part of the twon project
Welcome to Your New Role!
You're the lead designer of a brand-new online social network—welcome to twonderland.
In this simulation, you’ll explore how even the tiniest design choices can ripple out to shape user behavior, spark fragmentation and fuel polarization.
Ready to see how your decisions shape the digital world? Let’s dive in!
Welcome to the Network!
These aren’t just smiley faces—they’re users of twonderland, each one part of a larger social web.
Look closely: some are tightly connected, others link distant parts of the network.
Alice has four friends here in twonderland: Bob, Charlie, Dave, and Eve. You can see them smiling over on the right!
In twonderland, friendships are mutual—so it’s not just Alice who calls them friends. Bob, Charlie, Dave, and Eve all consider Alice a friend too.
In twonderland, users don’t just share messages—they influence each other’s moods.
Here, you can explore how Alice and Bob affect one another. Each has a sentiment slider, and the white zone around Alice shows the range of sentiments she’s open to. If Bob’s sentiment falls within that range, his message can shift Alice’s mood closer to his.
Try adjusting their sentiments, then press the button to see how Alice reacts to Bob’s message. Will she move closer to his mood?
You’re in Control: Designing the Feed
You’re in Control: Designing the Feed
As the platform designer in twonderland, you decide how users see the world.
Each user receives messages from all their friends—but only the top one makes it through. That’s where your ranking algorithm comes in. Should messages be shown at random? Prioritize similar sentiments? Highlight the most aggressive or the calmest voices?
Click the button to assign random sentiments to Alice’s six friends. Then, choose two ranking strategies and compare how they sort the messages. The connecting lines show how the same friends shift positions depending on your design.
Your choices shape what Alice sees—and how she feels. What kind of world will you build?
Now, let’s see the world through Alice’s eyes.
How does your algorithm mess with her mood?
Remember that Alice only pays attention to messages that feel familiar — ones that land inside her white bubble of influence. And she only reads the top-ranked post the algorithm serves her.
Explore how Alice’s model is affected by your algorithm. Start with similarity and see how picking a different algorithm changes her mood shifts.
It’s Not Just Alice Anymore… Alice has friends.
Her friends have friends. And guess what? Everyone’s influencing everyone.
The simulation breaks this down into steps. Here, you see what happens in a step.
It’s like a never-ending carousel of influence:
Each user reacts, shifts (or not), and then passes the vibe along to others.
But take your time, explore, play. Get familiar with what happens in a single timestep in twonderland.
Welcome to warp mode. 🚀 Everything moves faster. You’ll begin to see how sentiments shift and spread over time. The network has also grown—more users, more connections, more complexity.
Choose a ranking algorithm and start the simulation a few times and watch what happens. You won’t catch every detail, but you’ll start to see patterns emerge.
One Run? Fun.
Many Runs? Science!
Every time you run the simulation, things might turn out a little differently. Why? Because there’s always a bit of randomness sprinkled into the system.
So don’t trust just one run. Only by repeating the simulation can you spot the real patterns hiding in the noise.
Here, you can run 12 simulations in parallel. Do you see patterns?
This is where twonderland becomes your lab.
Here’s your challenge:
twonderland may look simple — and that’s the point.
Yet even in this minimal setup, the dynamics are anything but simple.
Now imagine adding more traits, more complex networks, smarter algorithms...
💥 The dynamics could explode in complexity.
That’s why we need formal tools to truly understand these systems.
You’ve seen how even the tiniest design choices can ripple through a digital society. They shape what people
see, how they feel, and how they influence each other.
But here’s the twist:
The consequences of these choices are often hidden, complex, and hard to predict. That’s why we need tools
like twonderland. Not just to play — but to
experiment, observe, and understand.