It's Dunbar's Number. When a tribe gets to large, because of Metcalfe's law the tribe loses the ability to discuss things to a level of nuance that is required

It's Dunbar's Number. When a tribe gets to large, because of Metcalfe's law the tribe loses the ability to discuss things to a level of nuance that is required, and that causes fractures that lead to a tribal split. Because all of the internet communities have no natural way to split, the only thing left is for them to become toxic and eventually die. Systems attempt to keep the tribe going longer by attempting to keep track of metrics, and this works for a while because the tribe had built up trust, but the bigger the tribe gets(with new members never trusting, forming Eternal September), the more the metrics reign, Goodhart's law states the more inevitable it is that it collapses. > ... there seems to be only one cause behind all forms of social misery: bigness. Oversimplified as this may seem, we shall find the idea more easily acceptable if we consider that bigness, or oversize, is really much more than just a social problem. It appears to be the one and only problem permeating all creation. Whenever something is wrong, something is too big. ... And if the body of a people becomes diseased with the fever of aggression, brutality, collectivism, or massive idiocy, it is not because it has fallen victim to bad leadership or mental derangement. It is because human beings, so charming as individuals or in small aggregations, have been welded into overconcentrated social units. - Leopold Kohr, 1957