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Paper is basically showcasing this effect playing outhttps://t.co/QMRB3Mq2hwWhen you neuter a community, only the hardcore adherents care enough to reform it and reknit on another platform. https://t.co/gOaNAauwYp
Irony is that they mention people migrating to 4chan... I watched people migrate OFF of 4chan to 8ch due to censorship fears years ago.Ironically we've seen the same dynamic play out there, when 8ch closed the hardcore types reformed elsewhere https://t.co/Bq8jAZmweIfractal.
This phenomena keeps playing out. A critical mass of users congregate on a platform, then like triggering a honeybee hive swarming. Then they mass around a Schelling point and then fly away to other locations.Looking at this from the platform level is the wrong perspective.
There's more than one reason to migrate, not just censorship. Sometimes these places get too big and divergences happen due to poor or aggressive moderation causing communities to lose members, so they reach out elsewhere.This one predates my own use of forums. https://t.co/TRoL7jpPFQ
You can reframe this as a signal/noise problem. If a place gets overrun with noise (spam, ads, eternal September effects, competing conversations taking up limited real estate), then then community often migrates.Varying social ties can cause network effects to occur over time.
The normal flow is more passive - various members vote on if the hive is to move much like how a bee hive's decision to move id decided by quorum.This is hypothesized to be done by members of the hive who have the most information on brood strength. https://t.co/i0pC7bwDAk
But of course we aren't exactly bees. This effect is more like how those super colonies of ants set up multiple nest sites. People will often exist in the old and the new areas - ferrying memes back and forth like how ants ferry resources.
Apparently bees make tooting and quacking noises that can be picked up with a microphone, and it predicts swarming behavior ahead of time. Intervening with the hive disrupts things in a strange way too! https://t.co/1QMoETLL69