I think a better metaphor is fermentation.
It happens naturally whenever the ingredients are brought together but in order to get a quality product you need ridiculous amounts of knowledge, process, and technology.
And even a tiny bit of the wrong bacteria can ruin an entire batch, but people will still drink it and go blind.
Fuck yes those memories...
I used to purposefully disable the error correction on my modem so the connection sound didn't have that stupid hissy wobbly beepy part at the end. Yeah it meant that sometimes I'd fjhkswa thjasd ar eee e but it was worth it for that pure music.
Maybe we're blessed for knowing it like none that came after, or cursed for knowing it will never be that good again...
If they really understood the phrase 'too many cooks spoil the soup', then they'd realize the advantage of smaller online communities.
Reddit was at its best when it had a low count but engaged userbase, and became actively worse as it grew.
I think this is because trolling and response isn't a 1 to 1 ratio. All it takes is 1 toxic person to make an entire subforum rancid and takes the effort of several mods to mitigate it.
The more people you have, the more chance you will have these trolls organize, the more likely they will either overwhelm or infiltrate the mods.
Yeah but then when it collapses all the roaches will scurry off to other forums, including lemmy .
Personally I want it as a place to sequester the hard and alt right, like 4chan was before the digg exodus.
Every time someone pops the infection caul where they gather, it just spreads their toxic juice everywhere else.
I think you are mistaking infiltration for 'getting spread out too far'.
Nearly all of what you describe can be most easily attributed to planted agitators.