All social media profits from measuring interactions. Did this person skip past this item quickly, then slow down for that item by just a few milliseconds? What exactly caught their eye and why? Close friend or distant? Certain trigger words, or images? Which words are worth how much?

Creating conflict creates much greater opportunity to get useful measurements. If someone believes "those people are going to kill me!" - it's easier to measure and monetize their other responses (and then influence their behavior somehow...like try to sell them new security services they didn't actually need).

I think that the reason social media might create a feeling of inauthenticity is because we know that it's a for-profit platform that is selling our interactions to someone else - we KNOW we are being watched and studied - and yet we still think it is 'ours' and private somehow.

Medium does this to some extent too ("I made ### money by following these # tricks!!!"). But at the end of the day, the joy of reading and thinking is the attraction here, not the quick emotional judgment we unwittingly sell to some other bidder.