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Social media orgs discovered a while back that what they want is "engagement", not "good content". Enraging content is as good as "good" content in terms of clicks, and downvotes would bury that enraging content.

Making you mad is as good as making you feel any other thing in terms of engagement.

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yeah that's the story that I read a lot. But it doesn't make sense. E.g. I don't use Twitter because it's just a shitshow (e.g. even before Musk took over). Of course the algorithm from Twitter doesn't see it like that because it never analyzed me. It only analyzes those who are there not those who are not there. Thus, there's a hole in their algorithm. Or in other words: It's a short-termin optimizing algo (for those who are already there), not a long-term optimizer (long-term user growth).

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