Interesting to choose Hacker News as an example. I'm sure they measure every metric that can be measured, but it'd be interesting to see what measures they actu

Interesting to choose Hacker News as an example. I'm sure they measure every metric that can be measured, but it'd be interesting to see what measures they actually care about doing well on. The stated goal of the site is pretty explicitly not to be as engaging as possible. It's to satisfy intellectual curiosity. They make plenty of design choices for the express purpose of not being addictive. No infinite scroll. No personalized feed. No ability to subcribe to or follow particular users or topics. No visual or audio content. No previews. Automatic editing of clickbait titles to be less clickbaity. Built-in ability to temporarily ban yourself if you're spending too much time here. It's not the measurement that is toxic. It's what measures you optimize for that can become toxic.