Top-Level Threads with Links

We've probably all seen the message, and then either abided by it (as I see daily) or laughed and ignored it:

"Your Thread contains a link. If you'd like to share a link, please post the top-level thread and then make a reply thread to it with the link."

But, has anyone stopped to wonder why InLeo of all places is promoting this user behaviour?

Don't worry, I'll give you the simple, quick, answer:

Because Twitter Does It.

There is zero benefit to seeking to control this user behaviour on this platform beyond an (in my opinion) childish desire to be like Twitter.

To understand why I'm making that assertion you first have to understand why Twitter implemented this practice.

Twitter enforces this because for them, their entire business model relies on eyes-on-screen. It relies on folks staying within the Twitter ecosystem for as long as they can keep them there - making comments, interacting with posts, and devouring ads.

As such, Twitter makes a sacrifice of user experience for their financial benefit. Using their algorithm they punish top-level posts that contain off-site links by severely limiting their spread. Thus, by devaluing posts whose purpose is to bring attention to some other place, they keep more eyes on their platform for longer. This is coincidentally also why you're constantly being served shit you either hate (so you can get angry and post about how enraged you are), or that you love.

And this is where InLeo comes in. We are fed this idea that it somehow matters if we post top-level posts with outbound links. IT DOESN'T.

First and foremost, InLeo does not have an algorithm surfacing posts to you that could penalize those types of posts.

Second, it doesn't hurt InLeo at all to have outbound links: ads, and thus eyeballs, are not the funding model InLeo uses.

So why do we have some little popup telling us to be More Twitter-Like when it quite literally doesn't fucking matter?

Why haven't the devs focused on user experience instead of just re-hashing Web2 ads-based UX choices in Web3? Aren't we supposed to be "better" than the old way?

Leo is actively working to support things like the Subscriber posts and in some ways is encouraging in-system links by marking high-rep authors... but stuff like this doesn't have to happen here. It's not user friendly and it just honestly looks dumb.

There is zero reason that anyone wanting to follow @bitcoinflood's posts should be required to pop into comments. Because that's a web2 standard that doesn't make sense here. Like quite literally Does. Not. Make. Sense.

There's no reason to do this. It's an extra step between a creator and their audience, purely because the team hasn't thought through the "why" of the UX design their system is based off of.

Now I realize that may prickle some feathers, and I'm not trying to be overly snarky about it but if there's one way to get attention here it's to piss people off. So, Khal or whatever other dev whipped this up, if I've offended you I'm sorry: but also remove this dumb UX feature.