I unsubscribed from Quora emails because I was troubled by all of the engagement manipulation in what they sent me and how well it worked. As long as it works on people and creators and consumers don’t punish platforms for promoting manipulative content, these things will continue to exist.

You can blame <social media demon of the day> as much as you want but these things will never go away until people learn to leave them.

Demonizing things doesn’t work (masking, drugs, alcohol, <human weakness of the day>, <moral outrage of the day>) and it leads to evasion, black markets, and reactionary opposition.

You have to actually teach people how things work, a reality based message about positives and negatives, and a respect for several disagreeing viewpoints in order to reach optimum outcomes which are never “goal zero”.

The harder you squeeze the more will slip through your fingers whether it’s through moralization or authoritarianism.