I like your discussion but I don’t understand the opening paragraph. The recommender systems are designed to maximize engagement as you say. Nothing has gone awry here, things work as intended - people click lots of links, even if they don’t gain anything from the time spent.
Anyway, I feel like twitter/bluesky solve this problem. Your followers feed can be curated to meet all these goals. Bluesky is even easier since you can follow a bluesky list/group that has been curated for people with specific values.
I like your discussion but I don’t understand the opening paragraph. The recommender systems are designed to maximize engagement as you say. Nothing has gone awry here, things work as intended - people click lots of links, even if they don’t gain anything from the time spent.
Anyway, I feel like twitter/bluesky solve this problem. Your followers feed can be curated to meet all these goals. Bluesky is even easier since you can follow a bluesky list/group that has been curated for people with specific values.