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Are social platforms optimizing for the wrong metric?
Posted by on February 17, 2026 at 2:39 pmI’ve been thinking about something lately.
Most social platforms are optimized around attention — views, engagement spikes, trending content. That makes sense from a growth perspective.
But I’m wondering whether that model unintentionally discourages long-term credibility.
For example:
• Viral content often outperforms consistent expertise
• Outrage spreads faster than nuance
• Algorithm shifts can wipe out years of reachIt makes me question whether attention is a stable foundation for digital ecosystems.
Do you think platforms should start prioritizing credibility signals over virality?
If so:
What would that realistically look like?
Reputation scores?
Identity verification layers?
Behavioral history?Curious how others see this evolving.
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1 Reply
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Start with the revenue model (display vs programmatic vs subscription) and work backward.
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lol if you believe a channel will ever optimize for “nuance” over outrage, I have a fucking bridge to sell you
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whatever makes money. it’s a business.
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Authentic content is highly discouraged in favor of whatever gets you in front of the most faces for the longest time.
The whole thing is borked and encourages freaking the system rather than actual content people want to watch.
People are making content for the algorithm, not for people, and the algorithm supports that.
Pretty soon it will be AImaking content for AI
IF NOT ALREADY! lol -
I agree with this 100%.
It creates polarization too. Which is why I’ve been off all SoMe for 5 ish years now.I just vibe coded a social app (https://palate.replit.app) that ignores all of the things you mention and aim to connect people based on taste
Been trying to share it on Reddit but little did I know most communities auto block newcomers
Aaaanyway, I fully agree with your post but at the same time I think most people are struggling to accept apps that don’t engage the way they’be become used to. For the same reasons people tend avoid boredom and navigate towards comfort over less appealing options. I hope I’m wrong or at least will be wrong in time
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Hi ! I work for Doomscrollr and we were motivated to start because of this exact problem. Our premise is basically zero algorithmic bullshit – just pure posting joy! Give it a try <3
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Attention is easy to optimize, credibility isn’t. Platforms chase engagement because it scales trust and reputation are harder to measure and monetize.
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They’re optimizing for attention because attention pays the bills, credibility is just a nice side effect when it happens. The algo doesn’t care who’s right, it cares who keeps you scrolling. Long-term trust is great, but quarterly revenue says hi.
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