| Large crowds in some kinds of shapes of open spaces randomly result in stampedes and people dying. All shapes of spaces are not subject to this. There are general designs that don't have this problem and there are people that have various practical guidelines to counteract the stampede problem. Same with forums where people can say things. For example a simple algorithm that does not suffer from as gross feedback effects, that facebook eliminated early on, was the timeline view of activity. Timeline sorting did not use popularity or advertising promotion to sort items. Would the service be usable like this, well yes, facebook was perfectly usable during the era it worked like this. What is the hit to their bottom line if they changed their algorithm back to simple timeline sorting? Well we can guess it must be pretty big because their current algorithm seems to be pretty psychotic by comparison (in that it intentionally fans the flames of outrage with it's interaction seeking behavior) and they are willing to take all the negative PR for the sake of this interaction uplift. |