r/place was a recurring collaborative project and social experiment hosted on the content aggregator site Reddit. Originally launched on April Fools' Day 2017, it has since been repeated again on April Fools' Day 2022 and on July 20, 2023. The 2017 experiment involved an online canvas located at a subreddit called r/place. Registered users could edit the canvas by changing the color of a single pixel with a replacement from a 16-color palette. After each pixel was placed, a timer prevented the user from placing any more pixels for a period of time varying from 5 to 20 minutes (depending on whether the user had verified their email address). The idea of the experiment was conceived by Josh Wardle. Over a million users edited the canvas, placing a total of approximately 16 million pixels, and, at the time the experiment was ended, over 90,000 users were actively viewing or editing the canvas. The experiment was commended for its representation of the culture of Reddit's online communities, and of Internet culture as a whole.
Overview The experiment, during the 2017 edition, was based in a subreddit called r/place, in which individual registered users could place a single colored pixel (or "tile") on an online canvas of one million (1000 x 1000) pixel squares, and wait a certain amount of time before placing another. In 2017, the waiting time varied from 5 to 20 minutes throughout the experiment, and the user could choose their pixel's color from a palette of sixteen colors. The 2022 edition started with the same size and colors as 2017, but the canvas was later expanded to four million (2000 x 2000) pixel squares, and the palette gradually gained sixteen more colors for a total of 32. The 2023 edition also started with the same size as the 2022 and 2017 editions (1000 x 1000), and started with 8 colors. It was later expanded to 2 million (2000 x 1000) pixel squares, with 16 colors, then it expanded to 6 million (3000 x 2000) pixel squares, with 32 colors. Reddit administrators have the ability to place as many pixels as they want and can use this ability to remove offensive content from r/place. Guidelines have outlined this content as nudity, hate speech, targeted harassment, or otherwise objectionable content. This power was illustrated in 2023 when messages expressing violence towards Reddit CEO Steve Huffman as well as some sexual imagery was removed.
History
2017 experiment
The early hours of the experiment were characterized by random pixel placement and chaotic attempts at image creation. Among the first distinct sections of the canvas to emerge was a corner of entirely blue pixels (named "Blue Corner") and a homage to Pokémon. As the canvas developed, some established subreddit communities, such as those for video games, sports teams and individual countries, coordinated their user efforts to claim and decorate particular sections. This frequently created conflict between communities competing for space on the canvas. Overall, thousands of communities were involved. Other sections of the canvas were developed by communities and coordination efforts created specifically for the event. Several works of pixel art sprouted from the collaboration of these communities, such as fictional characters, Internet memes, flags, and recreations of famous pieces of artwork such as the Mona Lisa and The Starry Night. Several self-declared "cults" also formed to create and maintain various emblematic features such as the (black) void, engulfing art in nothing but black, the green lattice, the aforementioned blue corner, and a multi-colored "rainbow road". At the time of the experiment's end on 3 April 2017, over 90,000 users were viewing and editing the canvas, and over one million users had placed a total of approximately 16 million pixels. An analysis found that the final version of the 2017 experiment consisted of art from over 800 communities. r/place was commended for its colorful representation of the Reddit online community. The A.V. Club called it "a benign, colorful way for Redditors to do what they do best: argue among each other about the things that they love". Gizmodo labelled it as a "testament to the internet's ability to collaborate". A number of commentators described the experiment as a broader representation of Internet culture. Some also commented on the apparent relationship between the makeup of the final canvas and the individual communities within Reddit, which exist independently but cooperate as part of a larger community. Newsweek called it "the internet's best experiment yet", and a writer at Ars Technica suggested that the cooperative spirit of r/place represented a model for fighting extremism in internet communities. The experiment did receive some criticism for the lack of protection from bot usage where users used scripts and macros to automatically draw on the canvas.
2022 experiment
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