Reddit’s r/Place is going about as well as expected

Reddit officially launched the 2023 edition of its r/Place collaborative art project on Thursday morning, and so far, it’s already littered with messages protesting Reddit and Reddit’s CEO. You can see the current iteration of the canvas on the r/Place subreddit or by following the prompt at the top of the app. (Note that you can’t access r/Place on Old Reddit; you’ll need to be on New Reddit or one of the company’s mobile apps.)

In r/Place, individual users can drop a single pixel of color every five minutes on a huge canvas, including overriding other pixel placements if you want to try and claim some turf. In the utopian version of this idea, r/Place becomes an ever-changing piece of art where users work together to draw all sorts of pixelated images in one giant collage.

Here’s a photo of r/Place from shortly before publishing this story and about three hours after the project launched:

Here are a few things I’m already seeing:

When asked if Reddit will remove the protesting messages, spokesperson Courtney Geesey-Dorr pointed to the r/Place canvas rules. One of those rules says that “targeted hate or harassment of private individuals (including mods and admin) and protected groups are violations of our

Reddit officially launched the 2023 edition of its r/Place collaborative art project on Thursday morning, and so far, it’s already littered with messages protesting Reddit and Reddit’s CEO. You can see the current iteration of the canvas on the r/Place subreddit or by following the prompt at the top of the app. (Note that you can’t access r/Place on Old Reddit; you’ll need to be on New Reddit or one of the company’s mobile apps.)

In r/Place, individual users can drop a single pixel of color every five minutes on a huge canvas, including overriding other pixel placements if you want to try and claim some turf. In the utopian version of this idea, r/Place becomes an ever-changing piece of art where users work together to draw all sorts of…

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policy (Rule 1) and will be removed. In addition, posts, comments, and imagery that are hateful, graphic, sexually-explicit, and / or offensive are violations of our policy (Rule 6) and will be removed.”

Geesey-Dorr declined to specify when the r/Place canvas will close.

There is a lot of art that’s not protesting Reddit. A lot of the drawings are flags. There’s also a giant logo for the rhythm game osu!, and another section features the word “DICKS” spelled out in a rainbow of colors. But amid the more lighthearted fare, it’s nearly impossible to miss the anger against Reddit that’s currently on the canvas. And with users actively planning protest designs — including in Reddit’s own post about the opening of r/Place — I imagine they’ll keep fighting to make their feelings known.