introduced that it might be charging firms for entry to its software programming interface (API). Reddit didn’t make the price of its API public after it was introduced, and Steve Huffman, founder and CEO of Reddit, instructed The New York Occasions that he thought it was time “to tighten issues up” on the firm. It wasn’t till a back-and-forth between Reddit and third-party app Apollo that it was revealed the dialogue platform was planning on charging $12,000 per 50 million requests to entry its API—an unsustainable determine for many programmers.
The moderators of 1000’s of subreddits subsequently protested the information by taking their communities non-public for at the least two days. Most have returned, whereas others have gotten extra inventive with their ways. All of the whereas, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman fanned the flames by antagonizing the platform’s consumer base. Reddit claims the choice to cost for its API is meant to forestall AI firms from scraping its web site for information. Whereas that could be true, it’s far more believable that the platform noticed it as a viable earnings stream, a lot the identical approach Twitter did when CEO Elon Musk realized he wasn’t making sufficient cash.