There's many ways for something to be better than another thing, though, and a lot of stuff is winning because it's best at "engagement" even if it's really bad in many other ways.

Spot on. By OP’s metric, we should shift all agricultural and pharmaceutical production to heroin.

As an example, watch a really good documentary on something, I would consider it best

But it might have less views than some AI slop video perhaps even generated in a minute

Another aspect relevant to the propaganda discussion is that I think modern algorithms have decided that ragebait is the best form of engagement and this is why propaganda might spread fast and how social media might actually actively help the foreign nation

I would argue that this is one of the reasons social media actively harms but its that profit over all for social media seems genuinely harmful. We need more focus on bluesky and mastodon and other alternatives as well to establish a network effect there but also that I would argue that prosecuting social media / large tech companies should have such a case where something can be prosecuted criminally for a class law suit case so that these social medias can stay better in shape than being deranged

But the issue to me feels like I am already protesting Italian even fining because in this case to me it feels like abusing the vagueness of the law and other factors so I am sure that if we give govts more power they might have the ability to abuse it as well for some lobbying powers (in this case it seems to be football)

Everything boils down to what the genuine incentives of the govts are I guess. I mean some are trying to do somethings but I guess all of this is just really tricky and the answer is in a series of changes and not a single one. There is nuance to this like every other discussion