[gruez]

>Yeah, is the top only fans girl really 10x or whatever more valuable than the penultimate only fans girl?

That's the wrong interpretation. The reason why the top only fan girl gets 10x more revenue than the penultimate only fans girl is because she's marginally better, so more people flock to her. This works because her marginal cost of production is zero, so her having 10x the fans doesn't cost her 10x the work. The same applies to other professions where the marginal cost is zero. I doubt the average NFL player signing multi-million dollar contracts are hundreds/thousands of times better than the amateur player, but because sports leagues wants to hire the best, the top players get a disproportionate amount of money chasing after them.

[ffwacom]

Fair enough, it must be inevitable and the algorithm is irrelevant.

[PaulKeeble]

The algorithms tend to favour entrenchment. They don't select on good or best they don't understand those qualities so they select on the basis of popular, assuming people are aware of the best. The issue with that is once a best has been selected years later the algorithm has effectively boosted them even with better options. Discovery is a real problem on most social media but especially on places like twitch.