Ben Werdmuller, a tech leader at ProPublica, discusses the trust crisis in Meta’s Threads app after his comment about the Internet Archive’s legal issues unexpectedly attracted a hostile audience. He was surprised by accusations of engagement farming, prompting him to question the assumptions behind such claims. Werdmuller discovered that Meta has been paying certain creators up to $5,000 for viral posts, leading to a climate where all content is viewed with suspicion.