“ Smaldino and colleagues modeled adoption when using something becomes a social marker—meaning adoption signals membership in a particular group. They found that when groups want to distinguish themselves from one another, an innovation becoming associated with one group can delay or suppress adoption by the other group, even when the innovation itself is beneficial. They call the mechanism “outgroup aversion.””
Twetch gets discovered by BSV people → BSV people create most of the content/social norms → using Twetch begins to signal “BSV person” → outsiders perceive joining Twetch as joining a BSV community rather than simply trying a social product → some outsiders don’t experiment → the existing community becomes even more disproportionately BSV.