I think both approaches are used on HN, and I like that model. Votes are a cheap solution that work great as long as abuse is taken care of.

I have not thought of anything concrete yet as I literally got this idea yesterday. But I am confident that most of the drivel can be kept out of the platform. The goal is to keep out people who enjoy reading sweet nothings. As long as you don't have them on the platform, bad writers won't have an audience. To do this, make the platform as boring looking as possible (like HN). When those over-stimulated entertainment junkies don't find flashy content, they will go back to scrolling tiktok.

Replacing HN is not really the goal as HN is a news aggregator, not a content-hosting platform and it works great.