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Engagement is a toxic metric. Products which optimize for it become worse. People who optimize for it become less happy. It also seems to generate runaway feedback loops where most engagable people have a) worst individual experiences and then b) end up driving the product bus.
This reflection brought to you by the respected American journal which retweeted ragebait today... for the eighth time in the last two years. Did they do it because their social team knew that article would piss people off? Or does "sort by engagement desc" generate this magic?
I described the article as "clearly designed to be ragebait" in an early version of that tweet but in hindsight I think that might actually not be true. They could literally just have entirely conscientious journalists publishing daily and have their social team find the bait.
Maybe every editor wakes up every morning to serve the public interest. Maybe every journalist shines their light into every assigned story. Maybe every social media planner gives people what they want to see. Moloch cares not; he will subvert them to producing pollution anyhow.