to be honest if this isn’t a pinned post or linked in the sidebar i feel like it should be, great writeup

Well, we all would like more engagement on the Fediverse, but most of us do not want it in exchange for engagement algorithm hell. There leads the path to even more politics than is already posted but now with an extra serving of vitriol, “hey let’s look at this video of a stranger being an asshole, get enraged, and insult them,” and controversial takes on someone’s “am I the asshole?” post drowning out actual cool stuff that appeals to most, but that also doesn’t make them type out 7 paragraphs online. And what cool stuff does make it up to some kind of Popular/Trending is frequently extremely short-form content, which a lot of people believe is lowering their attention span and frequently (though not always) just lower-quality than long-form content.

At least, that is what you get with an algorithm that tries to maximize engagement above all else. We’d have to balance engagement encouragement with quality, and try to avoid outrage porn getting pushed up so high at the expense of other things just because it tends to generate the most engagement.

I think a lot of us also like that we can read the unread posts and click off, instead of forever being encouraged to scroll more, so adding an addiction component on purpose would probably be unpopular.

About the artist thing specifically—I see artists more often on Mastodon and BlueSky. I think it is because Twitter was their home platform, so naturally they flee towards other microblogging platforms.

Yep, this happens to me and it’s kind of frustrating.

When I see a discussion-based post or question I do try to answer because I know the Fediverse needs engagement and I know what it is like being on the other side. But sometimes I truly just have nothing to offer and the fact I don’t have a good answer isn’t interesting enough to be worth posting (for example, “What is your favorite football team and why?” in some general ask community. I do not have one so I can’t participate in the intended discussion, but that it isn’t special or unique to not have a favorite football team either, so talking about that wouldn’t add a fresh perspective to the discussion. I’d just feel like a party pooper typing that I don’t have one as a response to that hypothetical post). So I say nothing. Or people are arguing and getting hostile over it, and I am not interested in getting in a fight myself. Or what I do have to offer feels very very spammy and generic (“picture looks good!”).

Seeing a lot of upvotes on a post or comment feels nice, seeing that mass social approval of whatever my contribution was. But I also never had any interest in engaging in low-effort posts to get that same reward. I also think the Lemmy hivemind disapproves of low-effort posts like that so such behavior would not be rewarded.

I do wonder what motivated people who made low-effort posts for karma, and why I don’t seem to see it here even though we share an upvote/downvote system. Identifying that might help us at least figure out what not to do so that we do not set up a system that encourages that behavior. We do still clearly have the ability to see upvotes on posts and comments.

It is also possible I’m seeing low-effort posts but they are not rewarded as heavily and I mentally dismiss it as “just someone trying to get any activity going on the Fediverse at all.” I sometimes just post a link and let it be because it’s relevant to the community, I thought it was cool, and I’d like to see some Fediverse activity there but don’t really have anything original to say. It’s possible the low-effort posts are not rewarded not because the Lemmy hivemind disapproves of low effort but because they just don’t see it in the tiny little community I posted in that receives maybe an average of 3 upvotes per post.

For what it’s worth, I’m not using “Lemmy hivemind” in a derogatory fashion here, I just mean it as “the general sentiment of most Lemmy users”.

What Redditisms are you speaking of? The OP seems to be talking normally, I don’t really see any quips.