And not by random accident either - companies put in HUGE investments into designing blinking, flashing, candied-looking… everything, in order to foster “engagement”. Dark Mirror has several episodes illustrating various aspects, trying to warn people.

In the olden days there was a phrase that “sex sells”. Well it turns out, only up to a point - whereas kittens & puppies sell even moar, and getting people angry is an appetite that seems inexhaustible.

And that does not even begin to touch on how certain actors would very much like to exaggerate certain of those effects, to their own potential benefits. e.g., the likes of anti-vaxxers + never-Hillary-ers got Trump elected, and while both of those movements maybe (probably even) started organically, they definitely have also had their fans flamed both by outside groups and the poorly constructed echo chambers of social media.

This is just the way of the world, and fighting against it, like death & entropy, is an absolute necessity yet difficult.

So if that is how they want to be, then fine. But we still need to do our part to call it out like it is, and to warn others away, or else the Fediverse as a whole suffers. I almost quit the Fediverse myself a few months ago, though fortunately v.0.19.3 came out and I simply blocked lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net instead, and now I am as happy as a clam:-).