No Place for Old Memes: Large-scale Collective Dynamics in the Three Iterations of Reddit r/place
Yutong Wu, Arlei Silva

TL;DR
This paper analyzes the collective dynamics of Reddit's r/place experiment, revealing patterns of engagement, collaboration, and competition that mirror broader social decision-making processes.
Contribution
It is the first study to characterize r/place's collective behavior using computational social science tools, providing insights into online community interactions.
Findings
Evidence of group coordination costs
Detection of social loafing behaviors
Increased cooperation in competitive contexts
Abstract
Is there something akin to geopolitics for online communities? One could think of communities as nations formed around shared interests of individual users. Friendly borders capture similar interests, but conflicts could emerge due to ideological differences or competition for attention (as for land). Over time, new coalitions could emerge, others could crumble, and many could disappear as casualties of online wars with highly unpredictable and often devastating outcomes. The r/place experiment is the most ingenious attempt at reproducing this complex collective dynamics as a series of three social games hosted by Reddit. The result is not only an accurate picture of the diverse interests on Reddit -- one of the most popular social media platforms in the world -- but also fine-grained traces of sequential actions taken by millions of players during the game. In this paper, we are the…
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
Taxonomy
TopicsOpinion Dynamics and Social Influence · Complex Network Analysis Techniques · Complex Systems and Time Series Analysis
