r/place is an interactive art project run by reddit on April Fools. It ran in 2017 and 2022. Now they've brought it back for 2023 (it was supposed to have happened on April Fools this year, but various....things....happened). It kicked off again today and as expected, it's gained attention for the bad timing (protests, tone deaf admin, etc..) and people have coordinated to write "fuck spez" messages and other things (at some point, there was a guillotine + reddit's head).
Thanks for the clarification. I've been wondering all day how I was on Reddit for years and never saw this. It's because I purposely stayed off the site (and most of the internet for that matter) on April 1st every damn year.
I've been told that it works something like each user is allowed to paint one pixel every two hours or so, so it really is about coordination with other users, and big images require a huge system of users. I've never seen it either, even without trying to avoid it