Reddit officially launched the 2023 edition of its collaborative art project r/Place on Thursday morning, and so far, it’s already been filled with letters of protest to Reddit and the Reddit CEO. You can see the current iteration of the canvas 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 one pixel of color every five minutes onto a huge canvas, including overriding other pixel positions if you want to try and get some grass. In the perfect version of this idea, r/Place becomes an ever-changing piece of art as users work together to paint all kinds of pixelated images into one giant collage.
Here’s a photo of r/Place shortly before this story was posted and about three hours after the project launched:
Here are some of the things I actually see:
When asked if Reddit would remove the protest messages, spokeswoman Courtney Geesey-Dorr pointed out: r / place canvas rules. One such rule states that “targeted hate or harassment of individuals (including mods and moderators) and protected groups are violations [content] Politics (Rule 1) And they will be removed. Additionally, posts, comments, and photos that are hateful, graphic, sexually explicit, and/or offensive are violations of our policy (Rule 6) and will be removed.”
Geesey-Dorr declined to say when Canvas r/Place would close.
There is a lot of art no protest on reddit. Many of the graphics are flags. There is also a giant rhythm game logo Oso!and another section containing the word “DICKS” written in rainbow colors. But amid the hilarious atmosphere, it’s almost impossible to miss the rage against Reddit that’s currently on the canvas. And with users Active planning of protest designs – including in Own Reddit post about r/Place opening – I imagine they will continue to struggle to express their feelings.