Evaluation, Well-Being Tension, and System Tradeoffs
~40 min read
How to evaluate feed ranking systems, the engagement vs. well-being tension, A/B testing design, and the key architectural tradeoffs specific to social feeds.
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Key points
- •Feed ranking A/B tests need guardrail metrics (report rate, unfollow rate, satisfaction survey) alongside engagement metrics — a model that improves engagement by amplifying outrage should NOT ship
- •The engagement-well-being tension has no clean algorithmic solution: heavy penalty on report signals, negative sentiment in replies, and satisfaction surveys are patches, not fixes
- •Time-decay should be content-type-specific: breaking news decays in hours, evergreen educational content should decay over days to prevent quality posts from disappearing immediately