[sfj]

All the new alternative social networks and video sites that have cropped up and the old ones that have ben gaining in popularity is evidence that people are beginning to turn away. Ex. lbry.tv, bitchute.com, gab.com, voat.co, phuks.co, zerohedge.com

[jakelazaroff]

This is an expected consequence of deplatforming — once you kick them off, those people are going to go somewhere. For this argument to work, you need to show that those networks are able to grow more than they would as a community on a mainstream platform.

[sfj]

Networks tend to follow an exponential growth rate, so even if the same number moved to the alternative platforms, the time it would take them to grow large enough to be significant would shorten substantially.

[jakelazaroff]

Why would it shorten the growth period compared to mainstream platforms, where there are far more users who could join the community? Is there any evidence that this is the case?

[sfj]

> Why would it shorten the growth period compared to mainstream platforms, where there are far more users who could join the community?

Because networks tend to follow an exponential growth rate. The time it takes to go from 1 to 128 equals the same time it takes to go from 128 to 16384, so if you add 127, you've shortened the time for the network to grow from 1 to 16384 by half. Meanwhile, for a platform that already had 16384, subtracting 127 is a drop in the bucket.

> Is there any evidence that this is the case?

Facebook/Youtube/Twitter/et al couldn't have grown as much as they did as fast as they did unless that was the case.

[jakelazaroff]

Not all exponential growth is the same: x^2 and x^1.01 are both exponential. I’m asking you for evidence that the exponent is higher for niche isolated networks than it is for communities on platforms with algorithmic promotion to a massive existing userbase.