It's hard to articulate but it does seem to get “user attention” to another social platform requires some sort of incentive model built in partly because of the ridiculous amount of options a person can share their opinions. Keeping it p2p seems letting off the gas a bit. I think leaving it up to the community to decide is ultimately the right decision at least on sn. I enjoy the rewards but my bigger worry is about the multiple accounts stacking sats and leaving them abandon.

That's fair. History generally does repeat. People do feel the loss of something (e.g. rewards) more than they're likely to feel the gains.

For now most rewards are coming from ads and imo if any revenue should go directly to stackers its the ad revenue. Perhaps that should be the only source of rewards.

I care just a little about rewards as an indicator that my contributions are valued, and that feels good. I zap stuff that seems substantive, and some people do that with me, and the rewards that came from that are financially immaterial, but psychologically consequential.

Do you think anybody really cares about rewards as a way to earn actual money?

I enjoy the thrill of stacking for my contributions to the website regardless of their source. I don't even look at the stats which they make publicly available. People gaming the algorithm are their own worst enemy, and they can "turn on the site". their leaving simply decreasing the noise.