[doctor_eval]

I agree, It seems like we are in a race to the bottom in which, where if we don’t target engagement in the manner derided here, we fear having our lunch eaten.

Make no mistake, I am 100% with the author here (at least philosophically), but it’s really hard to avoid in practise. In my forthcoming project, on the one hand I want to have a soft touch with users in terms of engagement, but on the other hand the wrong investors will not care. And as I learned in my previous project, you can’t always know if you have the right investors until it’s way too late.

Engagement (in the classical sense) is essential for a successful product, and I’m really hopeful that we can find, agree to, and implement limits around what we will do to manage it. But in an industry where this behaviour is the norm, it also becomes the expectation.