@hcmarks Definitely a combination, I think; each thing alone is not quite enough. The paywall is certainly part of it, but not for anyone who brings an RSS feed to their user name. (The friction of setting up one’s own blog elsewhere then feeding it into the timeline is probably another part of it.)
Its relative smallness is probably part of it, too, but I believe that M.b could be far larger than it is now and it would still seem small, precisely because it lacks the viral qualities of hashtags/trends, etc.
It’s impossible to mindlessly propagate anything. In fact, it’s impossible to do anything mindlessly here.
It’s more like a network of neighborhoods than a vast echoing room. For instance, there was one very grave conflict a few years ago, which even led to several good people leaving the community. But it went almost unnoticed and its fossil remains are virtually undetectable now. There was almost no piling-on, side-taking, endless rehashing, or other toxic exacerbations which conflicts like this lead to on the attention-economy sites.
Not every local dispute is global news. But if you monetize rubbernecking, then local flame-wars will become global news — and the “news” will simply be a constant shrieking white noise.