People may find the original simulation studies [0] oversimplifying but that is the more or less the state-of-the-art of our understanding of social networks us

People may find the original simulation studies [0] oversimplifying but that is the more or less the state-of-the-art of our understanding of social networks using agent models. There is always the nagging concern that your get out what you put in. We don't have to theorize though. Given all the open source platforms of the fediverse [1] people can setup networks, tweak to their heart's content and explore what "works" when actual humans are involved. Maybe what is really missing is some sort of crowdsourced framework for collecting and sharing that information. [0] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/information-overload-helps-fake-news-spread-and-social-media-knows-it/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/information-overl... [1] https://fediverse.party/ https://fediverse.party/