It was tweaked quite a bit. Canvas expansion over time, palette expansion over time, wait time modified to a flat 5 minutes, and a completely different ending come to mind. Of course this time there were also ~5x as many tiles placed per hour as well. If all that counts for is a lazy uninspired move to copy the exact same thing then sign me up for more lazy uninspired events.
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.