Comment by jim33442

It's the authenticity, but even more than that it's the saturation of inauthenticity. Even if there's oodles of authentic content, if there's enough inauthentic content to drown it out, you enter a vicious cycle where plummeting interactions and new authentic content both deed each other.

I have a hypothesis that network effects kick in for social interaction before they do for monetisation, which is why the advertisers/influencers/propagandists/scammers(/trolls, though this is different) are in a constant state of hunting down and infesting whatever platform good-faith users have most recently fled them too. Part of it is likely that smaller communities are more robust and have an easier time identifying and repelling smaller-scale incursions, but I suspect a big part is that smaller communities simply aren't worth the investment of larger incursions, especially since they'll more easily be ruined before any real payout.

Anyway, I agree with you that "quality" (as in effort and craft) is lower on the list of factors than authenticity, which makes complete sense. There was a time when a well-crafted ad was worthy of note, but ads have been so sneaky and pervasive that I think many people are desperate to have a spontaneous interaction or experience that's not trying to sell them anything.