Right, it feels like things are optimising purely for “next click”, i.e, what will keep you mindlessly in flow, forgetting the time and consuming more content.

Right, it feels like things are optimising purely for “next click”, i.e, what will keep you mindlessly in flow, forgetting the time and consuming more content. So if I’m watching a video about TIG welding say, to optimise “next click” I suppose I should be recommended mostly more welding videos, with a smattering of engineering and finally a bit of clickbait mixed in case I’m starting to get distracted. If services are optimising for “keep going right now”, they might be modelling as something like a markov chain of “clicked on next” and that’s how we get stuck in this kind of short-sighted local optimum.