In recent times, Reddit was the stage of massive online protests from its users, who have expressed their dissatisfaction with the platform’s decisions – in particular with regard to the new policies on APIs and third-party apps. In short: the community is angry. So it’s not surprising that, as soon as Reddit launched r/Place againa large blank canvas where users can express themselves one pixel at a time, several communities have organized to continue the protests.
Reddit r/Place becomes a place for community outcry
Reddit first launched the r/Place initiative in 2017 and then again in 2022. A very particular project, which had the aim of embodying the feeling of the various souls of the site, one pixel at a time. In fact, each user was allowed to change one pixel of a huge digital canvas once a day. To create an image, therefore, the commitment of the entire community was needed. An enormous symbolic value: Reddit is not the individual user, but the relationships that are created in the individual subreddits.
Reddit announced the return of r/Place in 2023, just one year after the last time it opened its public online space. But a lot has happened this year. After the protests and blackouts, the mandate to reopen private subreddits, and communities posting only images of John Oliver, Redditors took the opportunity to voice their thoughts regarding Reddit itself and its decisions.
Protests against the leadership
In particular, the communities have drawn a rather large protest message on r/Place canvas, saying “F**k Spez”. We censor it here in the text, but in the image below you can read it in several places and in several languages.
This is a reference to username of Steve Hoffman, the CEO of Reddit, which has come under a lot of criticism for some unpopular decisions made on the platform. Users felt betrayed by these actions and wanted to make their voices heard in creative ways through pixel art.
The launch of the r/Place 2023 release was originally supposed to arrive in April. But due to various setbacks and the blackout outcry, Reddit decided to postpone this year’s launch to July 20. We don’t know if as early as April users would have protested over doubts about the CEO’s proposals to monetize APIs, which allow third-party developers to create alternative services and apps for Reddit, such as the popular Apollo (which had to close). Certainly, the anger after the protests and the company’s peremptory response led to several protests and insults on Reddit r/Place yesterday.
A day of protests, one pixel at a time
As soon as Reddit announced the return of r/Place, immediately a large number of users entered the word “API”. This refers to the main problem that many users have with Reddit: the introduction of a new paid API, with unaffordable costs for most developers. So much so that many third-party apps based on Reddit had to shut down this month due to the requirement to subscribe to use these previously free APIs.
The developer of Apollo for Reddit, a popular client app, revealed before the shutdown that it would have to pay an amount of 20 million dollars annually for API access under the new conditions imposed.
To protest this situation, users have carried out tons of different protests. At first they declared gods black-out, to which all the large communities have joined, who have seen moderators make subreddits private. So only subscribers could access, limiting clicks (and therefore advertising revenue). But on r/Place, the protest has taken on a different form.
Some users have created the subreddit r/PlaceAPIwhere users can devise messaging strategies through pixelated art, in order to further theirs protests against company policies.
Blatant protests, which however do not seem to have changed the company’s mind. Indeed, Reddit has announced the end of its popular system ricompense Reddit Gold, arousing even more anger among users. The relationship between Reddit’s management and the community appears to be at an all-time low. Just count how many pixels formed the various “F**k” on r/Place.