# Engagement-based feeds bury controls that would end sessions

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/engagement-based-feeds-bury-controls-that-would-end-sessions/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Aravind Srinivas](https://realalpha.app/builders/aravind-srinivas/) · Aravind Srinivas is cofounder and CEO of Perplexity AI. · Held research roles at OpenAI and Google DeepMind before co-founding the AI search engine Perplexity in 2022.
- Host: [Joe Rogan](https://realalpha.app/people/joe-rogan/) · Host, The Joe Rogan Experience
- Show: The Joe Rogan Experience
- Episode: [Joe Rogan Experience #2521 - Aravind Srinivas](https://realalpha.app/v/fOLu-pWQssQ/), Jul 1, 2026
- Moment: 1:53:23 to 1:56:15 of the episode (3 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/engagement-based-feeds-bury-controls-that-would-end-sessions/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/fOLu-pWQssQ/?t=6803

## Quote

> “your **engagement time would go down** because once you consume the content that you really want”
> — [Aravind Srinivas](https://realalpha.app/builders/aravind-srinivas/) at [1:54:17](https://realalpha.app/v/fOLu-pWQssQ/?t=6857) · The Joe Rogan Experience

## Takeaways

1. Personalized controls can lower time-on-app and ad inventory.
2. He calls unregretted minutes a better product metric.
3. He says ad incentives push against that metric.

## About this segment

Aravind Srinivas says platforms bury preference controls because users who find what they came for leave sooner, undermining ad revenue. He contrasts that with optimizing for unregretted time.

From “Joe Rogan Experience #2521 - Aravind Srinivas”, Jul 1, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/fOLu-pWQssQ/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[1:53:27](https://realalpha.app/v/fOLu-pWQssQ/?t=6807) Do you anticipate a time where we recognize the dangers of algorithms And there is some discussion to either curb them or allow people to have control over them in a real meaningful way. Like you could dictate maybe through AI even that there's an AI interface to your algorithm that understands your particular emotional needs, your curiosity. Like only show me this. This is what I'm interested in.

[1:53:54](https://realalpha.app/v/fOLu-pWQssQ/?t=6834) Carpentry and basketball games. Show me those things. I don't want to see who's getting divorced. I don't give a fuck about this. Yeah. Yeah. So here's the thing. You can still customize on most of the social apps. You know, if you it'll be deeply buried somewhere in the setting somewhere and you can go and say stuff. But the reason it's buried is because once you you always have to say it or like it's the starting entry point for your experience there, your engagement time would go down because once you consume the content that you really want, you you would go back to your work, which is what you really need to be doing. Right. But that doesn't help them sell more ads. Right.

[1:54:31](https://realalpha.app/v/fOLu-pWQssQ/?t=6871) And so the incentives are not aligned. And so Elon has this really good metric he talks about where it's like a total amount of unregretted minutes spent on the app should go up. That's a good way to say it. It's hard to measure. It's hard to measure. It's more like, in spirit, the right metric. But this metric is also why it's hard to make money on ads if you care about this metric, which is why X doesn't really make a lot of money on ads compared to you know instagram or youtube right because uh you're kind of like optimizing for interestingness like doesn't mean excess everything right there's a lot of chaos there's a lot of memes there's a lot of like um weird shit going on there as well but uh in general social media is not necessarily like great for people i think it's terrible for people but it also provides you with

[1:55:25](https://realalpha.app/v/fOLu-pWQssQ/?t=6925) a way better understanding of what's going on in the world than has ever existed before. particularly. Acts particularly. Because it's a place for like discourse. It's a text-based app more than a video-based app. Right. So naturally like people tend to engage in discussions and debates and you know there's a lot of curious debates going on there and a lot of interesting viewpoints expressed by people. So I think in terms of the unregretted minutes it's actually one of the better social media apps but apps that are purely based on like video or or images and largely video these days i think that's just you know just trying to get your eyeballs in time yeah those are the mind numbers yeah they just numb your mind it's depressing when you go to a