Abstract

For three days in April 2022, 10 million Reddit users placed colored pixels on a giant canvas, with a per-user limitation of one pixel every five minutes. They hence needed to collaborate to build significant “compositions” (i.e. pixels forming a discernible drawing), so this game-experiment provides a great window into human collective behavior. We studied the transitions on the canvas (the replacement of compositions due to group conflicts), which could give general insights on transitions in other socio-ecological systems. To build an efficient warning system for these transitions, we use machine learning to combine multiple time-dependent variables for each composition. The resulting early warning signals can predict half of the transitions coming within 20 minutes (6 hours) with only 0.6% (18%) false positives. We also study the network structure of groups collaborating on compositions, both on the canvas and in external communication channels. Bottom-up group formation and stigmergy might be present, and we investigate how resilient and probable these structures are compared to top-down organisations. Co-author: Annie Stephenson