IMO people who designed social media services like facebook or reddit intended those effects that we see as side effect. For instance facebook side effects that make people from different circles able to see all of your discussion post (and even when they added the option to segregate it was hard to use) is an important piece in the addiction that people have to facebook, it make them able to have a window on other people life and "spy" on them, it's kind of a voyeurism fetish that most of people secretly have and the service is designed to exerce it.<p>To go back to the Conway's law I see it as a reverse Conway's law, or how communities are mirrors of the software design of the service they are organized in.