I certainly don’t think we should copy everything exactly. There are no real algorithms on nostr and I certainly don’t count primal. Another feature no one has solved is follower count in a trust-minimized way that is fast. I have a few ideas for how to solve follower count but am swamped with other things right now — will get to it after launch. Status (followers) and max discovery/dopamine (algorithms) are two huge blind spots of nostr. We all have our reservations about if followers and dopamine-excess is bad, but relevant content and status is a huge part of what keeps people hooked. These are ancient programs of neurobiology that have been funneled into technology after decades of refinement. Nostr isn’t even close. I’d rather people be hooked in a place like Nostr where they have freedom of choice about what algorithms they use, rather than behind walled-gardens that manipulate and farm their attention to advertisers for corporate or political motives. If we can’t stop the addiction to social media, we can at least let people choose what they want to consume.

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If some structure would help, a framework for unpacking user preferences vs competition is - - Absolute Advantage - Relative Advantage - Parity Work out first where is your unfair absolute advantage that will attract users (when users are picking winners this is what they pick for), for Nostr that could be various things e.g. interoperability, easy DX, etc. Then work out where you must attain at least parity with competition so the user is able to switch (when users are stuck or face resistance to change, this is why). Colby, I think you're arguing that algos and follow counts are a parity need for social feeds.
It might even be that customise-your-own-algo could be an absolute advantage. But that seems harder to prove for now