I still feel like metrics arent inherently bad if for no other reason that it helps conceptualize ourselves on a macro scale. like monitoring how well a movement is doing through the activity of it's respective tag, or elevating a creative work for everyone to see through the amount of likes it gets.
in the case of the latter though, i see one concern. not wanting to turn social media into a popularity contest. but that makes me think, isnt that a pretty negative connotation? Whats wrong with a good talent show? is it bad to want to compete? is it wrong for people to hold the proverbial spotlight for being good at what they do? maybe cohost doesn't want that, and thats valid, but i do hope we get a better designed "talent show" social media site thats both geared to handle public metrics, and uses them responsibly.
and to me, metrics being used responsibly would mean to not arbitrarily guess a person's likes/dislikes to manipulate their timeline, or arbitrarily judging how long tags are allowed to trend, or censoring tags on important topics, or arbitrarily boost posts depending on arbitrary keywords, and a bunch of other stuff i'm probably forgetting. literally the only measure i care about it is "How many people like X?"
could that still stress people out and pressure them to post more or stress out trying to make the perfect post? maybe, but i'd hope a platform like that would coexist with cohost, rather than try and pull a youtube and try to become the ONLY social media site in its field, like facebook is so desperate to achieve. Like, you can always log off, and hopefully cohost or another site like it will still exist for you to engage with the internet on a personal level, to interact with the people you care about, and not compete. If that makes sense lol
the only snag ive found with this is that you kinda do have to be arbitrary with the amount of time a post or tag should be allowed to hold the spotlight, otherwise a person can snowball themselves into the #1 spot for the rest of time. i personally enjoy the idea of "votes" which are seperate to the "likes" system but function almost exactly the same, only the difference is that all votes are removed by the end of the week, and a leaderboard of sorts is created to show what the most upvoted posts were.
getting rid of votes means posts can remain viable for the week that follows if people are still interested in it and think it deserves more time in the sun, but also prevents that snowballing effect i mentioned. one issue with this though is that it has that "topic of the week" twitter effect i dont like. again, it seems like you'd have to be arbitrary with stuff like this, and ive yet to come to a satisfying answer