It could be that what you're calling the "network effect" is what keeps people tethered to Facebook or Whatsapp, but I doubt it. Speaking only for myself, I cer

It could be that what you're calling the "network effect" is what keeps people tethered to Facebook or Whatsapp, but I doubt it. Speaking only for myself, I certainly don't keep my Facebook account open for events. I also don't care for groups on Whatsapp. I have to have both solely because I value the relationships that I have with the people that I expressly added as friends/contacts on both. Reddit may be different, but only in the sense that its overall value is less tied to individual relationships, but rather to the communities themselves. Each is a treasure trove of searchable, moderated, insightful, and trusted (if sometimes opinionated) information. One obvious similarity is how difficult it is to migrate communities. I've seen so many attempts. None convincing. All such successful migrations that I've witnessed were actually slow organic growths of new networks that progressively made the older ones obsolete or redundant. I don't recall a successful one that was a mass exodus from one platform to another. The fine prints never made the unanimity (new moderation rules, etc). It seems that you really need to have a new destination that people can agree to gradually join and use concurrently with the old one, before abandoning the latter altogether.