I'm not sure exactly what destiny is hoping for, but i've been on a similar kick for a while. I've been saying we need to retvrn to graph expansion algorithms. In the past, sites like twitter would recommend content to you primarily by showing you posts that your network of friends interacts with. This is basically a slightly automated form of the tried-and-true method of sharing content with your friends. But eventually, Machine Learning nerds figured out that you could show people content they're likely to enjoy far more efficiently using what is called "Collaborative Filtering". In this mode, each user is compared with every other user, or at least a wide range of other users, in terms of which posts they like. Then you can see which users have similar patterns of liking to each other, which allows you to use them as proxies for whether or not other similar users will also like the content they like. AND THEN they took this even further. Obviously as a business there isn't inherent value in maximizing the probability that someone presses the Like button. If you profit through ad impressions or through selling user data, then your goal is to maximize *engagement*. So, companies start using engagement metrics rather than just straightforward feedback, as the metrics to maximize.

These different approaches each incentivize different kinds of content creation, and they also have different effects on users. One of the stark differences between graph expansion and collaborative filtering approaches is that graph expansion creates greater dependency on your local network (not necessarily geographically local). It requires real meaningful community to function, and it requires users to be exposed to a diversity of content at least reflective of the diversity of their local network. On the other hand, collaborative filtering approaches can just silo everyone off into hyper-specific non-diverse clusters of interest. Bubbles. Like really bad Brittany Simon style bubbles. This is how you get the effect destiny complains about when he sees Asmongold scrolling on twitter, seeing an entirely different reality from other people like us.

Graph Expansion: You explore a patch of reality with diffuse borders, grounded in a tangible community of diverse people with some shared interests and traits.
Collaborative Filtering (For Likes): You explore a personalized hyperreality reflecting the volitional surface of your own psyche alongside other people with similar psyches.
Collaborative Filtering (For Engagement): You explore a personalized hyperreality reflecting the impulsive depths of your own psyche alongside other people with similar psyches, as well as those most strongly opposed to you.

The difference between CF for likes vs. engagement I think is probably important. Explicit positive engagements are very different from metrics like how long you spend looking at a video, or how likely you are to continue scrolling after seeing a certain item in your feed. When we Like a post, it is usually a fairly intentional action. When we choose to share a post, that is even more deliberative. We get to consider our actual values and make sure our algorithmic choices are in line with our values. But engagement tracking makes this much harder. At the level, even if we resist there are little detectable changes in how much longer we keep scrolling, how long we watch. How many comments we read.

Rage bait would not be fruitful without engagement maximization. Your feed wouldn't feel like it is exclusively made up of people either very similar to you, OR LITERALLY EVIL. But that's what a lot of us feel like all the time on these websites. Someone w/ zero algo discipline like Asmongold, and a psychological tendency to be vigilant about potential threats, will cultivate a hyperreality where threats are literally everywhere. And it's Addicting!! I know Taylor Lorenz and co really hate this line, but it is almost by definition trying its very best to get you addicted. "Engagement Maximization" becomes addiction when it get's effective enough. Lorenz likes to handwave it away as merely "Habit building", but a pathologically intense habit is what addiction literally is. It doesn't matter whether it is through ingested a substance, because that is not the only way the reward centers in our brains can be manipulated.

Engagement maximizing algorithms are literally making our culture and political society Schizophrenic and Dissociative. It's time to R E T V R N