“Pixel War”: war is declared between Reddit users and the CEO of the social network

2023-07-28 04:25:45

After 128 hours and 32 minutes of combat France, defending champion, finished third in the “Pixel War” 2023. In all 10,276,963 pixels were deposited by French Internet users, far behind the 19 million from the United States finish at the top of this edition, followed by Germany. The collaborative event, which consists of filling a digital canvas with pixels of color by creating patterns, has seen an increase in the insults towards “Spez”, the nickname of the boss of the site, Steve Huffman.

War is declared between Reddit users and its CEO. The “Pixel War” which has just ended comes a month after an announcement that made people cringe within the communities listed by the American social network. Its president has thus chosen to increase the prices for using the application programming interface (API), which allows other applications to be connected to the site. Many “Redditors” then embarked on an unprecedented “strike movement” on the platform, restricting access to many discussion forums.

The r/Place (for Reddit Place) was therefore an opportunity for Internet users to express their dissatisfaction. From the launch of the new edition, on July 20, messages “Fuck Spez” or “we will never forget what you stole” appeared in the middle of the French, German or Turkish flags. On the final canvas with four million pixels, we can see on the right a huge “Fuck Spez” in the colors of different flags.

Less success for this edition

However, the 2023 edition did not arouse the same enthusiasm as the previous one. Thus, many streamers did not participate this year, nor encouraged their community to defend the French title on Reddit. The two heavyweights of Twitch Squeezie and Kameto have announced that they will not stream during the event, denouncing the too close dates between the second and the third edition, while the first took place in 2017. Previous pixel wars were busy with esports matches, as Reddit decided to place the event later than last year in the calendar.

France remains less visible than the previous year on this “pixel war”, where a French flag with in particular the portraits of Zinédine Zidane and Thomas Pesquet had temporarily occupied a large part of the fresco. The final canvas of this edition featured French football, the Restos du Cœur, Amélie Poulain, Charles Aznavour, Asterix & Obelix and even the program “C’est Pas Sorcier”.