Bettering social media platforms could be a top-tier systemic intervention.
My understanding is that EA puts most systemic change / solutions S-rated in terms of impact but F-rated in terms of neglectedness and tractability.
Is this the case for social media? Is it super hard and attempted to make the platforms, either internally or through policy, to not maximize for engagement? What about popularizing (and building if necessary) platforms that reward for what would be "useful" for people (or society at large)?
Because I think it's the most impactful systemic leverage I can think of. Unlike reforms to traditional media, entertainment, education and even politics, changes to them would reach and make at least small changes to most most of the demographics of most countries. And we need to add to this that they are not just replacing those sources of influence to individuals (except education I guess?), but also replacing the last bastion of influence: social circles.
Systemic change interventions should be mentioned as a category of things EA works on when introducing EA and categorizing EA work, outside the "countermeasure" interventions that are done to solve more specific problems (animal suffering, x-risks, global h&d, etc) and meta-work.
I think this would help clarify the idea that EA tries to analyze systemic change proposals and puts money and work on them sometimes.
They would include causes like improving institutional decision-making, happiness research, etc, and even new ideas like making AIs' character good.
I think there are a lot of people who want to do good, but just if they think they're fixing "the system". We can attract these people and give them answers to what we believe is better to do and incorporate their ideas if good.
In principle, they are of course great because of the positive feedback loops that systems could provide and that could make the impact of the interventions grow exponentially. Maybe the community could be thinking more about them.