During the first version of /r/place, there was some mechanism in place to reduce the use of bots such as a CAPTCHA and not allowing newly created accounts to place pixels.
However, this year I feel like they gave up on all of that simply to gain more users.
Notably, Reddit is planning to IPO this year. [1]
[1] https://www.redditinc.com/blog/reddit-announces-confidential...
Re:How We Built r/Place (2017)
by toper-centage on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @11:17AM
(#30920113)
That explains why they allowed new accounts to participate. There were probably hundreds of thousands of new bot accounts created over the weekend.
Also hundreds of thousands human accounts as well to be fair. Whether they will stick around remains to be seen.
Re:How We Built r/Place (2017)
by MonkeyIsNull on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @11:15AM
(#30920085)
oh no.
Re:How We Built r/Place (2017)
by KennyBlanken on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @11:10AM
(#30920016)
There was a reddit admin using both their admin power (no cooldown) and a bot.
The whole thing jumped the shark, big time.
Having said that, I also hope that the next time it does happen - Reddit developers will implement at least some protection against this kind of brigading. I wouldn't be surprised it was also the reason they decided to wipe out the whole thing in the end.