Following the Reddark movement that took down thousands of subreddits in protest of third-party app monetization, Reddit's r/place is now calling for reform through the power of pixel art collaboration.
Often called the "pixel wars," r/place is considered a haven for pixel art. r/place is a kind of social experiment subreddit that emerges from time to time, allowing users to contribute to a vast digital art board. Particularly well-coordinated groups often conspire and plot intricate takeovers of certain areas of the board to get their message across.
But when r/place went online this year, things heated up a bit with the recent changes to Reddit's third-party app pricing policy: shortly after its July 20 launch, Reddit users and administrators alike went all over the board with messages of passionate discontent with messages of fervent discontent.
In case you missed it, recent changes to the pricing of third-party apps have put administrators and developers in a difficult position, as Reddit now charges developers for access to its API, with pricing that can reach $1 per user per month, Many developers are under extreme pressure to find and maintain a revenue stream to pay for third-party access fees.
In short, the ability of the community to create plug-ins and features that form the basis of many subreddits is now severely limited, and administrators of top subreddits with over 40 million users are understandably miffed.
Amid lines and lines of "Fuck Spez" - Reddit CEO Steve Huffman's user name - R/place is littered with calls to users to "never forget what was stolen from us."
The official first-day time lapse shows true dedication to the cause, with many users rallying against the changes in every corner of the board. Germany has taken the top spot on the bulletin board, incorporating messages such as "Spez ist ein hurensohn" (Spez is a bastard) into its flag.
This is likely an attempt to prevent a runaway by the so-called "Fuck Spets Void," as many other flags do.
The Void seems to have calmed down for now, and the current state of the forum suggests a truce among users. While this is good news for those whose art was about to be obliterated by the movement, whether Reddit will listen to get funding is another matter.
Here's to the developers who didn't survive the API apocalypse.
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