Yes, the tendency of focus on easy to measure metrics instead of what you actual care about is a whole other discussion of interesting craziness.
But isn't that orthogonal to this discussion? There are better metrics, but they still have the same large scale attention economy, filter bubble, junk food media effects as "engagement" does. "actual clicks on ads" is conversion rate x ad views and ad views is a function of engagement.
I don't see how more accurate measurements would positively affect the way content is written, presented and optimized. If anything wouldn't it just get worse?
But isn't that orthogonal to this discussion? There are better metrics, but they still have the same large scale attention economy, filter bubble, junk food media effects as "engagement" does. "actual clicks on ads" is conversion rate x ad views and ad views is a function of engagement.
I don't see how more accurate measurements would positively affect the way content is written, presented and optimized. If anything wouldn't it just get worse?