things the ideal sane discourse encouraging social media platform would have: [...]
opt in anti scrolling pop up that asks you every few days what the highest value interaction you had recently on the site was, or whether you’re just mindlessly scrolling. gently reminds you to take a break if you can’t come up with a good example of a good interaction.
Cynical thought: these two points might be incompatible. Social media thrives on network effects, and one requirement for those is that the website be addicting or attention-grabbing. Anti-addictiveness designs are nice in principle, but then your prospective users just spend their time on something that’s more addicting instead (whether other websites or Netflix or whatever), and thus can’t benefit from the other ways in which your site is better.
Cynical thought: these two points might be incompatible. Social media thrives on network effects, and one requirement for those is that the website be addicting or attention-grabbing. Anti-addictiveness designs are nice in principle, but then your prospective users just spend their time on something that’s more addicting instead (whether other websites or Netflix or whatever), and thus can’t benefit from the other ways in which your site is better.