How does the visual design of digital platforms impact user behavior and the resulting environment? A body of work suggests that introducing social signals to content can increase both the inequality and unpredictability of its success, but has only been shown in the context of music listening. To further examine the effect of social influence on media popularity, we extend this research to the context of algorithmically-generated images by re-adapting Salganik et al's Music Lab experiment. On a digital platform where participants discover and curate AI-generated hybrid animals, we randomly assign both the knowledge of other participants' behavior and the visual presentation of the information. We successfully replicate the Music Lab's findings in the context of images, whereby social influence leads to an unpredictable winner-take-all market. However, we also find that social influence can lead to the emergence of local cultural trends that diverge from the status quo and are ultimately more diverse. We discuss the implications of these results for platform designers and animal conservation efforts.

翻译：数字平台的视觉设计如何影响用户行为和由此产生的环境? 一组工作表明,向内容引入社会信号可以增加其成功与否的不平等和不可预测性,但只能在音乐监听的背景下表现出来。 为进一步审视社会影响对媒体受欢迎程度的影响,我们通过重新调整萨尔加尼克等人的音乐实验室实验,将这项研究扩大到算法生成图像的背景。在一个参与者发现和监管人工生成的混合动物的数字平台上,我们随机分配了其他参与者行为的知识和信息的视觉展示。我们成功地复制了音乐实验室在图像方面的研究结果,社会影响导致一个不可预测的赢家通吃市场。然而,我们也发现社会影响可能导致与现状不同并最终更加多样化的当地文化趋势的出现。我们讨论了这些结果对平台设计者和动物保护工作的影响。