Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software

by Nadia Asparouhova

Our social platforms were built for distributed, small-scale, many-to-many use cases: the quaint social world of yesteryear. They were modeled after internet forums, chat groups, and mailing lists, because these were the only blueprints that we had for our online social infrastructure. As more people flocked to these platforms, we saw a few bridges collapse, because, it turns out, we had no idea how to build bridges for today’s world. The aftermath of the 2016 United States presidential election saw Facebook wholly unprepared for its new role as a steward of civil society. But platforms are learning from those mistakes and rebuilding their services with new knowledge that we’re still uncovering today. If you imagine a music concert that keeps adding attendees until it becomes a rousing crowd, you can understand the effect of adding more people to our social platforms. When six people are gathered, they can all talk to one another; everyone is engaged in the same conversation. When a thousand people are gathered, they divide into two types of interaction. There’s the broadcasting effect, when someone climbs onstage to control the crowd and everyone turns to watch. And then there’s the small-group effect, when people strike up side conversations with their neighbors, ignoring the main stage.