The hyper-polarization is probably preventable, in my estimation. The main thing a social network would need to do is to stymy the flywheel effect that allows a handful of users (and thus sets of norms) to come to dominate so strongly. That might mean something along the lines of a system that puts a hard cap on the reach any profile or topic can have, and when engagement exceeds the triggering threshold, reach actually tapers off proportionate to how far the threshold is exceeded.

In theory this would naturally elevate posts that are more measured and mundane while sinking posts with big emotional lizard brain appeal (by design or otherwise). With time this would establish a self-reinforcing norm that makes polarized and inflammatory posts look as clownish as they actually are.

I think a lot of social network problems would be solved if platforms put an orange flag next to profiles that have posted more than 10 times in the last 24 hours, and a red flag next to profiles that have posted more than 60 times in the last 7 days. The total number of flags ever given to an account on the bio would be good as well. No other automatic action, just a visible flag or other symbol.

Being able to temporarily filter out profiles that post too many times (a setting you could change) would also be nice, but it shouldn't be automatic.

I think it’s more about not taking posts out of context. Communities need boundaries between them. Substack and other blogging tools are good this way.

For Bluesky, the problem is that the replies to someone you follow can be pretty bad. (Official Bluesky posts are an example of this.) People can filter them individually, but it’s not the same as a blog with good moderation.

I don’t think I could do a whole lot if the replies to one of my Bluesky posts were bad?

A recent study[1] seems to indicate that polarization is a hard problem, along with some of the other negative effects of social media. Many of the commonly suggested solutions have minimal impact, or no effect at all. That flywheel effect is surprisingly robust.

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.03385

> stymy the flywheel effect that allows a handful of users (and thus sets of norms) to come to dominate so strongly

This prevents certain communities from forming and certain topics from being discussed. For example, you can't discuss LGBTQ issues with troll armies constantly swarming and spamming. If such communities are not given tools to exclude malignant disruptors by setting norms and "dominating" a given channel, they will have to go elsewhere (such as leaving X for BlueSky).