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we explain to you the battle played on the social network Reddit to draw a French flag on a collective canvas

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A pixel war is raging. Hundreds of thousands of internet users compete for drawings on a collective digital canvas made available by the American platform Reddit. On Sunday, April 3, a French community coordinated by famous videographers (such as streamers Zerator and Kameto) managed to raise a giant tricolor flag there.

This initiative has been welcomed by brands as well as far-right presidential candidate Eric Zemmour. Franceinfo explains what it is.

It all starts on Friday, April 1. The social network Reddit run /r/Set, a temporary community where a giant white canvas is made available to users. The rules are simple: any internet user with a Reddit account has the right to post a pixel (i.e. the smallest possible unit of an image) every five minutes for free.

Communities soon came together to place drawings that had been made jointly on this canvas. Video game logos, movie logos, symbols of support for the Ukrainian population victims of the Russian invasion… Over time, a wacky patchwork has been put in place.

Scattered during the first hours, the French community finally coordinated behind Kamel “Kameto” Kebir on Sunday. This videographer and entrepreneur specializing in video games is very popular on the Twitch platform, where he is followed by 1.2 million people, and invited his viewers to “use” their pixels to create a huge tricolor flag on Reddit. to draw.

During the evening, many influencers and celebrities from the French internet invited their fans to join the collective effort. And so it happened that after a few hours a giant pennant on which an approximately yellow Eiffel Tower appeared on the collective canvas.

However, the initiative was not to everyone’s liking and the tricolor was sabotaged by other communities. The many peaceful “offensives” have always been repulsed.

Unsurprisingly, this “Pixel War” (“pixel war” in French) was quickly noticed outside of the video game fans who gathered on Twitch. during the evening, the French Rugby FederationThe media Konbinicor the profession of the French dairy industryinvited their followers to join the Kameto-led effort.

Also on a political level Eric Zemmour tried to regain this virtual mobilization. Over the night, the far-right presidential election candidate’s teams congratulated the “French internet users defending our beautiful tricolor flag”. “France needs you, the recapture is also happening on Reddit”wrote the former journalist on Twitter.

This meddling in the “Pixel War” was not to the liking of many Twitch personalities watching the event.

In any case, the bellows should not be long in coming. After four days of intense artistic struggle, the r/Place/ initiative should end on Monday. Today, the imposing French flag still hangs there, adorned with a beautiful Arc de Triomphe.

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