Frequently asked questions.
The most common questions about RED / BLUE, answered plainly.
What is RED / BLUE?
RED / BLUE is a real-time global social experiment with one question and two choices. Every person on Earth gets one vote: red or blue. If more than 50% of all votes are blue, everyone survives. If 50% or fewer are blue, only red voters survive.
Is it real?
The vote is real and binding. The 'survival' outcome is symbolic — a thought experiment. Nobody is going to do anything to anyone. The point is to observe what humanity actually does when offered a free, cooperative way to save everyone.
Can I vote more than once?
No. Voting is enforced by a signed session cookie, a browser device fingerprint, and a server-side hash of your IP and user-agent. Attempts to revote return your original vote, idempotently — never a new one.
What happens if I clear cookies, switch browsers, or use incognito?
Your device fingerprint and IP-UA hash still match. The vote stays the same. You will see your original choice.
What happens if multiple people on the same WiFi vote?
All of them can vote. IP is intentionally not a unique constraint, because households, dorms, offices, and mobile networks legitimately share IPs.
What happens if Blue loses?
Symbolically, only red voters survive. In practice, the site records the result, the world keeps turning, and we collectively have to look at the number. The number is the point.
Why can't I change my vote?
A vote you can change is a vote you keep changing until you like the answer. The lock is what makes the choice cost something. Irreversibility is the entire mechanism that gives the experiment weight.
Is the vote anonymous?
Yes. No accounts, no emails, no profile. No raw IP is ever written to disk — only a salted SHA-256 hash. No precise location. No third-party tracking on the voting page.
How are the live results computed?
A Postgres trigger updates two aggregate tables on every insert: a global tally and a per-country tally. Browsers subscribe to those aggregates via Supabase Realtime — never to the raw vote stream — so the system stays fast at viral scale.
Can a bot stuff the vote?
It can try. Three independent layers stop the common cases: session cookie, device fingerprint, and the database's unique indexes. A serious adversary running a botnet across thousands of unique devices is harder to stop without breaking the no-signup rule — see the source for the limits of v1.
Why is the choice red and blue and not, say, A and B?
Red and blue are old. They are the two-team color you already feel. The point is to make the choice immediate, not abstract.
Who made this?
An independent team. Open to journalists and researchers — see the bottom of the about page.
Can I see why other people voted the way they did?
Yes. The 'voices' page shows anonymous reasons that voters volunteered after voting, updated in real time. Reasons are 280 characters max, one per voter, in their own words.
Where do I find the live numbers in a format my AI assistant can read?
At /llms.txt. It is updated daily and includes the global tally, the top five countries, and recent voter reasons.
How do I share this?
Any URL on the site works. Every share renders an open-graph card with the current live split. The most useful link is the homepage; people who arrive can vote immediately.
Still curious?
Read about the experiment, how voting works under the hood, or what other voters wrote in their own words.