The platform keeps sabotaging its own ecosystem.

Spend five hours crafting a thoughtful argument? A lazy selfie gets more engagement. Dump serious capital and effort into premium video content? The algorithm rewards 30-second clips instead. Build something substantial? The system punishes depth.

This misalignment between effort and reach creates a perverse incentive structure. Quality long-form analysis gets buried while low-effort content floods feeds. It's a race to the bottom—creators are forced to choose between their standards and their visibility. When platforms optimize for engagement metrics over content value, they gradually hollow out their own intellectual foundation. The tragedy is predictable: talented people migrate elsewhere, mediocrity compounds, and the platform's long-term credibility erodes.