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Of course architects can choose to build buildings to meet other criteria, besides the effects on the people that interact with them. They can choose to make buildings that support the environment, or save the owners' money, or achieve some political end. They can also build buildings to have social effects not just through their affordances but through aesthetics, such as being beautiful to improve a neighborhood's appearance or to aggrandize an aristocracy.

But primarily buildings are built to be used, and as such they are tools, and we judge them, as we do all tools, by how fit they are for their purpose, whatever that might be.

And the purposes of buildings are to afford various ways of people interacting or avoiding interacting.

So architects think a lot about that. It's a whole thing.

Those who put together social media platforms need to think about the same sort of thing.

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