Social platforms are under the same effect as voting. Over half population either supports it or is too ill informed. They just want to scroll their feed without thinking too much. Same way voters just vote for the one that sounds alright on the surface. Combined with the fervent supporters makes a majority. It’s the minority of voters/users who are opinionated against it.

Voats problem wasn’t engagement. It was literal nazis.

They tried to prop up a thin veneer of legitimacy but at some point they just stopped caring. The front page became blatant “kill all [whatever]” type posts. That’s when engagement completely collapsed.

Lemmy has some clearly in bad faith instances which are probably run by nazis. Federation seems to be doing its job of resilience.

The goal has always been engagement prisons. Where people never leave the platform. With generated content this must seem like a final step. They don’t need to make people to interact with each other in ways that keeps both of them engaged. They don’t need to leech content from other sites while preventing people from going to the site. With generated content people will interact with themselves while engaged in completely fabricated content. It’s even more dystopian than ever.