> Originally they were there to connect people and let them share in each other’s joy.

No, they looking for a ways how to easily and faster to fuck.

> They couldn’t measure joy, but they could measure engagement, and so they did.
> That measurement became their goal, and they focused on maximizing it.

Because this is social networks profit. Ads, and more people attached to some topic where can be shown an ads to these people. That's why and only that's why it is works like that. Nobody cares about principles. Only money. Power in money, a money is a power.

> What they didn’t understand was that negative, divisive, hate-inspiring posts get more engagement than positive, supportive, kind posts do.

For what do your country has intelligence and different defense structures?
Because it is very easy manipulate by people and do wars. Extremely easy to organize that and involve a lot of people to mass destruction events. Extremely easy. And i do not know (the same as you too) who is behind some kind of negative behind.

> . The algorithm didn’t care whether the posts brought joy or anger, it only cared about whether they brought engagement.

Because this is about ads and money. More people will watch ads more money social network will get. Easy.

> So in order to maximize engagement, the algorithm actively encourages and elevates posts that cause unhappiness among the platform’s users.

You said that? Is a bots with fake votes, SEO thing is not about manipulating data, opinions? Its easy to make fake accounts and promote hate as a wide interested topic, while it's not. Only social network know that.

> They join looking for support, or connections, to give back, or find meaningful relationships.

No, they looking for themselves reflected in the community.

> Measuring engagement doesn’t tell you if your community is happy, or healthy, or even accomplishing any of the things you were hoping it would accomplish.

Depends on a case. Some measuring engagement can prevent negative business processes.

> Knowing how much engagement you have doesn’t tell you how much value you’re getting

For that you have another metrics. Depends on a case. Registration, profit, grow, etc. Final countable results.

> Let’s bring this back to community building. We still want our members to be happy, right?

Who the fuck am i to let people happy? Happiness is subjective thing. I have no clue, no ability to make someone happy. The same as you, the same as anybody else. This is very agile thing depends on many factors and the most important wish to be happy and objective situation.

> So what should we value?

Does your community member even read or know about "values" at all?
Is it some kind of cult, or what?

----

I have a well known secret.
To get maximum engagement need to say that the white color is black color.
Water - is not a liquide, and planet earth is flat.

And then your "engagement" will go above the sky.
Just always need to split people, and say that one thing is not the thing what you used to think, it's another thing. totally vise versa.

Oh... Darling, exactly this you have done by saying:
"stop measuring engagement". And by this title invited to engagement a lot of people who forced to read all of your nonsense to one more time confirm that white is white, black is black.