Of course it does. They've been increasingly controlling with how the whole site is run. The whole thing is a gimmick to pump engagement metrics anyway.
Reddit sells ad space, that's it. That's the business. And at this point it isn't oriented towards a community at all, it's been made into another nickel and dime outfit.
That's because it is. r/place is a pathetic attempt to try to bring engagement back. But honestly everything on the board is just what happened last year. Bunch of popular subs branding the same spaces on the board, people spamming with Among Us guys. Just this year has a brand new message of Fuck Spez that will no doubt be removed before the end of the event.
The second one had some charm with how they expanded the canvas, made for some nice surprises.
But that first one was magic. From the early days when it was hard to see how anything but random noise could happen through to how it ended. It was peak internet.
Aside from everything else, how could a repeat ever have the same magic as the original.
If they did something NEW that was as interesting as r/place now, that would help convince the world that Reddit wasn’t dead. But repeating a last hit basically announces to the world that it is.
Its body will shamble on for a while, but the soul is gone.
Even the second running of it was just kinda a sad attempt at bringing back what made the first one great, completely missing the point that what made the first one great was that it was new and nobody had time to organize
Yeah, if anything the fact that there's an actual organic non-subreddit-specific "fuck spez" message makes it seem less forced than the previous one did.
It is. While the guillotine may have been spontaneous (and perhaps caught them off-guard), they had to know that “Fuck Spez” would figure prominently in this canvas. I suspect they’re hoping that people will get it off their chest and get back to making content for them to sell.
Knee jerk reactions like this is a symptom of a slow death. Reddit will continue to pivot and because they are so completely out of touch with their own service each of their pivots will continue to slowly cannibalize Reddit.
It’s entertaining to say the least. Watching zuck elmo and spaz eat shit is quality entertainment.
Even more forced since Place was originally a surprise April fool's event and iirc was brought back for a subsequent April fool's due to popular demand. Whipping it out in the middle of July really just reeks of desperation, especially considering the current situation.