There are high quality original sources writing information today, just like there was before Web 2.0, when people would go on the internet to learn things and spend actual quality time reading blogs and personal content as well (which wasn't written for virality, but for expression).<p>However, while original sources (NASA, Reuters, bloggers, authors, scholarly journals) still write and publish (including to social media), the viral content makers, a second tier of people who write about what the original author wrote about, specializing themselves for social media, just write the grabbiest headline, and the most engaging (infuriating, polarizing, salacious) version of a piece of the original content, and when we go to our platforms, these are the content examples we see and read.<p>The original source's publications (posts) become almost invisible. The source becomes almost unknown as a source.<p>Engagement algorithms can't help this, because this is actually their purpose, which is anti-original content and -quality content.<p>We should design platforms and systems that allow people to index their own content again (as was the case before Web 2.0 when people manually put links to other websites, blogs, organizations, and articles on their own websites. This would make original and quality content writers become visible and indexed (even just in people's worldviews, not just indexed on the internet) and make viral content makers more invisible.<p>It wouldn't be total, because many people prefer the emotionality of viral content, but it would at least create an internet where there was more value available.