Sam Liebeskind

We tend to think of the problem of social media as a problem of disinformation - that is, of people receiving erroneous information and being convinced that false things are in fact true. Hence, we can try to make social media better through factchecking, through educating people to see falsehoods and similar. This is, indeed, a problem, but it is... See more

However, some types of engagement, such as votes and likes, come from controls designed to solicit feedback, while other types of engagement, such as clicks and watch time, are more implicit. In general both implicit and explicit engagement signals provide distinct and useful information to recommenders.

Centralised moderation isn't the only option that doesn't work. We also need to eliminate any option that doesn't have a credible mean of doing the work — and it's a lot of work, meaning that either someone needs to get paid or you need a lot of volunteers. And punting it to the users can never work.