On what date did the original r/place launch?

The original r/place launched on April 1, 2017.

Reddit introduced r/place as an April Fools’ Day social experiment. It displayed a shared 1,000-by-1,000-pixel canvas in the r/place subreddit, where registered users could change one pixel at a time. After placing a pixel, users had to wait before making another change, turning simple drawing into a large-scale coordination challenge.

The first edition ran for about three days and ended on April 3, 2017. More than one million Reddit users contributed roughly 16 million pixel changes, producing flags, characters, memes, artwork and community symbols. The event’s success made r/place a notable example of collaborative internet culture.

A common mix-up is confusing the original launch with later editions. Reddit revived r/place on April 1, 2022, and launched another edition on July 20, 2023. Those were sequels, not the original event. April 1, 2015, instead belongs to an earlier Reddit April Fools’ project, The Button.