Reddit is bringing back r/Place at perhaps the worst possible time

If it wouldn’t direct traffic to Reddit I would suggest we create a team and map to make the whole place just a simple “FUCK /U/SPEZ”

Reddit is bringing back r/Place — a collaborative project where individual users can edit pixels on a giant canvas — at a time when users are still furious over things like Reddit’s API pricing that forced beloved third-party apps to shut down, the company’s decision to remove chat history from before 2023 with hardly any warning, and its recent announcement that it would be sunsetting the current system to give Reddit Gold. The 2023 version of r/Place kicks off on Thursday, July 20th.

As you might expect, users are already using the announcement post to air their grievances toward the company. The current top comment in reply to the post just says “fuck u/spez” (“spez” is CEO Steve Huffman’s Reddit username), and many of the other comments say only “API,” so I wouldn’t be surprised to see that sentiment show up in some way on this year’s r/Place canvas.

I think even Reddit might be aware that the timing isn’t great. In a short announcement video, the company’s tagline for the event is “right place, wrong time.” In a different post, a Reddit admin (employee) shared a series of pushed dates for when r/Place would kick off — it was supposed to go live at the beginning of April but kept getting delayed:

April 1st (the previous two r/Place events were April Fools’ Day events)
Then April 20th, two days after Reddit first announced the API changes (but didn’t announce pricing)
Then May 4th
Then June 15th, which was in the thick of the subreddit blackouts and coincidentally became the same day we had a contentious interview with Huffman
Then June 23rd, which was one week before apps were set to shut down
And now, July 20th

Past r/Place experiments took place in 2017 and 2022. (Josh Wardle, who would later go on to create and then sell Wordle, thought up the idea for r/Place, according to Newsweek.) The final canvases for each (2017, 2022) are honestly fascinating pieces of work, with things like art, country flags, memes, and video game iconography all smashed together into colorful pixel collages.

For the 2023 edition, Reddit is letting subreddit moderators “pin” coordinates on the canvas to help community members more easily navigate to certain areas. While that does sound useful, I imagine some communities will use the feature to help focus their protest efforts.

Reddit declined to comment. It’s unclear exactly how long this year’s version of r/Place will be open to contributions; the 2017 version took place over 72 hours, while the 2022 edition was made over four days.

By the way, this announcement helped me solve where the ugly pixelated Reddit app logo is from: you can see it in Reddit’s r/Place announcement video. For some reason, that video also includes pixelated images of a fire in a garbage can.

Watch people build a graveyard of dead 3rd party apps, which gets wiped every so often by admins.

Which then gets covered up by a vague drawing that oscillates between a middle finger and a pixelated penis.

Oh they are desperate for engagement.

Alright who wants to bet how big the percentage of bots will be this year. Maybe 95%?

I'm not going back to Reddit.

I'm ESPECIALLY not going back to see u/chtorr and other admins cheat on r/place just because they don't like what someone else did with their master plan for it.

I hope it's covered in protest-themed art they can't erase fast enough. At least that way I'll get a good laugh out of it.

It boosts traffic during a time a lot of ex-redditors scraped/nuked worthwile content and left. If people are annoyed and want to show that off, but they can only change a single pixel every-so-often, then they will refresh / check the site VERY often to make sure their hard-earned single-pixel contribution isn't overwritten by someone else.

I wouldn't be surprised if that was one of the reasons, trying to profit from the agitated masses somehow.

This sounds desperate. Like, their monthly traffic stats must be bad and they recognize that r/place drove traffic and this will hide the dip in traffic.

I was there in 2017. It was glorious. I refused to participate in 2022. It was a cheap imitation. I won't even give it an ounce of thought in 2023. It's a disappointment.

We're bringing back something many of you actually asked us for.

The fucking nerve of them lol

Reject r/place. Embrace pxls space

r/Place was insanely popular... Popular enough that people bitched for a few years before they brought it back. Now Reddit's in the corner and they're trying to bring r/Place back. On one hand I'm very curious how it'll turn out this year. On the other, I won't be doing anything to it because I really don't care for Reddit to use the community's art as a reason for them to generate more traffic and more profit.

How long until people employ bots to create burner accounts and deface r/place.

I'm expecting tonnes of "fuck Spez" graffiti, along with some NSFW stuff.

I got banned last time because I was helping draw naked ladies.

"sunsetting" is such an ugly euphemism for "killing". On the other hand, I am sunsetting Reddit right now. Deleted all my posts and comments, left all the subreddits apart from the drama ones to keep informed about the latest Reddit Inc fuckups. I have a feeling they are not done alienating their userbase yet.

We should have our own /c/place

The only good news may be that the change to the pixelated logo is probably temporary, to hype /r/place . But making that change at the same time as unlocking premium logos was an extremely bad decision. They are very good at making bad decisions, though.

Apollo users have the opportunity to do the funniest thing ever

This is hilarious, it's going to get the shit griefed out of it.

I will leave that r/Place completely alone and not even look at it. I am close to 5 weeks sober from Reddit and nothing that will happen there will bring me back. The best thing that can happen is no one participating, not even a f*ck spez picture, just an empty white page, not even Canada trying to get their flag on it.

I have a Place for Reddit,

in my toilet

They aren't stupid. They are absolutely counting on the engagement from people flooding back to turn the whole thing into a giant Fuck Spez canvas. That's the only reason they're bringing it back, guaranteed.

I thought r/place turned into BattleBots guarding their own pixels at the end, and you can get banned for placing the wrong pixel at the wrong place.

Maybe they are using this to bait out and ban any old accounts that will try to vandalize r/place before the IPO? The timing is very suspect, I don't think it's as simple as increasing user engagement.

They have jumped the shark, going the way of Digg, the death spiral. Bannings and mod replacements are the start. pr0n will be banned in 3... 2... 1...

tumblr 2.0 after they get their fat stacks of cash. But I think the VC's are now aware and spez won't get as much money has he hopes for that dead eye POS

If for one will definitely not be partaking, as I don't want any of my traffic going to Reddit if I can help it.

However, I would be interested to see the result. I suspect there will be at least some references to the protests, if not censored, and a couple of "Fuck u/Spez"s for completeness

Lmao the header image on their modnews post about it appears to have a pixelated dumpster fire.

What about a /c/place version on lemmy?

Shows how desperate they are.

Reddit is becoming a clusterfuck.

Their going hard on the whole "bad publicity is also publicity"

Next up they'll be bringing back r/Time at the worst possible place.

Let’s change “r/...” to “c/...” for existing Lemmy communities!

You know what, who gives a fuck about /r/place. I'm done with Reddit until Baconreader is back the way it was.

Last year's r/place event was beautiful and just amazing overall. The communities all coordinated and I was really taken aback by the final product. How this year's one will turn out is anybody's guess. I'm pretty sure even Spez is aware of this, so this just looks like a desperate attempt to drive engagement, even if most of it is negative.

I imagine a programmer unaware of anything that's going on writing the code for the latest, greatest /r/place feature, getting so wrapped up on the project that they don't realize it's not April anymore, smiling proudly and announcing loudly when they deliver their pride and joy. Only to see it be transformed into a big penis that shoots out the letters API.

Activate the 'fuck spez' detection algorithm. Omg, it's full of dicks

Is there a quick explanation of what place is? A scroll through here didn't reveal. In not gonna look on Reddit. Tx

Well, another desperate move to the list

I saw some chat about just voiding it, only black pixels everywhere, I'm liking that idea

Oh this is gonna be hilarious. I bet it was an idea of some rogue employee and dum dum management thought mmmh great idea

Reddit trying to get remember people of the times when Reddit was good 🥲