With the introduction of r/place, protests over recent Reddit API modifications have persisted as users repeatedly write “F*ck Spez” on the canvas and people are wondering ”Who is Spez?”.
Early in June 2023, Reddit announced modifications to their API that would ultimately lead to the demise of the majority of third-party applications owing to the exorbitant expense of maintaining them.
Quickly, there was a backlash against the website, with many people criticizing Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, often known as ‘u/spez’ on the site. While the initial outcry has gradually subsided, the July 20, 2023 debut of r/place provided users another opportunity to criticize the platform.
R/Place: Who is Spez?
Josh Wardle, a former Reddit programmer who also founded Wordle, first came up with the idea for r/place as an April Fools’ Day joke in 2017. Every five minutes, each registered Redditor can add a single colored pixel to a canvas of a million pixels. Individual subreddits will collaborate to add their own touches to the enormous work of collective art; in the past, these have included enormous Brazilian flags, pixel-perfect renditions of the Mona Lisa, countless rainbows, and Pizza Johns that seem to be staring directly into your soul. After the initiative reappeared in 2022 and attracted about 11 million people, Reddit made the decision to bring it back this year. The event was originally slated for June 23, but it was postponed because a number of subreddits had shut down at that time in protest of API changes.
One Redditor responded to the announcement by saying, “So what they are saying is that they have fucked up so bad that they are going to try to distract us with r/place.”
Reddit stated in early June that it will begin charging developers for access to its API, following Twitter’s (also contentious) lead. This limits the community’s capacity to develop plug-ins and features that make Reddit more usable and pleasurable. The popular iOS client Apollo’s creator, Christian Selig, announced that it would now cost him $20 million per year to keep it online, thus at the end of June, he permanently shut it down.
While Relay, Now for Reddit, and Narwhal’s developers opted to start collecting membership fees, other programs including Sync for Reddit, BaconReader, and Boost for Reddit have also shut down. Although hardly everything on the internet can be accessed for free, certain tools have been a staple of Reddit for so long that the changes might seem like a kick in the gut.
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, also known as u/spez on the site, doubled down in his defense of the API modifications rather than taking the advice of the community. Redditors view him as a symbol of how Reddit has deteriorated, and as a result, r/place is now flooded with “f*ck Spez” comments.
There are about 50 distinct versions of “f*ck Spez” on r/place as of the time of posting (albeit a handful of those messages were hidden by rainbow-colored “D*CKS” within another 15 minutes or so). In a particularly inventive display, the German community wrote “u/spez ist ein hurendsohn,” which roughly translates as “u/spez is a son of a bitch.” Ouch.
By the conclusion of the endeavor, the canvas will probably be completely changed. However, r/place is currently conveying a loud, unambiguous message that Reddit’s user base is dissatisfied with Huffman’s direction. There are differences even among these protesting groups; some individuals want to paint the entire canvas black and have started their work in what they refer to as “the black hole.” On the “f*ck Spez” train are others. Others believe that participating in r/place would automatically increase the number of hits on Reddit’s website, which is what the company’s leaders desire.
No number of “f*ck Spez”-es is likely to persuade Huffman to reconsider the cost of Reddit’s API. But at the very least, these initiatives demonstrate that people aren’t yet ready to give up.
Twitter responds to protests on Reddit
People have used Twitter to debate the issue, as was to be anticipated. The results of this year’s r/place, according to one user, are “several murals calling the site admins various insults,” which was described as an “ill-conceived attempt to draw users back to Reddit.”
A second person said: “Not really sure what Reddit was expecting doing another place thing right now.” The shenanigans on the canvas this year, according to a third Twitter user, “won’t be happening again for a while” for r/place.
Before you leave, you can read our article about Reddit’s new cryptocurrency MOON.
Featured image credit: reddit
