The notion of a platform watching over group conversations, with its only purpose being engagement, is scarier. There is nothing more engaging than existential

The notion of a platform watching over group conversations, with its only purpose being engagement, is scarier. There is nothing more engaging than existential threat. As long as anybody anywhere stands to benefit from fomenting the idea of existential threat and using the terror thus inspired to get a social group to exterminate a selected other social group… which is then itself under existential threat and can respond in kind… the only refuge to this is something like a government or legal system watching over this. Otherwise competitive pressure will ensure that the platform fomenting the most fear of existential threat will have the most engagement and will prosper. YouTube seems to have already recognized this and is grappling with it in its own way. I doubt Telegram has any wish to moderate its real purpose for existence and undermine the engagement it must have to survive. And there is nobody who cannot be turned monstrous through invoking existential threat: all the better if it's a realistic fear, it will persist long after the tables are turned and the victim has become the monster in turn. History has shown this really clearly.