Rather, all those things are being made antiquated metrics - by the opaque algorithm changes which platforms make without any consultation from the users.

They make or break people's and businesses' lives very frequently with those algorithm changes. Like Google killing off many small web design, ecommerce businesses with its Penguin algorithm update which gave all the weight to major corporations' websites. Penalizing everyone who practiced and obeyed the guidelines they have been giving beforehand to boot. A millions of small web design outlets and ecommerce sites were buried with that algorithm change. Google faced no repercussion, no legal consequence. They just kept doing whatever they wanted with such algorithm and product changes which made or broke people's lives and they keep doing that.

Same for Medium - now followers mean nothing - what you thought was a noticeable and reliable income stream from writing yesterday can be made into a few dollars per month tomorrow - through a change of algorithm by the platform without telling anyone.

Quora is the same - one didn't used to make money there, but one was able to reach many people with what he wrote and find many people as well.

Now Quora expects you to bring external traffic to your content from outside Quora for their algorithm to show your content to people inside Quora platform more. So you are supposed to do the social media marketing for Quora themselves. Else your content reaches much fewer people.

Such arbitrary and self-serving algorithm changes should not be easy to make. It affects people's livelihoods and the way the public consumes content. It feels like some regulation is in order.