The most horrifying thing to me from that episode was that the judges and audience understood and agreed with the MC's denouncement of optimizing for user engagement (something that never happens today /s).
It made them feel horrified, ashamed, and aware. Feelings they weren't used to feeling. Feelings they needed to feel. And they loved it.
So they packaged it up and let people cash in their merits to hear him speak again. Like what the hell? Even awareness of the system can be sold as a commodity by the system.
It makes me think of subreddits critical of proprietary software and social media, or privacy-focused Telegram users. It makes me think of TV shows I love that happen to be owned by media conglomerates: shows like Mr. Robot. Selling criticism of yourself...that's a powerful way to control dissent.
The worst part is that the people profiting from this probably don't even realize what a genius move they're making. Most of this is likely unintentional. The most powerful actors don't even know how manipulative they're being; everything runs on autopilot at an organizational and individual level. That's what happens when you optimize for a singular metric.