I feel that this is the right approach-- the liability and toxicity of the platforms isn't due to them being communication platforms it's because in most practical or technical ways they are not: they are deliberate behavior modification schemes where-in companies are willfully inflaming their customer's political and social sentiments for profit in exchange for access to the addictive platform. It's like free digital weed but the catch is that it makes you angry and politically divisive.

In this sense platforms like X need to be regulated more like gambling. In some ways X is a big roulette wheel that's being spun which will help stochastically determine where the next major school shooting will take place.

Right, engagement algorithms are like giving bad takes a rocket ship.

The words of world renown epidemiologists who were, to be frank, boring and unentertaining could never possibly compete with crunchymom44628 yelling about how Chinese food causes covid.

Bad takes have the advantage of the engagement of both the people who vehemently agree and the people who vehemently disagree. Everyone is incentivized to be a shock jock. And the shock jocks are then molded by the algorithm to be ever more shock jockish.

Especially at a time when we were all thrown out of the streets and into our homes and online.

And here I'll end this by suggesting everyone watch Eddington.