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Unfortunately, I don't think it's as simple as "just go back to smaller groups". For companies, more users = more revenue, there isn't realy much incentive to n

Unfortunately, I don't think it's as simple as "just go back to smaller groups". For companies, more users = more revenue, there isn't realy much incentive to not try and pull in as many people as possible. And then for most normal users, if they here about some big site, they're inclined to join that so they don't miss out on the the funny tik tok memes/all of their friends being on instagram/etc. For them, what benefit is there to a smaller site where you can't get as many followers or where your friends/favorite celebrity isn't a member. I agree with you that size is one of the main contributing factors to the problem, I just don't think smaller sites is a practical solution for the public at large. That being said, if you don't care about "fixing" the public problem, then you're right on the money. If you personally don't want to experience toxicity, get off the big sites, it's that easy. I just don't see that being a fix for the average teenager/college student/boomer

gyulai 7y ago
...it doesn't need to be a huge company (or company of any kind) to run these things. Back in the early 2000s, a volunteer who knew about computers would set up phpBB on a church's website, or a radio station would allow one IT person to spend half their time maintaining something like this, and that would be it. No need to turn millions in advertising dollars to have an online community. I do agree with the parent comment, that we may well see a resurgence of small and medium-sized online communities, for the simple reason that more fragmentation could be a good thing. When a community has its eternal september, people can move elsewhere.
- el_cujo 7y ago
  I meant more that even a new, small company would have no incentive to not want to become the next big thing/the next facebook. Good point though that we don't need companies/start-ups to feed us online communities, particularly since the users are almost always the ones bringing value to platform like a message board/forum sites.
- anigbrowl 7y ago
  That won't happen because the benefits of network effects accrue to the people across the network as a whole as well as the proprietors/advertisers.

gyulai 7y ago

...it doesn't need to be a huge company (or company of any kind) to run these things. Back in the early 2000s, a volunteer who knew about computers would set up phpBB on a church's website, or a radio station would allow one IT person to spend half their time maintaining something like this, and that would be it. No need to turn millions in advertising dollars to have an online community. I do agree with the parent comment, that we may well see a resurgence of small and medium-sized online communities, for the simple reason that more fragmentation could be a good thing. When a community has its eternal september, people can move elsewhere.

el_cujo 7y ago
I meant more that even a new, small company would have no incentive to not want to become the next big thing/the next facebook. Good point though that we don't need companies/start-ups to feed us online communities, particularly since the users are almost always the ones bringing value to platform like a message board/forum sites.
anigbrowl 7y ago
That won't happen because the benefits of network effects accrue to the people across the network as a whole as well as the proprietors/advertisers.