Your memory of 2017 seems to be more nostalgia than reality as much of the same occurred in regards to both good sentiment and bad during it - it was only looking back that everything seemed perfect. Many people hated rainbowroad, thebluecorner, flags, and similar groups just the same in 2017. Bots weren't the invention of the last 5 years either. If you look at the 2022 canvas and the only genuine interaction you see is the Ukrainian flag then you're simply ignoring the good parts to leave focus on the bad. If I had to focus on the biggest difference between 2017 and 2022 I'd actually say it was the amount of attention large streamers drove to it all. There were plenty of streamers in 2017 but in 2022 pretty much all major view count streamers were treating it as a multi-day content event between each other instead of really being tied to what was being coordinated from Reddit communities interacting.
I hope they do another one in another 5 years. My favorite part of this year was seeing placestart manage to get the XP start menu in after the final expansion. It was my favorite part of the first one and it was good to see it get some tweaks as well.
They were doing it so much that it was clear they weren't just abusing their admin power but using a bot as well.
This isn't true at all. As I was following it, the original American flag was just being griefed.
This -completely- ruined the entire narrative. It's not organic content, it's not even user generated content. It's whatever the employees wanted it to be. Gross.
>The Admins are currently at war with r/drama's offsite forum, who have been brigading Reddit. Last week the Admins banned lots of them permanently. So yesterday those brigaders drew their cat mascot in r/place, and the Admins used their powers to erase it.
https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/tv2lmx/comm...
Reddit even tweeted a screenshot of it: https://twitter.com/Reddit/status/1509990348378058755
Reference to "everyone" on their sub being banned by admins: https://old.reddit.com/r/Drama/comments/tty3fn/_/
If you go to their official site, you can clearly see (as of this comment) that they're using this cat as their mascot, and it's posted all over the place.
So yes, it's "just a cat" except it's being used in a specific way.
And no, reddit didn't tweet an image of the cat. They responded to someone else's screenshot of /r/place.
> The API should be generally open and transparent so the reddit community can build on it (bots, extensions, data collection, external visualizations, etc) if they choose to do so.
They specifically made r/place (at least in 2017) to be easy to bot. Without botting I don't think individual users could coordinate well enough against spam to build some of the more complex art.
Not only that, it spoiled the treasured memory and experience of 2017. This year was so full of hate and fighting over flags, stream raids, bot scripts floating around, none of it felt genuine except maybe people keeping up with the Ukraine flag on day 1. In 2017 it closed with me thinking Reddittors came together to make some cool art, this year it closed with me wondering whether any humans were involved by the end.