What happened
After the 2017 original, Reddit revived r/Place on April Fools' Day 2022, and the reprise dwarfed its predecessor. The canvas began at the same size and palette as 2017 but was progressively expanded to four million pixels (a 2,000-by-2,000 grid) with the color palette eventually doubling to 32 options. More than ten million users took part, and the event pushed Reddit's daily active users to an all-time peak — a vivid demonstration of how a single collaborative experiment could generate massive, measurable engagement.
Reddit ran r/Place a third time beginning July 20, 2023, under the pointed tagline 'Right Place, Wrong Time.' The timing was awkward: the 2023 edition arrived amid intense user anger over the company's controversial API pricing changes and the resulting subreddit blackouts. The canvas again grew in stages, from a 1,000-pixel grid up to six million pixels with 32 colors. While still a showcase of community creativity, the 2023 event also became a venue for protest art, illustrating how Reddit's signature feel-good experiment had become entangled with the platform's deepening tensions with its own users.