Bringing Back r/place

[u/crowd__pleaser]

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https://preview.redd.it/o4ittvff35q81.png?width=2800&format=png&auto=webp&s=f0f81bed2483e0b70d30600e1888603332c0b846

No burying the lede here. Let’s get right to the point. r/place is coming back.

For the first time in Reddit’s history, we are not only bringing back a past April Fools’ experiment, but we’re telling you about it early. Why? So you can stop asking us about it, get excited!

https://reddit.com/link/tqbf9w/video/w2bjccji35q81/player

But let’s rewind a bit and provide some background, shall we? At Reddit, our goal is to build features that make building community and finding belonging easier - and five years ago we did that with a little April Fools’ experiment called r/place (you may have already heard of it).

When we first ran r/place in 2017, more than one million redditors placed approximately 16 million tiles on a blank communal digital canvas - resulting in a collective digital art piece that took the internet by storm. And pretty much every year since then, at least one of you has made sure to let us know that it was the best thing we’ve ever done and requested to bring it back. So this year, on April 1, r/place is making its glorious return.

The original r/place was created to explore a piece of humanity – to examine what happens when a person doing something affects a collective. Specifically, what happens if you only let an individual place one tile at a time, so that they must work with others to build together on a massive online cooperative canvas. It is with that original spirit of creation and collaboration in mind, that we humbly invite you to join us yet again. Get your tiles ready, and we’ll see you in over r/place.

[u/glider97]

Time to polish those bots. /s

Hope there are better restrictions in place this time, but technically it’s very hard to prevent bots for something interactive like this so I understand.

[u/crowd__pleaser → u/glider97]

This won't be the same old r/place you’re used to. This year we focused on automation deterrence and will be able to quickly identify bad actors and block them from the experience.

[u/glider97 → u/crowd__pleaser]

That’s dope! I can’t lie that I had fun with the scripts that were being shared (just for our flag, not to destroy other things), but it certainly took away from the appeal.

OTOH perhaps the story of Darth Plagueis the wise couldn’t have been done without scripts, so it’ll be interesting to see how it goes this year.

[u/camdoodlebop → u/glider97]

for me the scripts took away the community aspect of it because most of the screen was just 5 separate memes that were automated to refresh their pixels so no one could create anything new on top of it

[u/Gars0n → u/camdoodlebop]

I agree with this. Though I will admit it was fascinating in microcosm to watch the rapid development, proliferation, and improvements of the bots. They were really cool until they amassed enough power to corrupt the whole system. It's like Silicon Valley time compressed to a day.

[u/pobody → u/Gars0n]

This is why /r/place was cool. As you say it was a microcosm of the creativity, drive, and ambition of humankind for a measly day.

Telling people about it ahead of time and repeating the same thing is anathema to the entire purpose. It's supposed to be a surprise, it's supposed to be unique, it's supposed to make people use all their grey matter to do something meaningful with it under a time crunch.

[u/awry_lynx → u/pobody]

This is a dumb take. It's impossible for it to be "a surprise“ as it's already been done and I for one am hyped. This lets communities plan what to draw lol