{"ID":2847135,"CreatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","UpdatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","DeletedAt":null,"paper_url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.00329","arxiv_id":"2511.00329","title":"When Small Acts Scale: Ethical Thresholds in Network Diffusion","abstract":"Much ethical evaluation treats actions dyadically: one agent acts on one recipient. In networked, platform-mediated environments, this lens misses how public acts diffuse. We introduce a minimal message-passing model in which an initiating act with baseline valence w spreads across a social graph with exposure b, per-hop salience $alpha$, compliance $q$, and depth (horizon) d. The model yields a closed-form \\emph{network multiplier} relative to the dyadic baseline and identifies a threshold at r=b.alpha.q=1 separating subcritical (saturating), critical (linear), and supercritical (geometric) regimes. We show how common platform design levers -- reach and fan-out (affecting b), ranking and context (affecting alpha), share mechanics and friction (affecting q), and time-bounds (affecting d) -- systematically change expected downstream responsibility Applications include pandemic mitigation and vaccination externalities, as well as platform amplification of prosocial and harmful norms.","short_abstract":"Much ethical evaluation treats actions dyadically: one agent acts on one recipient. In networked, platform-mediated environments, this lens misses how public acts diffuse. We introduce a minimal message-passing model in which an initiating act with baseline valence w spreads across a social graph with exposure b, per-h...","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.00329","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2511.00329v2","authors":"[\"Masoud Makrehchi\"]","published":"2025-11-01T00:15:56Z","proceeding":"cs.SI","tasks":"[\"cs.SI\"]","methods":"[\"Diffusion Model\"]","has_code":false}