I think the solution is to embrace algorithmic ranking, but insist on “control”—to insist that the algorithm serves your goals and not someone else’s. How could that happen? In principle, we could all just refuse to use services without control. But I’m skeptical this would work, because of rug-pulls. The same forces that made TikTok into TikTok will still exist and history is filled with companies providing control early on, getting a dominant position, and then taking the control away. Theoretically everyone could leave at that point, but that rarely seems to happen in practice. Instead, I think the control needs to be somehow “baked in” from the beginning. There needs to be some kind of technological/legal/social structure in place that makes rug pulls impossible.